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Speed Up Your Computer

Computer speed is like money; You can never get enough. To have as much of both as possible, follow the steps in this article to speed up your computer for free.

LET’S GET STARTED

STEP 1: VISIT THE DOCTOR

Open your preferred AV program, and run a scan. Delete all infections that are detected. If there were any, you should already get a good boost of speed to your computer.

STEP 2: CLEANING UP

Open CCleaner, go to the “Cleaner” (Default) tab, and click “Analyze”. This will show you what files will be deleted, but it won’t delete them. If you are satisfied with the results, go on and click “Run Cleaner”.

This should free up a lot of space on your hard drive if you have never done it before, and a slight increase in speed can be noticed. Well done, let’s move on…

STEP 3: THE WAKE UP

Again, open CCleaner. This time go to “Tools” and select “Startup”. You will see a (long) list of every program that starts up along with your system. Every one of these requires resources and time at startup.
Any entries such as “Google update”, “Adobe Reader Speed Launcher”, “iTunes Helper”, or basically any files called “update” or “helper” can be safely disabled. Also, many programs that you use do not require running at startup (Skype, MSN), as you can run them when you need to. Google the names of every program you doubt. You will be astonished to find how many of them that you don't need.

STEP 4: SELECTION

You probably installed a lot of things that you either don’t use anymore, or don’t strictly need. I would recommend uninstalling these as it will help speed up your computer.

To do this, stay in CCleaner and select “tools”->”Uninstall Programs”. Again, you will see a list of programs. These should be ALL the programs installed, so this list is hopefully longer than the previous. Click on the programs you want to remove, and select “remove” at the right-hand menu. After this, you should reboot your system.

STEP 5: DIGGING DEEPER

Windows has a lot of features that look good, but which you don’t really need. The bad thing is that they slow you down. Feel free to leave the layout as-is, but it will slow you down. A lot!

5.1

If you want to take my advice, right-click anywhere on your desktop and select “properties”. Then, go to the “visual” tab (2nd from right). Change the two top drop-down menus to “Windows Standard”. Your screen will go gray for a moment while this is being changed. Next, click the "Effects" button to the right and unselect all checkboxes. Click "OK" and "APPLY" to continue.

5.2

When this is done, right-click on “My Computer” and select “properties”. Click the “Advanced” tab, select “Performance – Settings” In the first tab, select the box that says “Adjust for best performance”.

5.3

Next, we should go into something called “Folder options”. You’ll find this in Start->Settings->Control Panel->Folder Options. In the first window that pops up, select “use standard windows folders”. Then go to view, and unselect the following box: Start folders in separate process

5.4

After that, disable the indexing services. This service makes an index of all the files on your system so that the built-in search feature will go faster. This service is not needed, as it does not have much of an effect, except slowing you down. Go to "My Computer" and right-click on your Hard Drive, usually C: Uncheck the box next to “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”.

5.5

Finally, right click on the “my computer” icon again, and select “remote”. Uncheck both boxes in this pop-up window. This will fix a small security vulnerability, but doesn't really have an impact on speed.

STEP 6: THE TWEAK

Tweaking the services can have a large impact on your speed. For a full list of all the services, go to http://www.blackviper.com. Any service that is not listed in the hart is not a windows default service, and belongs to a third-party program you installed. You should Search for these online to see if you can safely remove them. Reboot after this.

STEP 7: TAKING CARE OF WHAT’S LEFT…

Run CCleaner again and follow the instructions in Step 2. When you are done, select “Registry” from the CCleaner menu on the left, and run a search. Click “repair”, back it up when asked, and fix all the problems listed.

Now let's start the built in Disk Defragmenter (Click here for a detailed guide). Go to Start->Accessories->System tools->Disk Defragmenter. This should open up the defragmenter interface. Click “Defragment” and let it run for as long as it needs to (overnight is best). When it is done, close it, and repeat Step 7 again (YES, Defragmenting too). Reboot one last time.

Congratulations! You are done! Give yourself a pat on your back and say "Good Job". Please check out some other articles too.