We all want a little more performance from our beloved computers, from gamers running overclocked monsters, playing the latest game to a humble silver surfer just writing emails and putting photos on face book.  

The problem is that some ways of squeezing a bit more speed out of the systems, tend towards the costly. As much as we might want to drop a few hundred on a whisper quiet, fast as a flash Solid State Drive or some nice, recklessly large, amount of RAM, it can be good to have some more budget friendly options on hand.

Here are five ways to make you system run faster that aren’t just cheap, they are completely free.

Reboot at least once a day.

I’m not going to weigh in on the age-old argument about whether it is better to put your computer to sleep at the end of the day or if it is better power it off completely, but you should reboot it at least once a day.

The reason for this is that if you imagen your computer as a literal desktop, the more work you do with it, the more scraps of program get left running and other digital detritus build up, simply powering off your computer and waiting 30 seconds before powering it back up again will solve this problem, starting with a fresh set of instructions will keep your computer running smoothly and can prevent other issues.

Take out the trash.

    Similar to the above, but only really needs to be done on a weekly basis, your computer is basically a machine specifically designed for data processing, and as such like any machine it creates by products along with its primary output.  This can be in the form of a small file that denotes what website’s you have been to, or the remnants of a word processing document that you deleted weeks ago, they all hang around on your hard drive as digital ghosts and they can impede the efficiency of the machine.

    The best way to clean up these files is to Type ‘Clean’ into the search box on your task bar, click on ‘Disk clean-up’, tick all of the boxes by clicking on them and press the

    You will get a message like the one below, don’t worry if it takes some time to complete the process, the more there is to clean up the longer it will take.

    Run the disk defragmenter

    Files tend not to be saved on your hard drive in nice, neat and tidy, continuous blocks of data.  For various reasons they are saved in an almost scattershot patten.  This is brilliant for speed when it comes to saving the file, the drive just divides the file up and saves it to wherever is convenient.  However, its not so good when it comes to accessing your data again.

    What defragmenting does is simply takes all of your files and makes them into a contiguous whole whilst updating the index, so your operating system knows where to find them.

    One small caveat here, if you have a newer style solid state drive you can get a little more performance out of trimming the drive, but that’s a subject for another post.

    To defragment your old-fashioned Hard Disk Drive, type ‘defrag’ into the search section of the task bar, select defragment and Optimise Drives, click optimise and wait.

    This can take a few passes and be a little time consuming, so if the disk is showing up as more than say 10% fragmented then do it overnight but you will see a marked improvement in the time it takes your machine to open a file once it has been completed.

    Uninstall programs that you no longer need (using Revo Uninstaller)

    A few generations (of PC tech) ago, hard drive space was a critical resource, I remember being really excited about my ‘massive’ 512mb hard drive back in the day, of course now the laptop I am writing this on has a hard drive that is 1024 times as big, but the fact remains that we can learn an important lesion from our more space conscious forbears.

    Although you can store dozens of movie files on your main drive and just as many programs, does that mean that you should? Well, ideally no.  Hard Disk Drives, and newer Solid-State Drives will work just fine if you pile up the data on them, they just wont work as well as if you tried to aim at leaving about 50% of the useable disk space free.

    Think of it as digital ‘elbow room’ for your computer to move and manipulate the files (see the entry on defragmentation) the best way to uninstall unwanted programs is with my personal favourite utility for program management; Revo Uninstaller.  There is a paid version and a free version, I usually recommend the free version for most users.

    Revo Uninstaller is better than the vanilla version that comes with Windows 11 because it completely deletes all traces of the file, without leaving being any digital ghosts or junk files.

    Stop any unwanted programs form starting when you boot up.

    Part of basic machine management is keeping track of what programs fire up when you boot your machine from completely off – what we in the biz call a hard boot – essentially if you think of your PC as just stepping into work and being assailed by a dozen people all demanding its attention right now. It’s like your system gets halted in its tracks as, rather than focus on system critical resources and getting your system so you can do whatever you want to do with it in that moment.

    To check what programs start up when you boot your machine:

    • Press CTRL+ALT+Delete
    • Go into your Task Manager
    • Select the Startup Tab.
    • The applications that start automatically when turn on your computer will be listed.  (You can see the Startup Impact as LowMedium or High. This indicates the Impact that the Program has on your computer.)
      • If you see a program that is having an High impact on your computer, you may want to disable it, if is not a necessary program.
    • To disable a program, Right Click on it then select Disable so the program will no longer Auto-Start automatically.  

    So, there you have it, five safe, zero cost ways to squeeze a little more performance out of an ageing windows PC. 

    Make regular backups, keep your programs current and use strong passwords,

    Rob,


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