Discussion on:

10 ways to speed up a slow PC

Taken in order, this is a poor list and some of the choices are just plain bad.

Try this in this order:
Clean out the crap! You want faster now, get rid of all toolbars on all of our browsers! I use Revo Uninstaller to clean the crap. Next look at your system tray. What do you need there? Kill the rest. Either delete it completely or prevent it from starting. This would include the Adobe reader, Quicktime helper, MS Chat, and the OEM system checker. And, unless you work for the Weather Channel or Weatherbug, get rid of their helper programs.

Take a look at what it loaded on your computer. Did you want it? Yes, keep it. No delete it. Look for Norton or Mcaffee security programs. They are "free" with Acrobat installations. If you consider losing 20% of your productivity free.

Next install updates: Windows may have downloaded the updates and is waiting and using memory waiting for you to install them. After you install Windows updates, reboot and check for updates again. Repeat until there are no updates you need installed to be installed.

Dust. Amazing how everything works better when it can breathe. Especially air cooled mini heaters like computers. Are you a laptop user? set your laptop on a hard surface instead of cloth or a pillow. I use an old cutting board. It does not block the vents, everything works better.

Choose one AV and stick with it, until you change your mind. Not to get into a long discussion on AV programs, but find one and use it. Several AV products do not play nicely with others. The conflicts are slowing you down.

Use the built in defrag? Are you a Microsoft shareholder? Use one that will work in the background. http://www.mydefrag.com/ can be set to defrag as your screensaver.

Now you can open the case and work inside. But really, other than a memory upgrade and making sure everything is plugged in tight, I would save the time and money for a new computer.

How do I know what to delete if I am not an IT person? Much comes pre-loaded that I'm sure "hogs" my laptop.

Try PCdecrapfier (http://pcdecrapifier.com/). As a part of the process it will highlight possible crap. If you see things that you do not use then use it to eliminate them. Generally anything that you do not want in there is fair game. Also running Ccleaner and allowing it to clean your system may help a bit, it can also be used very easily to stop things running at start up, if you use it to optimise your registry let it create a backup - this may help but only a little. All the things in a.portman's list can be stopped from here Ccleaner's start up tab. http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php has more info on stopping start up programs if you are interested. You can always restart anything that you have stopped if you think you need it. Just ensure that you leave your AV running.

that is the worse no nothing piece of software that I've encountered. It does nothing that going to programs in control panel would do - unbelievably pointless.

With Revo Uninstaller or the Task Manager look at every running process. As a start, keep everything Microsoft. Now work down the list and google each executable. Unfortunately, HP sends a ton of crap with their printers. Some of the crap needs to be there to keep the printer happy. Does it run your nic? Keep it. Do you want the wild tangent games? You will learn a lot in about 30 minutes. Keep notes. Once you have your system paired down, you will know what you want. Is there something new? Investigate, decide.

All those Windows and software updates you do over the years, tend to ask the computer to do more and more. New features are added to software, security holes are plugged that might require a little more overhead, etc. Unless you're upgrading your hardware, (CPU, HDD, RAM) your machine will not be keeping up with the added demands of the new and updated software.

All security patches should be applied as well as others that offer performance enhancements. The extras like the Live tools can be skipped. But if you are not doing the updates, I, for one, would feel no pity when your system gets pwned.

10 ways ... I only count one!

Recently techrepublik had a post about kingsoft pc doctor. It seems promosing can anyone tell how good is that software.

Well, I really like the software and that is one I would ACTUALLY pay for! I have cleaned over 3GB of junk files including redundant registry entries and have never had to restore my computer or reverse its actions. My best feature is the startup booster which even measures my PC's startup and either label it as a snail start (taking more than 1m 30m), slow startup above 45s and fast startup taking under about 45s.

It allows you to diactivate some startup programs, or delay them It even shows which startups are essentail to the system. The Cleaner is also excellent. It scans the PC and shows the health status of your PC depending on how much clogged it is. The rating is upto 100points. After you clean the system you get the green 100points badge! I have it on 4 computers and have had no issues, just benefits!

On your recommendation kwabula, I have downloaded it and will give it a spin later, to see how it compares to CCleaner.

How old is too old to try to speed up your computer? I have tried some of these various tips. Before investing a lot more time, is an almost 8 year old desktop worth the effort?

Excluding tip #9, all the rest are free to try; your only expense would be time.

I wouldn't bother upgrading hardware on a system that old. By the time you add RAM and replace the HD and graphics card, you're halfway (or more) to a new one.

I agree with Palmetto_CharlieSpencer. Not worth to upgrade anything in an 8 year old system [unless you can't afford a new system]. If you have to keep it around for longer, make sure you can boost your RAM to at least 2GB. Judging by the age, your system can't handle Vista or later.
Another alternative could be re-installing Windows from scratch. Backup your data, make a note of what you installed, uninstall any apps that temporary relinquish licensing [anti-virus apps and others], wipeout the drive and install Win XP. Re-install your apps and restore your data. You will notice an increase inspeed right there because of no old clutters, very little [if any] defragmentation, no useless files, etc.

I agree with a.portman. Some screens have only two lines to read in the brower due to the number of toolbars and check on uninstalled software. There is a great difference between uninstall and delete as CCleaner will take care of this. In addition to updates from Microsoft a check on all drivers can help and last defrag the the registry. Then its time for the dust.

I'm glad that someone has finally confirmed that Norton IS 2012 is no longer a resource hog as Norton used to be in the old days because I have been trying to tell everyone that since I went back to Norton in 2011. But I would dearly love to know who precisely is the we in "We" recommend BitDefender Total Security 2012? Because Scott Lowe says he always uses Microsoft Security Essentials! Although when I tried it, I did not find MSE very reliable/effective at all as it let a trojan install itself on my PC!

As the vast majority of TechRepublic's articles seem to be aimed towards IT professionals, what is the point in publishing an article called 10 ways to speed up a slow PC? Because there was NOTHING new in that list that any fairly competent PC user shouldn't already know at all!

Most modern mac programs install daemons, some of the older or more poorly written ones still use StartupItems. And almost all install some sort of App Support folder that in many cases contains tools to unload and and/or delete these. Dragging the app to the trash will NOT accomplish anything other than clearing some filespace.

Moreover, a lot of times the App support files will not run without the actual executables that you just deleted. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself about removing Mac programs before willy nilly deleting things. launch daemons that haven't been unloaded and removed will bring your Mac down a few notches in speed, even after you've deleted XYZ app. And no, App Zapper IS NOT a good tool to use...

Performing a clean installation is the ultimate solution that solves most problems. In respond to the above comments there is a software known as Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder that can help you to retrieves your products ID prior formatting. extremelly useful since most people have lost the cds with the s/n.
Also i reccomend creating an image of your hard disk as soon as you finish with the formatting/installations

If solid state can work on PC upgarde pc with it. Any processor faster than 1 GHZ and ram more than 2 GB is faster than any HDD. Thus put in Solid State Use CCleaner to cleanup and install updates and you got ip to 3X the speed for 1/3 the price of a new pc.

The Dust part is also crictical.

I was wondering the effect of compressing the drive. The CPU would then get 2 (or maybe more) real bytes for every 1 the hard drive had to read (assuming at least 50% compression). The CPU (not the bottleneck) would then be busier having to spend time decompressing.

Disable most start up programs except anti virus. Type msconfig into run dialogue box for

XP or type msconfig into search for Vista & Win 7.

Set antivirus to manual scan only {once per week is ok or eve less} & scan when not using the PC ....scanning hits performance big time.

In task scheduler{Vista & Win 7}, disable any auto defragging ..defrag manually when not using PC ..the defragging process affects performance.

I love Office 2003 and found that Office 2007 and later are productivity killers. So I'll be keeping my old box around for a while. The only change I made was to install more RAM. In 2003, half a gig was enough. But as software gets bigger and bigger, you need more and more RAM. 2Gb works fine for me.

We are hyped to believe that newer is better (or faster, or cheaper ?).
So much so that when I look back I remember my "old" pc on windows 3.1 running swiftly.
Latest state of the art machine running on memory hogs++ gives me time to take "a cup of coffee" when compiling my 22 projects C# solution - well my old turbo Pascal has found no match these days.
As the article is all about "performance" or was it that too much dust can kill your machine FAST with same speed CPU.
I would add more parameters affecting you r overall performance on recent machines more than ever before.
- disk fragmentation (and compaction) along with file corruption.
- registry corruption with lots of redundant keys (do a cleanup)
- swapfile corruption or fragmented (create a manually defined contiguous file twice your RAM)
- Antivirus - sometime can account for slowness as it checks all your files and often.
- Microsft Update - put it to manual and take control of when to update.
- number of services and autostart software (are they all needed) some can be put on manual when you are not sure.
- Any crawling worms - do a test with safe antivirus - launched manually once a week.
- Did you partition your machine in a reasonable way
example: 1 huge C: drive with everything there - Poor layout.
example: 1 C: drive for system and 1 D: drive for Data and 1 E: drive for your swapfile and temporary files => Better layout
on my system I like to separate fixed binary files that do not change with heavily edited files on seaparte partitions whenever possible.

Well, here are the 9 ways I wish I had read in the article above.

Guido Cangelosi

I use Directory Report instead of SpaceSniffer
The treemaps are too confusing
and I uninstall every Explorer toolbar

One thing to keep in mind with memory upgrades is that many computers come with mother boards that support faster than installed from the factory memory. That was to save cost when the system shipped new (and the 533 DDR2 memory was so much more expensive than the 400 DDR2). Sometimes the replacement 533 you just put in there will be slowed to 400 to remain compatible with the "old" memory in the machine. Use the BIOS to see the memory speed with just old memory and just new memory to see if your system might run faster without the older memory in it. If you just bought 2 x 1 gig sticks of 533 to go with your existing 2 x 512 400 - you might be better off with only 2 gig of fast ram instead of 3 gig of slow ram

I take the view that whenever anyone goes to the trouble to write something that can help now, next week or in 5 years time it will come in useful. Over the UK winter the "tool" I used most was a McDonalds wooden stirer to clear out heatsinc vents in conjunction with a vacuum.

No quick fix for laptops other than dismantle and remove the plug of fluff accumulated in the air vent.

Poor ventilation has caused more trouble than anything else on all sorts of machines from * year old XPs (God bless 'em) to 3 grand (pounds that is, not dollars) year-old gamers.

Agree with startup and browser fixit options in addition to defrag.

Not too proud to fix anything no matter how old it is.

I'm a little disappointed in this post. Now I may have missed something, but I saw one step with lots of directions and suggestions on how to accomplish this one step. What happened to the other 9 steps. Like cleaning the file system out and getting rid of unused software and clearing the registry and removing the temp and temporary Internet files. There are soooo many things that can be done beside cleaning the dust out of the box which should be part of a regular maintenance program. Why not give 10 steps for a regular maintenance program which ppl can do to keep their machine running at optimum performance. Now that would be useful.

A lot of times computer manufacturers put in generic RAM. Which in my experience, they put in 800Mhz of memory when the system can run 1066Mhz.

Being in the computer repair business, I can't over state the importance of grounding the nozzle of your air source when blowing out the dust on a desktop chassis. Early in the game, I had to buy a couple of Motherboards because I did not ground the metal nozzle on my portable air compressor. Now I use a couple of alligator clip leads to ground the nozzle to the metal chassis before blowing out the dust.

This article wasn't about 10 ways to speed up your PC, it simply was an article on why and how to best clean your PC.

Nothing wrong with the article, a good reminder on what should be regular maintenance that often doesn't get done.

Is it able to run 64-bit OS?
Yes? Try to upgrade RAM (and maybe CPU) and finally ditch 32-bit OS. Do other necessary upgrades (and clean dust).
No? Buy new PC able to run 64-bit OS. Be careful! It might well be cheaper then to upgrade existing rig...

Everything else is well known among readers here, as essex133 wrote...

I missed out on the fact that the images are not just a slide show . . . each image is a separate page in the article. I take back my previoius comment.

Your layout isn't user friendly . . . at least until a person figures out how it works.

- Fastest processor for the socket & buss, e.g. I have been changing socket 755 core duo processors to core 2 duo for speed and 64 bit processing.
- Max out the memory in both quantity and buss speed.
- Max out the HD speed and cache size, i.e. 7200 or 10,000 rpm with 16mb cache.

For the SW side, run lean, mean, & clean, i.e. get rid of anything that is not used, i.e. software, startups, toolbars, etc. (lean): updated (mean): anti everything and defrag (clean).

Re: Vacuum vs blowing: Three three packs of air at Fry's equals one air compressor at Harbor Freight. In 30 years have never harmed a computer by blowing it out. During Desert Storm we would blow out computers every week or two to get the fine dust out.

I agree with essex133. Worthless information. We're not noobs. Post something that makes our subscription worthwhile. I guess they needed the ad space.

Well the first thing I will tell you all as an IT professional is not to assume a user has ANY expertise at all. I work in a area where people buy computers to play POGO, use Facebook, and email. They barely know how to turn them on, so this article was enlightening for users. I know a lot of you talked about not bothering with an 8 yr old system. I know in a primarily Windows world, that is probably a suggestion with some merit. I would like to encourage anyone with an older system with limited resources to consider installing some type of a Linux desktop to get a little more use out of it. It will expand your horizons and expand the life of your older system and best of all Linux OS software is free. You can do almost every general computing task on a Linux machine, using freeware or shareware that is available. Most drivers are installed with the OS. I rarely have to update a driver. Linux works very well and it uses less resources than Windows systems, so your older machine will love it.

One of the tech-groups on LinkedIn posted a question asking "What to do if a user comes to you and says the computer is slow.".

The interesting bit about the responses is the folk with years of experience responded by stating the first thing to do is talk to the user and ask questions. Those with no, or little, experience immediately begin defragging disks, emptying c(r)ache, deleting history, etc. God forbid the tech-guru engage the user in converation to determine what is meant by "slow", and "is it always slow or only at certain times", "how long has it been slow", etc.

I don't work in IT but CAD support. Funnily enough users came to me with their Slow woes, instead of asking IT techs and being fobbed off with nonsense jargon.
Most IT support don't know anything more than they have been shown. Hardly any ever check the event logs or know how to trouble shoot properly.
It's more uninstall, reinstall and hope it works.
One of the first things I used to do to a new built CAD PC was defrag it as they always had 25%+ deframentation.
The IT Crowd is so funny as it's based on reality. BD

In corporate domains old hardware usually doesn't survive.
Sometimes its given to users and just written off.

I've fixed tons of desktops and laptops and it is usually an issue of cleaning, reseating and using cable ties to replace broken fan assemblies.
'Bugs in the machine' is common problem too.
IT departments don't bother much with hardware, but a laptop often slows down just due to fluff.
IT give it a shot of compressed air and then declare it dead.

I remove the keyboard etc gain access to the fan assembly and open it up. Never fail to find compacted fluff which the fan still spins in. From ouside the fan looks clean and spins
(often a bit slower than usual)
There is no longer enough air flow over the MB.
Good sign for this is a high HDD temp and/or CPU temp.
Old thermal paste gets eaten by bacteria that make bubbles so heat doesn't conduct.
Lot's of laptops with Nvidia and ATI just stop working as the solder on the GPU mirco fractures.
The tip about using laptop desks is good but also check the rubber feet are all there. if one corner is missing even a flat surface with block air. I fix missing feet with extra thick sticky back cloth pads or rubber feet taken from other broken PCs. Dab of super glue and good as new.

Not every one can afford a new PC every 3 yrs.
An 8 yr old PC can easily do what most people want it for.
Installing Linux for research/learning is ok, but for most people I still think it best and easiest to stick with the original OS/Apps.

Of course if the Raspberry Pi can be manufactured on a big enough scale.. I think there will be a lot of old PCs being scrapped so if you want to upgrade memory or HDD check out local FreeCycle sites or buy a Raspberry if you can.


One of the worst cases of PC abuse I ever saw was at an Oil Refinery.
Had to ride my bike out to the place and was supposed to fix/replace the graphics board.
It was placed on a table by an open widow in a prefab hut.
Opened the grubby filthy unit and just laughed.
It had probably gotten very dusty but was now completely covered in oil. I just plled out the plug coiled the wire up and threw it in the bin. Then told them it was NOT to be used and skipped.
2.5hrs travel there 2.5 hrs back for 10 mins support.