Maintenance: Tune up your PC

Article supplied courtesy of ACP Media. (NetGuide)

Helen Bradley looks at some simple ways to put your pedal to the metal and speed up your PC.

Does it seem like everything has somehow gone downhill from the day you purchased your new computer? Do programs that once loaded blindingly fast creep onto the screen? Does it seem like your downloads are getting slower and your computer has gone from running swiftly to performing a slow crawl? Chances are your computer could use some attention to make it run faster. We’ll show you some easy ways to improve the performance of any computer running Windows XP.

Before we start, however, a word of caution: You should never (for this read, absolutely never) start tinkering with your computer until you have made a full backup of everything of value and that you aren’t prepared to lose. It’s Murphy’s Law that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and it will do so in the most inconvenient way. If your valuable files, emails and photos are backed up, then if the worst does happen you’ll have copies of all the important stuff somewhere other than on a computer that no longer functions. Also, never do anything if you don’t understand what you’re doing. For example, when cleaning your disk by deleting files, only delete those you have created yourself. Other files that you don’t recognise are program or Windows files that may be necessary to the smooth running of your computer - delete these entirely at your peril!

In this article, we’ve deliberately avoided providing instructions for optimising techniques, like overclocking your CPU. While it is possible to increase the speed of your computer’s components by changing settings in its BIOS setup, using many of these tweaks voids your warranty and may damage your computer. We’ve addressed only techniques generally considered to be safe to use. Before you tweak anything, it’s also a good idea to save a Restore Point so you can recover your Windows settings if anything goes amiss. To do this, choose Start>All Programs>Accessories> System Tools>System Restore and choose Create a Restore Point. Click Next, type a name for it and click Create.

Follow this link to read the full article.

print