No matter how good you are about keeping your computer clean and up-to-date, they tend to slow down after time. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to help speed them up― without upgrading your hardware. Depending on the version of Windows running on your device, you can either use the free automated tool from Microsoft to diagnose and resolve some of the issues that slow your computer down or follow the steps detailed below to identify and fix the issues yourself.
1. As a rule, you want to keep at least 15% of the hard disk space free to keep the computer running smoothly. Simply go to My Computer, right-click on Local Drive, and go to Properties. There you’ll see a pie chart of your free versus used space. If it’s mostly full, you’ll want to start by removing unnecessary programs and files; if it’s not, you probably want to tackle the actual way your computer operates.
2. On Windows 7, try disabling the pretty albeit resource-hungry “Aero” theme. Right click your desktop and then click “Personalize.” Choose the “Window Color” tab and then uncheck “Enable transparency.”
3. Windows indexes your hard disk for speedier searching, but background indexing can slow down your computer’s overall performance. If your PC is dragging its heels, consider disabling this feature.Click Start > Computer. In Windows Explorer, right-click your system drive (usually C:) and then click Properties.On the General tab, untick the box next to Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties and click OK. In the confirmation box, make sure the option to apply changes to subfolders and files is selected and click OK.
4. If you use more than one antivirus or antispyware program at the same time, your device may experience decreased performance, become unstable, or restart unexpectedly. To remedy the issue, you should select one Internet security program to run on your device. You should then uninstall the other programs.
5. Change power options in Control Panel, to High Performance if you have a Desktop PC as it may prevent Hardware Throttling by Manufacturer!
6. Disable any programs which run in the background. Background applications can take up valuable CPU cycles and ram, so disable the ones you don’t need.