How to Get Your Computer back to its Peak Performance

Written By Crank IT

Remember that time when booting your computer took just a few seconds and you had fun using your system. Its not that hard to regain that performance with a little maintenance here and there.

Performing certain pc maintenance on a regular basis will get and keep your system running as it should. To get your system back to the speed demon it once was you should first backup your system.

Be sure you have a emergency “boot disk” on hand. After you know you have a good backup of at least your important files, and a boot disk made, you're ready to get your computer back up to that peak performance it once had. You do this by performing the following steps.

Clean Up Your System

Taking the time to cleanup your hard drive by deleting unneeded files will speed up your system. Temporary internet filers, rarely used programs and recycle bin files should also be deleted.

To clean up your hard drive, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Cleanup. Select the drive you want to clean most likely the C:,and click OK. Place a check mark next to the items you want deleted and click OK. The most important check mark is next to ‘Temporary Files’ and ‘Temporary Internet Files’.

You can also remove Windows components that you don't use. Start Disk Cleanup and click the More Options tab. Click "Clean up" under Windows components. You can remove games, accessories and other non-essential Windows components.

Also, the More Options tab allows Windows XP users to clear old restore points. These old restore points hog space over time. Just click the "Clean up" button under System Restore and then Yes.

Consolidate Your Files

Its easy to have different files containing digital pictures. Get a photo organizer to put photos in one file and you will have consolidated to save space. Do the same if you have video clips and don't forget to remove all duplicate files or folders.

Search For Large Unused Files Perform a search of your hard drive to find and remove large files. Click Start, Search All Files And Folders and click on the arrow next to "What size is it?"Then click on large to search.

You will most likely find some rarely used music and video files that can be deleted. Perform such a search once a month to find those large files lurking on your computer.

Lighten The Load

Your hard drive will slow down once it reaches about 80 percent capacity, no matter how large it may be. Take the time to free up space by removing those unused programs.

Start by clicking on Start, Control Panel, double click Add or Remove Programs and find those programs that you don't or rarely use. If you have Windows XP, you'll see the size of the program, how often it has been used and when it was used last.

If Windows 89 or ME, click on the program you want to remove and click Add/Remove. You can greatly reduce the boot-up time and also free up memory by disabling certain programs. Do not start deleting sporadically though. Take care!

Instant Message programs, media players, for example, will slow down the boot time big time. See what programs are loading during boot-up by clicking on Start, Run, and typing "msconfig" without the quotes and click OK.

Now click the Start-up Tab and the programs listed are the ones starting during boot-up. Some of these names are easy to understand but some you have to figure out.

You can visit www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php to see a list of entries and explanation that will help you in figuring out which programs can be disabled.

Clear the boxes for the programs you don't need. Click Apply and OK. You'll be prompted to restart your computer. After restarting you'll receive a message stating that the System Configuration Utility is in Diagnostic or Selective Start-up mode.

Just check the box next to "don't show this message again" and click OK. And you are done. Your boot process should greatly improve as well normal operation of your system.

Take careful note of the programs you disabled in case you need to go back and enable a program.

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