TechAdvisory.org

Technology Advice for Small Businesses

5 Ways to make your computer faster!

Hardware_April21_BIf your company is reliant on computers, slow PCs can lead to delays, reduced productivity and even severe downtime that can rob your business of valuable resources. For this reason, you should take the time to improve your computer’s speed. The faster your computer runs, the more you can achieve which leads to higher profits.

While there are several ways to go about improving your computer’s speed, these five methods are some of the best:

Remove unwanted programs

Computers come with pre-installed programs that you may not really need. They use system resources like memory and often run in the background when you start up your PC. Freeing up system resources can give you more space, thus improving your computer’s speed. Here’s how to do it.

  1. Click the start button.
  2. Go to control panel.
  3. Click the program you don’t use and click uninstall.
  4. Repeat with all the applications that you don’t need.

Be careful not to remove applications that may be crucial for your PC to run properly. If you’re not sure about a certain program, research it to determine if it’s needed by the system or consult a technician.

Defragment your hard drive

The disk defragmenter is a tool that is a standard feature of all versions of Windows. It removes the bad sectors on your hard drive and optimizes file saving. It’s best not to do anything on your computer while running disk defragmenter to avoid interrupting the process. Furthermore, it usually takes time to complete so you may want to do this when you’re off work.

  1. Click the start button.
  2. Go to My Computer.
  3. Right click the hard drive icon.
  4. Click Properties.
  5. Select Tools.
  6. Click Defragment Now.

Upgrade hard drive size

Uninstalling unwanted applications can free up space and improve performance. However, if you need to use several programs and you work on lots of files that must be stored on your device, your hard drive can get full in no time. It’s recommended to have at least 15% of your total hard drive space free for the system to run smoothly.

If over 85% of your hard drive space has already been used, you’ll start experiencing slowness on your computer. To fix this problem, you may need to purchase a hard drive with more storage capacity. With this, you can store more files and applications without experiencing slowness due to an almost full disk.

Add more RAM

Another cause of slowness is low memory. Computers use RAM or random access memory to temporarily store data that you’re currently working on. Accessing multiple applications without enough memory will slow down your PC. To check if your memory is running slow, follow the steps below:

  1. Press ctrl+alt+delete on your keyboard at the same time.
  2. Click Task Manager.
  3. Go to the Performance tab.
  4. Under physical memory check if you’re already about to reach your memory’s limit. If so, you need to add more RAM on your system.

Run a virus scan

Virus infections can also cause a computer to slow down. If you have enough space on your hard drive and sufficient RAM, but are still experiencing sluggish performance, run a virus scan on your system as it could be infected. It’s recommended to keep your computer protected to prevent not just slowness, but other problems that can be caused by a virus, like corrupted files and system freezing.

Don’t let a slow computer disrupt your work, if you are looking for an effective solution contact us today to see how we can help.