Everyone of us have faced this question at some time – “Why my Computer is running Slow?” or “What should I do to make my PC run faster”. This is a well known problem with most of the computer professionals. Here we will discuss what are the primary reasons for slow performance of our PC and how to fix them.
1. Removing Hard drive unwanted files – This is the most common reason to slow down the computer. If we don’t take good care of our system, it will get cluttered with unwanted files, photos, temp files and unnecessary installed programs. It is advisable to run the disk cleanup utility on Windows system to remove temporary Internet files, temp files and optional windows program that we no longer use. If you are working on some other operating system, you can remove them manually that are present in the temp folders. You can also install some of the softwares that check your system and remove unused log files and temp files.
2. Fixing Registry errors – This problem is specific to windows operating system. Over the long run, there are broken links and options get created in Registry that make your system load slower. It increases the time of loading your operating system and other programs also. There are free softwares like “System Mechanic” that can be used to fix these registry errors. It will certainly help you in making your PC running smooth and faster than others. 
3. Hard Drive Defragment – When we run low on hard drive, windows place big files in the form of multiple smaller files that causes slow access to those. So its advisable to defragment your hard drive atleast one in a month to avoid these. Defragment of hard drive takes lot of time, so make sure you are connected to AC power supply and run it when your PC is idle.
4. Repair hard disk errors – You can check the integrity of the files stored on your hard disk by running the Error Checking utility. As you use your hard drive, it can develop bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing (such as file saving) difficult, or even impossible. The Error Checking utility scans the hard drive for bad sectors, and scans for file system errors to see whether certain files or folders are misplaced. If you use your computer daily, you should run this utility once a week to help prevent data loss.
5. Use Antivirus programs – As soon as you start working on your PC, make sure to have a good antivirus installed to be safe from viruses and malwares. Most of these viruses and trojan horses comes from Internet or USB, so make sure to have a firewall installed and scan pen drive before copying any data from pen drive.
6. Reducing Start Up programs – There are so many installed programs that gets loaded on system start up but you don’t use them frequently. So you can set these programs not to load on system startup. This will reduce your OS load time and also increase free RAM to boost your system speed.
7. ReadyBoost – This is the new feature in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating system. ReadyBoost allows you to use non-volatile flash memory like a USB flash drive or a memory card – to improve performance without having to add additional memory.
All the above mentioned methods are tried and tested by me on my personal system and they really works If you want more information as how to use them, please add a comment and you will get the reply with details as soon as possible.
