IS YOUR COMPUTER SLOWING DOWN?

Its never a nice feeling when you can say my system 

was faster when I first purchased it or it was faster than it is a while ago, in a nutshell computers are like i saw in a post online which said "Computers are like new homes or apartments; if you don't make good use of your space and resources they get filled with clutter as time goes by". In order to keep things running smooth, it is important to know how to make good use your computer’s resources.

Your computer has a limited amount of storage space, processing speed, and ram memory. The more programs, documents, pictures, videos, music, and toolbars you have, the slower your computer will become. It is also important to note that if your computer is extremely slow it could be due to a virus. To see some of the most common symptoms of viruses read our article "HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR YOUR COMPUTER HAS VIRUS, SPYWARE, MALWARE OR TROJANS"

Why Does It Happen?

Programs or software applications have the greatest effect on your computer resources and performance, especially those applications that start themselves automatically, e.g.: instant messenger applications, and antiviruses. These might be two that you can't live without, but most users have 6 to 12 applications running all the time, that they don't use, and that shouldn't be running automatically.

These applications are usually found at the lower right corner of your computer screen to the left of your system clock. The little icons next to the time clock represent programs running in the background. Most of these programs are installed in the startup folder, and start themselves automatically. That's why you now have to wait longer for windows to start or boot up. It's because Windows is trying to load all these little intrusive applications next to your clock.

What about regular files 

Regular files like word documents, pictures, videos, and music? These files don't cause too much of a problem because they don't run constantly in the background. They only use system resources when you open them. The only problem that they represent is storage space and fragmentation. What happens is that the more of them you put on your hard drive, the more messy your hard drive becomes.

What do I mean? 

Your computer's hard drive is always spinning. And it never stops unless you turn off the computer. So when the computer is on, it's always spinning, and when you save a new file on your computer it is written on the surface of the hard drive in no particular order. That means that there are gaps between the information. It would be like shopping at a grocery store that has 20 empty aisles between the laundry detergent and the fabric softener. It would take shoppers too much time to shop at such a place. And that's why it takes longer for your computer’s hard drive to find your files and folders, especially after a few months of saving new files. All that messiness is called fragmentation.

Solution

In order to put the information in sequence and efficiently arrange it, it is necessary to run a system defragmenter. If you have an older version of Windows (Windows Xp or older), you have one under the system tools folder called “Disk Defragmenter”. However on newer verssions of the Microsoft Windows Oprating system the system is set to defragment automaticaly.

So if you happen to still be using an an older version of windows, you'll be doing yourself a whole lot of good if you defragment your computer hard drive at least once a month. It is also very important to always have at least 5GB of free hard disk space for the operating system to run correctly. And don't forget to stop trivial applications from starting up automatically. To do this I recommend reading our post "how to use the Microsoft configuration utility to stop applications from starting automatically".

Cheers,

Ponsak.
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