Why is my computer so slow?
If you find your computer is running slow, the reasons could be many. Background programs running in your computer take up valuable memory making your PC run slow. The programs running in your computer take up not only the memory space, but also a part of your CPU time. The icons you find in your system tray are some of the programs which you have kept running. In order to bring back your computer to run normally, selectively stop these programs from running or delete them. When you boot your computer, some programs are automatically started. To optimize your computer, you need to stop these or delete them from “program start up” by using Start/Search function.
For your computer to function normally, it is always desirable that your hard drive has free space for your computer to use when executing tasks. If you do not have enough free space left in the hard drive, your computer may get slow. In order to be safe, you should allow 3 to 4 MB of free space available on your hard disk. Some computers have more than one drive installed. In this case, you need to have the space available in your “C” drive or any other drive in which you have installed your Windows operating system. In case you do not have any free space, or the space that you have in your drive is not enough, you should delete some of the programs.
When you are connected to the internet, your windows and other software programs may start to get automatically updated at the background. Your computer will start to run slow untill the time the updating process is completed. Once completed, your computer should come back to its normal operation. If you want to stop this from happening, you need to disable all your automatic update sequences.
Windows operating system requires the hard drive to be de-fragmented regularly. Fragmentation in the hard drive scatters the data in your computer. Your Windows operating system needs to look for the relevant data all over the disk making your computer slow down. Use Windows “de-frag” regularly to de-fragment your disk system and keep a contiguous data pattern in your hard drive. Contiguous data takes less time to find as they are well sequenced throughout the disk system.
Games software requires larger RAM to run smoothly. If you find your games in the PC are running slow, you should upgrade your RAM to the extent as required by your games software to run normally.
Your computer may run slow owing to conflicting Windows device drivers. You might have two different video drivers installed in your PC. This conflict makes your Windows operating system indecisive about which one to use. You should get rid of one of the video drivers for your computer to run normally. If you open your “system” from the control panel, click on the”hardware” tab and open the “device manager”, you will find yellow exclamation marks on the devices causing conflicts. You may either delete or reload the driver which is causing a problem.
As you are browsing the Internet, there are possibilities of viruses and spyware creeping into your system. Opening unknown attachments could also make your computer vulnerable. Virus and spyware will make your computer run slow. You must have the right ant-virus and anti-spyware software installed in your computer which can detect and remove known viruses and spyware programs. Spyware is malicious software which runs at the background, making your computer run slow. It is also responsible in passing personal information to the hacker when you are connected to the Internet.
Windows registry is a database where important data is stored by the Windows operating system. The registry in your computer starts to develop errors as you install and un-install programs from your computer. With these errors, the Windows registry grows larger occupying more and more space. Windows looks for essential data in the registry. This data is required by Windows to execute tasks. If your registry has grown large, Windows takes more time to scan the data than it requires and your computer slows down. To put your computer back in normal operating condition, you need registry cleaning software to remove the errors from your registry and optimize it as well.
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Filed under: Computers & Technology