Tips to Bring Your PC Up to Speed

Tips to Bring Your PC Up to Speed

(ARA) - Your PC isn't very old, but it sure is slow - so slow that you would love to replace it with something new and speedy. But a new computer just isn't in the budget in this tough economy.

The good news is that you can make your PC run faster, without upgrading or replacing it. All you need to do is give it a tune up.

The hard disk is the slowest part of your computer - as much as thousands of times slower than other types of storage, like memory. And your PC's hard disk slows down over time as files become fragmented. Here are some tune-up tips you can do yourself:

* Free up disk space. Start easy by emptying out your recycle bin. Then move on to deleting installed programs you don't use. If you're feeling more ambitious, remove Windows temporary files and optional extras that you don't use. The extra disk space will help to improve your computer's performance.

* Repair errors. Hard disks can develop bad sectors which prevent your PC from saving information in organized files on the disk. The information will be pushed somewhere else outside of the bad sector, causing the computer to slow down as it searches for files.

* Remove spyware. Spyware not only slows your PC down, but also puts your personal identity at risk. Spyware can track the Web sites you visit and collect personal information without your knowledge. There are many free anti-spyware programs available online.

* But what might make the most difference in speeding up your computer is to defragment your hard disk so your PC doesn't have to search multiple locations to find all the data it's looking for when reading a file. When you save a file on the hard disk, it saves in one place. But as you continue to open and save the file, fragments of the file end up scattered across your hard drive in different sectors, slowing your computer down. Use a defragmenting program, like Hard Disk Tune-Up, to reduce data access time by rearranging the fragments into their proper sectors quickly. The software can reduce the time it takes your computer to defragment the hard drive.

Sammsoft, www.sammsoft.com, offers free trials of Hard Disk Tune-Up, which reduces data access time quickly, so you don't have to wait hours for the computer to defragment.

Courtesy of ARAcontent