Computers are notorious for slowing down with old age, but there are a few tips and tricks to give your slow PC a speed boost. From small tweaks to your settings to purchasing some new RAM, there’s plenty of options for everyone’s budget and skillset. So before you toss your computer aside for a new one, try out these suggestions to get your PC chugging along again.
Tips to Fix Slow PC Issues:
Uninstall Unused Programs:
Open the Control Panel, find the list of installed programs, and uninstall programs you don’t use and don’t need from your PC. This can help speed your Slow PC up, as those programs might include background processes, autostart entries, system services, context menu entries, and other things that can slow down your PC. It’ll also save room on your hard drive and improve system security.
If you have recently upgraded to Windows 10. You might have Windows. old folder on your computer, and it’s wasting a huge amount of space. You can delete it — but not like you’d delete a normal folder.
Learn How to delete Windows old folder from your computer HERE
Clean junks and temporary files frequently
CCleaner is an amazing app that will help you find and delete caches and temporary files in many of your applications and speed up your slow PC.
Download CCleaner HERE
Remove visual effects and animations
Windows uses quite a few animations, and those animations can make your PC seem a bit slower. For example, Windows can minimize and maximize windows instantly if you disable the associated animations.
To disable animations,
- Press Windows Key + X or right-click the Start button
- and select “System.”
- Click “Advanced System Settings” on the left and click the “Settings” button under Performance.
- Choose “Adjust for best performance” under Visual Effects to disable all the animations,
- Or select “Custom” and disable the individual animations you don’t want to see.
- For example, uncheck “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” to disable the minimize and maximize animations.
Use Anti-Virus Software
Viruses and malware can bog down your computer in a hurry, so it’s best to prevent them in the first place. If you are using a free trial of antivirus software whose notifications are as annoying as a virus itself, uninstall it and try using Windows Defender. To stay diligent, try scheduling daily quick scans and weekly full scans.
Download Windows Defender HERE
Learn How to use Windows Defender to remove virus/spyware from your computer HERE
Free Up Disk Space
If your hard drive is almost completely full, your computer may run noticeably slower. You want to leave your computer some room to work on your hard drive.You don’t need any third-party software — just running the Disk Cleanup tool included in Windows can help quite a bit.
Close System Tray Programs
Many applications tend to run in the system tray or notification area. These applications often launch at startup and stay running in the background but remain hidden behind the up arrow icon at the bottom-right corner of your screen. Click the up arrow icon near the system tray, right-click any applications you don’t need running in the background, and close them to free up resources.
Reduce the number of apps that launch when you start up your PC.
Waiting around for your computer to boot up is a pain, so it can help to limit the number of programs and apps that start on launch.
Right-click the taskbar and select “Task Manager” or press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to launch it. Click over to the Startup tab and disable startup applications you don’t need. Windows will helpfully tell you which applications slow down your startup process the most and help you to get rid of your slow PC.
Note: Don’t delete anything you don’t recognize without first searching Google to see if it’s a necessary program.
YOU SHOULD ALSO READ:
HOW TO PERSONALIZE WINDOWS 10 APPEARANCE
HOW TO MAXIMIZE BATTERY LIFE IN WINDOWS 10
HOW TO STOP WINDOWS 10 FROM USING SO MUCH DATA
Lighten Your Web Browser
There’s a good chance you use your web browser a lot, so your web browser may just be a bit slow. It’s a good idea to use as few browser extensions, or add-ons, as possible — those slow down your web browser and cause it to use more memory.
Learn How to make your browser faster HERE
Refresh your computer’s search index
Defragmenting your hard disk actually shouldn’t be necessary on modern versions of Windows. It’ll automatically defragment mechanical hard drives in the background. Solid-state drives don’t really need traditional defragmentation, although modern versions of Windows will “optimize” them — and that’s fine.
You shouldn’t worry about defragmentation most of the time. However, if you do have a mechanical hard drive and you’ve just put a lot of files on the drive — for example, copying a huge database or gigabytes of PC game files — those files might be defragmented because Windows hasn’t gotten around to defragmenting them yet. In this situation, you might want to open the disk defragmenter tool and perform a scan to see if you need to run a manual defrag program.
See what’s running on your computer
You have a slow PC because something is using up those resources. If it’s suddenly running slower, a runaway process might be using 99% of your CPU resources, for example. Or, an application might be experiencing a memory leak and using a large amount of memory, causing your PC to swap to disk. Alternately, an application might be using the disk a lot, causing other applications to slow down when they need to load data from or save it to the disk.
To find out, open the Task Manager. You can right-click your taskbar and select the “Task Manager” option or press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to open it.
On Windows 8, 8.1, and 10, the new Task Manager provides an upgraded interface that color-codes applications using a lot of resources.
Click the “CPU,” “Memory,” and “Disk” headers to sort the list by the applications using the most resources. If any application is using too many resources, you might want to close it normally — if you can’t, select it here and click “End Task” to force it to close.
Buy RAM
RAM, or random-access memory, is a cheap and easy upgrade that can make a sluggish PC feel brand new again.
You can use this nifty “Memory Finder” tool from Newegg to figure out what kind your computer needs. You can then either install it yourself or have a computer technician slot it into your motherboard. It’s a very easy DIY upgrade, though.
IF YOU ARE STILL USING OLDER VERSION OF WINDOWS, YOU SHOULD CONSIDER READING THESE POSTS:
HOW TO CLEAN INSTALL WINDOWS 10
HOW TO UPGRADE WINDOWS 7 TO WINDOWS 10
Buy a solid-state drive (SSD)
Upgrading your hard drive is an easy way to see far faster load times. There are two types: the traditional hard drives (HDD) and the newer solid-state drives (SDD).
While traditional hard drives are cheaper and feature moving parts, SSDs are based on flash memory which has no moving parts. They e getting cheaper by the day, and having an SSD means faster startups and load times.
Reset Your PC / Reinstall Windows
If the other tips here didn’t fix your problem, the one timeless solution to fix Windows problems — aside from rebooting your PC, of course — is getting a fresh Windows installation.
On modern versions of Windows — that is, Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 — it’s easier to get a fresh Windows installation than ever. You don’t have to get Windows installation media and reinstall Windows. Instead, you can simply use the “Reset your PC” feature built into Windows to get a new, fresh Windows system. This is similar to reinstalling Windows and will wipe your installed programs and system settings while keeping your files.
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