Well, there are a lot of reasons why a computer might slow down over time, but I've got a list of 10 things that you can do in Windows specifically, they will hopefully get the computer up and running more like when you first bought it.
How to make a slow computer faster
And don't worry, these are all very simple and free things you can do right now, and some of these might seem a little bit technical but they're really not that complicated once you actually see what to do.
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Tips No.1 ⭆ Clear out your startup programs
So why don't we get started, first and foremost, clear out your startup programs. This has got to be the number one reason for slowdowns over time.
I'm sure many of you already knew this because think about it as time goes on you install new programs and many of them make them still startup with Windows, and if you don't close them after you boot up, you'll have an ever increasing number of programs is running in the background taking up resources, all the time.
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But don't think that just because you don't see any programs in the taskbar, that there aren't that many running in the background.
Slow computer faster In Windows 8 & Windows 10:
- You can actually open up the Task Manager you press CTRL+Shift +ESC
- And then go to the startup tab in the task manager to see all the programs that are going to start off with Windows.
Slow computer faster In Windows 7 & earlier:
- It's a little bit different you go to the start menu and type in ms config and run that, and then you go to the startup tab
- Run > "ms config" > Startup
- and you can right click and disable
Anything that you don't immediately need all the time to actually start up, and you can obviously just manually run these whenever you want.
You just don't need them to start up with Windows, but here's where most people screw up, because the startup tab is not the end of the story.
Tips No. 2⭆ Clear out your startup services
Many programs, install what are called services, which are still programs that run in the background, but you never necessarily see them.
So number two is to go through the startup services in disable any of that you don't need as well, in addition to the startup programs in the task manager that you can do this by
Solution 1: Go to the start menu and running services.MSC, just run that or maybe go to start menu, run and type in that in earlier versions
Run > "services.MSC" > Services
You'll get a list of all the services, and any of its safe automatic, we'll start with Windows just like the programs and what you can do is right click on them in properties and then change the startup type to say manual instead of automatic, so the only run when you actually start the program and need it.
Keep in mind though that you should be more cautious when disabling these services, especially for programs that aren't necessarily manually run by you. So for example, disabling the printer service might cause trouble. The next time you go to print.
That's something I would not disable, so only disable services that you know you don't need running in the background.
And this is also great for programs that you may see starting up all the time, but you can't find in the startup list, it may actually be a service, and that's why wouldn't show up, but you can still stop it from starting
what makes a computer faster
This one just really goes off the first two, but uninstalling any unused programs.
- This will free up hard drive space,
- And remove up startup junk,
- Without having to go through the whole list of startup programs and services,
- Trying to figure out what each one does.
- If you just go through the list of programs that you don't need in the control panel and uninstall them. It's way easier.
Tips No.3⭆ Scanning for Viruses
Alright, number three, another simple one that you're hopefully already doing, is scanning for malware and viruses.
If your computer is always running slow for no apparent reason.
It's possible that there are hidden malicious software running in the background, and doing anything from showing you ads to using your computer resources.
Now there are Free and paid antivirus options and there's even free versions of paid ones.
So some Free Antivirus ones include:
- Avast
- AVG
- Bitdefender
- Malwarebytes
And for some paid programs of Antivirus:
- I personally use ESET Smart Security
I've been happy with it so I would recommend that one, and even if your computer isn't necessarily running slow, you should always have some sort of antivirus on your computer, for reasons I've covered, plenty of other times in other post.
For example:
Sometimes if you're on an exploited website, then you might even get a virus just bought my going on it.
If there's an exploit in the browser, even if you didn't click on anything, there's other ways you can get infected. Always have an antivirus.
Tips No. 4⭆ Windows animations
Number four is really quick and easy, and that is disabling Windows animations.
One of the ways you can do this;
- Go to the Ease of Access Settings window probably in the control panel
- And check, turn off all unnecessary animations when possible.
If you want a little bit more control you can also
- Go to the Control Panel,
- Then system.
- Advanced System Settings
- performance settings,
And then there you can adjust which animations you want to use, you can select the best performance, which will disable all of them, or you can actually pick and choose, and this will probably only make a difference on really low power computers.
But it might help in other cases, especially if you want to squeeze out every drop of performance.
Tips No.5⭆ Keep everything Up to Date
Next up, number five, is keep all your software up to date.
This includes Windows itself your graphics drivers, and anything else you use regularly.
These software companies are going to be frequently releasing new updates that are optimized for performance, as well as improved security most of the time. Plus, it's just good practice.
Tips No.6⭆ Check power setting
Moving on to number six this one might seem dumb but hold on, check your power settings.
Especially on laptops, the default may be to have it set to balanced, or even power saver, which are good for conserving battery, but will slow down your computer considerably.
Instead, maybe want to change it to high performance indefinitely if you're on a desktop and on a laptop, maybe only if you're plugged in, I actually learned this the hard way, a couple years back I got a brand new laptop, it was supposed to be like really high end really fast, right.
But when I actually got it, it was super slow and I couldn't figure out why it was so annoying.
I was like I spent all this money, and then after several days, I finally realized it was on power saver mode, and of course when I switch it to high performance then it was lightning fast also slow computer fast , so be sure to check that I felt like a complete idiot.
And it's not some you always think about, okay, so now we're going to get slightly more technical, but don't worry.
Tips No.7⭆ Check drive Health/status get Slow computer fast
So number seven is to check your hard drive for errors. You can do this in a couple of ways actually.
What makes a computer faster
First, you can check the hard drives reported smart health by going to the command prompt
- So go to the Start menu,
- Type cmd and in the command prompt
- Type WMIC , press Enter
- Then type Diskdrive get status , press Enter
If they all say okay, one for each drive, it means that there are no immediate serious errors that it thinks it can see at least.
If any of them say something other than okay, then one of your drives could be having issues, and you shouldn't really replace it.
If the smart health is not okay. It means that something is going wrong with the drive and a lot of times these just get worse and worse over time it's not going to fix itself.
what makes a computer faster
The other way to check for Drive errors
- Go to the command prompt or CMD
- And run the check disk command by typing in check disk, or rather, CHKDSK /F means it's going to also try to repair anything and fine.
Now this is going to search for and charter pair those errors.
And if you consistently get a lot of errors as a result of this, again, that may mean your drive is failing.
And this is why you always want to backup, always, you don't really know when your hard drive is gonna fail, it may be sudden, but you can generally get an idea if you run these commands, and if it gets errors and repairs them, and that's it.
If you run it again a week later and they're fine, that's fine, but if you notice that, week after week you're still getting errors, you might want to get a new drive.
Tips No.8⭆ Check windows Integrity
Check the Windows files integrity.
- You do this back to the good old command prompt again,
- You type in sfc /scannow
This is going to run the System File Checker, and it will try and find any system files that are missing or corrupted and try to repair them these are specifically files that Windows uses.
Now there are a ton of possibilities for different error messages, it could spit back at you.
So if you get one, You're just gonna have to Google it for yourself okay just figure it out. I'm not going to be able to help everyone with every random error they get, because I don't know what they would be anyway I just be searching them as well.
So if you get an error message, you're just gonna have to figure it out yourself, but at least you know there's something wrong.
Tips No.9⭆ Check for Memory Issues
Next, on to number nine, check for memory errors, we're doing a lot of checking it's important if you have bad memory, it can cause all sorts of weird problems that you would never probably guess, has to do anything with the RAM but it probably does not to do this to check the memory
- Go to the Start menu
- search for Windows memory diagnostic,
now be careful because after you do that you don't want to click Restart Now, necessarily, unless you actually want to restart right this second, you probably would rather click on restart at the next startup, and then you can just restart whenever you want.
And after you restart, it's going to boot into the diagnostic tool, and should just automatically start doing the memory check and tell you if anything comes up.
Or if you want to get a little bit more advanced you can press f1 while it's doing it, and that will change some of the settings, but that's not really necessary.
If you do get a lot of errors, it could mean a couple things it could mean just your RAM isn't seated properly, but if you check that it could also mean that one of the sticks is faulty, and does need to be replaced.
If RAM is actually bad replacing it is really the only option because it's typically a hardware issue, you're not going to be able to fix it yourself, it's just broken
Tips No.10⭆ Reformat + Reinstall
So now the final one for the free options though there are a couple non free things I'll mention in a second afterwards slow computer fast.
Just new get in start all over reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows.
This is obviously going to be the most extreme option, but if you're getting consistent issues that you can't seem to fix, no matter what you try a fresh installation of Windows is often just the best way to go. It's just restarting altogether.
Now, explaining how to reformat and reinstall Windows is way beyond the scope of this post.
And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, then it's probably not something you should do, but this list would not be complete without.
Bonus option Slow computer faster
So now here are a couple other bonus options but these do involve actually buying new hardware so they're not free.
Replace HDD with SSD
First, you can buy an SSD a solid state drive to replace your main hard drive, you could just get a small one and just boot Windows offered if you want to be really cheap about it, but SSDs are much cheaper today so you probably just want to get a big one.
And let me just tell you there's probably nothing better that you can do that will make your computer faster than getting an SSD.
Of course this is assuming that the rest of your computer is an ancient, but once you get one, you're never gonna go back it's amazing it's so much faster to load programs to boot up.Everything's faster.
What makes a computer faster More memory
The other thing you can do is maybe buy more memory depending on how much you have right now.
If you have eight gigabytes of RAM, or less, and you do more than just check emails and type of Word documents, you probably could actually benefit from getting some more RAM.
However, I think, in almost all situations, it would be much more beneficial to get an SSD first instead of more RAM you're going to get much faster results out of that, and no, unfortunately, you can't just download more RAM as awesome as that would be.
So I think that just about sums it up those should be some great things to try if your computer's running slower than it should be, if you think and if I did forget anything, you can be sure to let me know.
So leave a comment, maybe with any tips you think would also be helpful slow computer fast. Everyone else should appreciate it as well.
Let me know down in the comments section what you think. And thanks for coming here, I'll see you next time. Have a good one.