It is a matter of fact, your computer slows down over time. At first you don’t notice it, but as time goes by, you start to realize that your computer used to be a lot faster. I’m here to let you know some causes and to give you step-by-step instructions on how to increase computer speed.

First Steps to Computer Maintenance

The first thing we need to do is make sure your computer is not infected with any viruses. Computer viruses will slow your system down to a crawl and can cause serious damage to your Windows operating system. So start up your anti-virus software, update it until you can’t update it anymore, then run a full scan on all of your hard drives.

Causes of Slow Computer Speed

Causes of a slow computer are varied. Your computer may just need basic maintenance, you may have a full hard drive, or you have registry errors that have built up and are causing your computer to slow down.

Fixing Slow Computer

We’ll start with the easiest to fix. Full hard drive. Open My Computer, if you are using Vista that’s all you have to do to see how full your hard drive is. You want at least 1gig of free space on your hard drive. If you don’t have it you are going to need to remove a program or two that you don’t use. Maybe save some pictures and other files to CD. This is not a bad idea to back them up to begin with.

That brings us to basic maintenance. A scan disk and defrag can work wonders if you are not in the habit of doing them on a regular basis.

• Go to Start
• Go to Accessories
• Go to System Tool
• In XP, you will have to choose Scan Disk, then when Scan Disk is done go through steps 1-3 again to choose Disk Defragmenter. In Vista, all you have to do is pick Disk Defragmenter at this point.
• Let it run without using the computer at all. I suggest going to bed and letting Disk Defragmenter run while you sleep as it can take hours.  If you use the computer at all while it is trying to run, it will restart.

For registry errors, I suggest getting a registry cleaner. Registry cleaners are programs that will go into your registry looking for errors and then fixing them in a matter of moments.

For more information on registry cleaners and how they can fix slow computer visit our website today.

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