Speed Up Your Computer
This is in response to a question that was asked
in the I Need Help section of the February
02, 2000 issue of PCIN. The question was:
I got a major problem in that my PC is slowing down (progressively
gets slower) over a period of time. This problem is at the
moment solved only by rebooting. What can I do?
These are the suggest answers sent in by subscribers.
John Hills
Y ou could try working slower so its not so noticeable or
alternatively a complete trash of your hard drive and a reinstall
of the operating system will work wonders. I always
do this as a matter of course at least every 4 months.
Windows is like a battery. The longer you have it the
slower it becomes. This is caused by the amount of info
that is increasing in the registry and in particular settings
that are no longer current. If you are very busy and
have not the time to do this, then try defragging but really
you should go for the Full Monty.
Johnathon
I've always found that "defragging" will help keep the computer
sail smoothly. (Start Button/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk
Defragmenter). Also, if you have a lot of programs loaded
in your TSR's, (IE: Real Player, Virus Cleaning Software,
Viewer's, etc.). These all take up precious memory.
Look in your system tray, if you got a lot of Icon's popping
up, try disabling them, & then see if you get a little
more "Ummf" out of you computer.
Bill R
I have found that you need a disk clean utility. I am sure
you are aware that every site you visit leaves it's tell tale
signs where you have been in your cache folder. This in time
builds up and slows your system down tremendously, you
can clean these files up by going into your programs and finding
history, temp, and temporary internet and deleting all the
stuff in there which will free up hard drive space. If this
does not help the only suggestion I can make is the amount
of memory versus the number of running apps could cause the
same effects.
Herb Hoffman
One or more applications may be the cause. For example, MS
Word and Excel have known memory leaks that can lead to a
deadly freeze.
Leeor Geva
Same here. You have windows and it builds up information without
proper system cleaning and rehashing. I recommend you
do what I'm going to do (since recently I have booted windows
to 50% free resources!!), and it is to back up important data,
and then format the hard drive and re install a good version
of windows. Also see if you can get some more RAM.
Ajit Damle
While I am not sure if this is the best solution I exit my
applications, particularly the browser when the resourse meter
gets down to 33%(the yellow colour comes on). This seems to
release the memory in 90% of the cases and I can spend the
whole day without rebooting.
Roger Thompson
I don't think it is solvable, I use powerstrip from galttech.com
to keep track of memory usage. when I get to 15% left I get
frantic at shutting things down before it crashes. I try to
stay above 45 %. I learn which programs not to use together
like on internet,realjukebox, and world time all at same time.
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