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[C931]Computer Runs Slow How To Fix

by Jeff Farley, Jef

There is nothing more irritating! When this has happened to me, I wanted to chuck my laptop across the room or out the window! Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and I found an option that is much more cost effective (and not as messy).

If you're experiencing problems with your computer's performance and speed, you have a few options. You can either take your computer to a repair shop and have them look at it, or perform an easy yet comprehensive fix yourself from the comfort of your home. Let's look at what you can expect from each option.

1. RE-FORMAT YOUR HARD DRIVE AND INSTALL WINDOWS AGAIN

If you choose this option, make sure you locate the Windows backup discs that came with your PC if you bought it new. If you can't find these discs, you may have to obtain them from Microsoft. Check their website for more details. Be sure to backup any files you need, since they will be gone once the re-format has taken place. If this doesn't solve the problems, you can:

2. SEND YOUR COMPUTER TO A SHOP TO HAVE IT FIXED.

You will probably have to pay at least one hundred dollars. You might have to pay more, depending on how the amount of labor involved. Don't expect to get your computer back for a while. The wait time can be anywhere from one day to two weeks, depending on how backed up your repairman is. Some will offer a money back guarantee, though you probably won't get all the money back. Some of the labor costs will probably not be refundable. Contact your local repair store for details.

3. SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FROM HOME

I have found this to be the best option, both for the sake of time and money. First off, you can have your computer's windows registry scanned for free. If errors are found, you can purchase a program that will cost anywhere from $29 to $59, about half of what you would pay at a repair shop. You also won't have to worry about being without your computer for an extended period of time. The whole process takes about 30 minutes to an hour tops. And there is really no monetary risk. All of the major registry cleaners and repair programs offer a money back guarantee.

I definitely recommend trying to fix your computer from home first. Nine times out of ten, a registry scan and repair program will fix the problems, plus it's something you can use over and over again. If there is a more serious issue, you can always have it fixed at a repair shop, but don't spend that extra cash until you absolutely have to.

Then again your speed for surfing the internet depends entirely on your internet connection speed. Obviously a high speed cable connection is much faster than a dial up.

When your computer seems to gradually run slower over a period of time there can be a number of reasons for this and you can correct the problems fairly easily in most cases.

1. Do you have enough memory in your machine? Anything less than 1 gigabyte of RAM is barely enough these days. If you have less you should upgrade to at least 1 Gigabyte of RAM and 2 or more gigabytes would be better. Same applies to your hard drive. If you download a lot of stuff you should have a big hard drive. A minimum of 100 gigabytes is needed these days.

2. Do you have a lot of never used programs on your hard drive? Uninstall as many as possible. The extra hard drive space will speed things up especially if you have a small hard drive. Aim to have no more than 50 to 60 percent of your hard drive space in use.

3. You should defragment your hard drive regularly to keep things running fast and smoothly. When pieces of programs are scattered throughout the hard drive the computer is slowed down as it attempts to find the many pieces of a program. All the pieces of a program should be together on the hard drive and defragmenting accomplishes this.

4. Regular use of an antispyware program will eliminate spyware which has been installed on your machine by someone unknown. Adaware and Spybot are free programs which you can download. Your computer resources are used up by spyware as it goes about its dirty business. Take it out and speed up your machine.

5. Many people will have months or even years of old emails taking up hard drive space. Permanently delete all old inbox items,sent items and deleted items consistently and you will open up a lot of hard drive space. This will enable your machine to run faster.

6. Your startup menu may be clutterd with all kinds of material which need not be there. You can access any of these programs quite easily if you need them. No need to have them slow down the booting of the machine. Edit them out of the startup menu. No need to delete them,just remove them from startup and booting will become faster.

7. All Windows PCs will slow down over a period of time. The computer registry gradually becomes choked with excess material. This greatly slows down the operating system as it tries to locate the data it needs to run your computer. The solution is to remove all the unwanted data from the registry and clean it up.

If you have the necessary computer knowledge you can do this manually using the Regedit function which is installed in all Windows computers for this purpose. Regedit will give you access to the registry files and you can then delete any material you don't want in there.

A serious caution is in order at this point however. If you do not know exactly what you are doing you should not remove any data from the registry. Many entries are there for the purpose of running the computer and if you should delete any of these important files your computer could be disabled. It might become necessary to reinstall the operating system to get the machine back in working order. Needless to say you want to avoid this at all costs.

Fortunately there is a safe and easy way to remove the unecessary material from the registry. You simply need to download a registry repair application from the internet and this will take care of the problem for you quickly and easily.

A number of these programs are available to download and they vary considerably in ease of use and in performance. We purchased and tested several of them and found that some were superior to others.

The first necessity is to get a free scan of your computer which most of these applications offer. This will determine whether or not you do have a registry problem and will report to you what the problems are.

You can look at this report and decide what you would like to do. The reasonable price which is charged for repairing your registry is well worthwhile and this is what we would recommend that you do.

The registry cleaner will quickly do it's work and your computer will be returned to full operating speed. Your computer will run like a new machine again.

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Both Jeff Farley & John Mowatt are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Jeff Farley has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet. . Jeff Farley's top article generates over 480 views. Bookmark Jeff Farley to your Favourites.

John Mowatt has sinced written about articles on various topics from Family, Health and Family. We found one registry repair tool which was by far the best. Do you want to know which one? Would you like to get a free scan of your registry to repair problems? We have plenty of free information and resources at our website:. John Mowatt's top article generates over 40500 views. Bookmark John Mowatt to your Favourites.