Q&A: What are some troubleshooting tips on fixing a slow computer?

Question by joe m: What are some troubleshooting tips on fixing a slow computer?
The Internet seems especially slow sometimes, like when you type in a field it processes each letter (sometimes). I have road runner high speed and a 512mb memory, 80gb drive etc. Could it be the over 1,000 songs or the amount of programs?

Best answer:

Answer by Susan

All most all face this problem many times in their history of windows computing. These symptoms are seen, once any one or more than one of the below happens with your computer.

1> Hard disk is running out of space.
2> Not enough memory(RAM).
3> Hard disk fragmented severely.
4> Too many applications/services loading during start up.
5> Conflict between two or more running programs.
6> Virus.
7> Spy ware .

Let us first try to speed up the boot up process.

Disable the boot virus detection capability of motherboard:
Many motherboard manufacturers started giving boot sector virus detection capability to the motherboard after seeing the menace of boot sector virus few years back. But as most of the antivirus software have become quite efficient to catch the boot sector virus, there is no need to check the boot sector virus by your motherboard while booting. If your motherboard has this capability just disable it.

Change the boot drive preference:

When you install first, the CD ROM is set to the preferred boot drive. But after installation also many times people forget to change the boot drive preference to hard drive. If your preferred boot drive is CD ROM then change it to Hard Drive in the BIOS setting. Again if you are not using your floppy drive just disable it in the BIOS setting. All these steps will help a lot to increase the boot up process.

Switch off unwanted hardware in the BIOS set up:

Most of the motherboard comes with many hardware attached with it. For example onboard sound, Ethernet controller, Fireware devices etc. If you are not using then disable it. Otherwise during boot up process resource allocation will consume some more time to slow down the process.

Disable the XP load screen:

Just follow the steps below to disable it.
Click on Start
Click on Run
Write “msconfig”
Press enter
In the window opened, navigate to BOOT.INI tab
Check the /NOGUIBOOT
Then press Apply
Then restart the system.

Disable unwanted programs at start up:

You may have seen a fresh installation of Windows XP is much faster. Do you know why? This is because after you install a lot of applications, some applications start with the XP itself during the boot up process as service.

We will suggest disable all the unnecessary application from start up. Again open “msconfig as discussed in earlier step.

Select the “Start up” tab.
Deselect all the unnecessary services.
Restart the system.

Remove unwanted fonts:

During the boot up process, computer load the fonts to the memory. There are fonts in the font directory which we never use. You can delete all such types of fonts to speed up the boot process.

Go to control panel
Double click on the “Font”
Copy all the fonts to a back up directory.
Then delete all the unused fonts from the font directory.

Let us now try to improve the system performance.

Disable visual effects:

As you know as compared to older versions of windows XP comes with a lot of eye candy, which eat up a lot of resources resulting in slow system performance. This will affect if you have a RAM of 256MB or less. If you have more RAM there is nothing to worry.

To disable visual effects follow the below steps.
Right click on the My Computer icon on the desktop. Select properties (You can do it through the short cut(Windows key+Pause break)

Select the advanced tab.
Now click on the performance button.
Select the visual effects tab.
Select the “Adjust for best performance” radio button

Now press Apply and ok.
You can also customize the look and feel of XP here if you don’t like the plain look.

Disable Error reporting:

Error reporting is of no use and eat up a portion of the available resource. You can disable it to free up the blocked resource.

Just navigate to the Advanced tab as specified in the previous step. Now click on the Error “Reporting button”. Select the Disable error reporting.

Disk/Folder Properties
Check the properties of the drive
1> Right click on your windows OS drive(We assume it to be C: drive) icon in my computer.
2> Choose properties.
3> Ideally minimum of 20% free space should be there in the OS drive for better performance. If it is not there then you may have to delete unnecessary files and folders to release disk space.
4>Keep a minimum of 15% free space in all the drives.(Believe me it will help)

Download ccleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com/download . And release memory dumps and and unnecessary file. We have seen it releases in a tune more than 10% of the hard disk space.

Not enough memory

1>Ideally minimum of 256 MB RAM is needed to run a windows XP OS flawlessly.If yours RAM is less than that you may have to upgrade memory to get good speed.We recommend to go for a 1GB RAM module as the price has gone down to earth now.

To check memory size:
Right click on the My Computer icon. Select Properties.
In the general tab you can see the System memory size. It should be like *** MB of RAM.

Disk Defragmenter
It is a good idea to run defragmenter on a regular basis, ideally every month. It will help to keep your drive live longer and healthy and keep your system faster too.

How to do it:
1>Right click on a drive icon you want to defrag.
2>Select properties.
3>Select the tools tab.
4>Click on the Defragment now… button.
5>Click on the Defragment button.
Then wait until it completes defragmentation. During this period your system will be slow.

Conflict between two or more programs
To avoid such unwanted situations you should properly go through the compatibility issues documentation. Usually it is provided by the software vendor itself. For example Zone Alarm has compatibility issue with Cisco VPN client. You can’t use both at the same time.

Too many applications/services loading during start up

Remove unnecessary programs from start up.
Go to Start > Run
Write msconfig and enter
Select the startup tab.
Uncheck unnecessary programs from there except the anti-virus like program which is needed to run automatically.
Press OK
Restart the system.

Virus
The most deadly program that makes your system slow is Virus. Check your system with a good antivirus software after updating the virus definition. Its not needed to go for a costly antivirus software. There are several free antivirus software available in the internet. We recommend AntiVir, AVG, Avast. Don’t forget to update the Virus definition database regularly.

Use a good firewall.It will help to protect your system from virus and other malicious programs.Its like a wall between your computer and the outside internet world. We recommend ZoneAlarm as a good and free firewall.

Spyware
Spyware considerably reduce the computer speed and internet speed.It also put your valuable information at risk.Use a anti-spyware software to scan your system and remove all the spywares. regularly update spyware database.

scandisk/checkdisk
Run scandisk/checkdisk in Safe Mode. Have it repaired anything it finds.

Swap File
When XP runs out of physical RAM, it uses a swap file, also called virtual memory or the paging file. XP swaps information from RAM to this temporary file and then pulls it back as needed. This can slow down your system. Having a large module of RAM will minimize the use of a paging file.

Increasing Graphics Performance

By default, Windows XP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items.
They just slow down the computer performance.

To turn these off selectively:

Right click on the My Computer icon
Select Properties
Click on the Advanced tab
Under Performance, click on the Settings button
To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance
My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging

Bootvis
There is a nice tool provided by Microsoft. It helps in optimizing the booting time.
The link to download is as follows
http://download1us.softpedia.com/dl/26f … ootvis.msi

I personally like this small, free but efficient tool.

Registry
Keep your registry clean. It will help your programs run faster there by increasing your overall computer performance. You don’t need to pay for it.There are many free registry cleaners available. You can try RegSeeker. This is a free tool to clean the registry. But before cleaning take a back up of the registry.

You can download it here

http://www.hoverdesk.net/dl/en/RegSeeker.zip

System File Checker

If you have XP installation cd then check if all system files are intact. To do that insert the XP cd into cd/dvd drive. Then type the following command in run elevated prompt.

sfc /scannow

and press ok.

The system will automatically check if any system file is corrupt and it will repair it automatically making your system more stable.

Many times computer runs slow, because of faulty hard drive. This is a very good option to check the hard drive before getting panic.In the market there are various types of tools available, but you may check System Mechanic Pro. Download the trial version. Do a deep analysis and resolve the issue. This will definitely help to optimize your computer.

If your internet is slow then you may visit the following article to optimize it.
http://itsupportcell.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=50

Please reply to this if you find it was helpful to resolve your issue. Please suggest what else more we can add here. It will take only one or two minutes for you. But it will be great help to our support team to do still better job

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!




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One Response to “Q&A: What are some troubleshooting tips on fixing a slow computer?”

  1. beauty_thus_become says:

    If you have a lot of files and programs on your computer and you haven’t done upkeep and maintenance on it lately, the computer may run slower. There are several maintenance tools on your computer ready to use, and several that are on the internet that can help.

    First, run Disk Cleanup (Start> All Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Disk Cleanup).

    Second, run Disk Defragmenter (Start> All Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Disk Defragmenter).

    After you’ve run those and you’re computer still runs slow with the typing you can download two different programs. A simple Google search for these should be all you need.

    CCleaner (yes two C’s) is a great program that cleans out unnecessary temporary files that slows your computer down.

    Last but not least, is Spybot – Search & Destroy. This will find any spyware, or adware on your computer.

    The links to the downloads are in the sources.

    I hope this helps


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