Tips to Make Your PC Go Faster - Free Up System Resources

Over time, even the fastest, state of the art brand new computer seems to slow down with use. Luckily, there are a number of steps that you can take to make your PC go faster. Learn how freeing up system resources can speed up your computer.

Each and every program that you have installed on your computer takes up valuable resources on your hard drive, and this tends to accumulate over time. You may rarely or never use some of these programs, and may even have forgotten about them. Furthermore, almost all factory-manufactured computers come with pre-installed programs that you will never need and may not even know that you have.

Uninstalling all these unused programs will free up wasted resource resources and help your PC go faster. The fastest, simplest way to un-install most programs is to use the Add/Remove Programs utility in the Control Panel. There are also free and commercial clean-up utilities that you can use, such as CCleaner and Norton Utilities

A number of programs are loaded and run every time that you boot up your computer. This includes programs that you may not need or even realize that you have running, such as bloatware, applications that are installed on the PC by the manufacturer.

The more programs that start up and run, the more system resources are taken up to run them, and the slower the computer will run. Limiting the number of start-up programs that start up will increase the resources available to run your computer, speeding up performance. Here’s how:

1. Click on your Start button and select Run.
2. Type msconfig into the text bow and then hit OK. This will launch the System Configuration utility.
3. Click on the Startup tab. This will display the programs that you have in your startup tray.
4. Un-check the checkbox for each program that you do not want or need to load each time you boot up your PC.

Quick Tip: When you are run resource-intensive programs such as gaming or graphic applications, you should close any other program that you do not need.

The more programs you have running at any one time, the more system resources they take up. Simply closing some programs that you don’t can often speed up your PC.

Viruses, spyware and other malicious programs are among the leading causes of slow computer performance. In addition to threatening your computer’s security, they also drain your system resources. It is important to run your anti-viral and anti-malware programs at least once a week.

If you do not have any, there are a number of free and commercial programs and tools available online, which you can use to get rid of and protect against these malicious, system-hogging applications. You may also use the Microsoft's Windows Defender, an anti-spyware tool that comes with every copy of Windows.