Computer and Web Articles

While having dinner with a good friend of mine the other evening, the general topic of computers came up, swiftly followed by the inevitable slew of “How-can-I-fix-this-problem” type questions.

My dear friend was primarily concerned about how sloooow her computer had been running. Programs such as Microsoft Word and Outlook Express were taking anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds just to open, and she’d found herself spending more and more time idly drumming her fingers on her desk waiting for pressed buttons and clicked links to do what they were supposed to. Yuck.

As has become automatic for me that, whenever someone laments about general computer problems, I began rattling off the importance of installing and running Spyware removal programs. But my friend cut me off. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “I run Ad-Aware and the latest version of Spybot all the time - you were the one who told me to install them, remember? Tell me something else.”

So I gave her a list of three super-easy steps she should take that could potentially go a long way in speeding up her machine. And today, I present this list to you. Enjoy!

Free up disk space

Freeing up disk space on your machine will most certainly help it to run faster. “But how do I do that?” you cry. Well I wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t easy, right?

Just click on the green Start button in the lower left hand corner of your Desktop, then select Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Now just sit back and let your computer do its thing. And have some cake while you’re at it.

When Disk Cleanup is done, it’ll show you a list of things you can clean up.

(For the most part, anything that’s taking up extra space can be deleted.) Hit OK, and that’s it.

Defragmenting

Many people know how to defragment their computers, but honestly, unless you save and delete a bunch of files every day, you don’t need to run your Defragmenter frequently - once a month should be just fine.

Though it sounds fancy, defragmenting simply tidies up your computer’s hard drive, allowing data and programs to be accessed more quickly. You’re not going to accidentally delete anything important here, I promise. To defragment, just go to your Start button, then choose Accessories > System Tools > Defragmenter.

Get rid of those extra programs

You know that golf game you installed on your computer back in 2002? The one you never play anymore? I think it might be slowing your computer down.

You really should try to do an occasional cleaning of programs on your computer you no longer use. Just browse through your programs list, which you can find by clicking Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, and remove all the extra stuff you no longer use - or even forgot you had.