Ten Steps to Speed Up Your Computer and Fix Your PC Errors
Posted by Martin | Tagged as: Reviews
After writing a review the other day in my twice-weekly newsletter Kickstart Today about a program I discovered that helped fix a lot of my PC speed problems and errors (see Step 8 below), I got a lot of emails from people looking to generally spruce up their computers.
It doesn’t take much to fix a PC so that it will run faster and more efficiently, but you do have to go about things in the right order – and with the appropriate regard to the safety of your data.
To that end, I’ve written this article to give you ten steps to a more efficient PC – and the security of mind to know that your data and programs are safe and sound no matter what might happen to your hard disk!
Each step is an important stage in improving your computer’s speed, so don’t miss any out.
Many of the things I suggest you do are free, or have free alternatives. One or two are items you need to pay for, but think of those as an investment – in making life easier and in giving you peace of mind.
The Kickstart PC Speed Up Action Plan
1. Perform a full scan of your computer for viruses and trojans.
Options for this include:
* Norton AntiVirus
Norton works very well and keeps your computer as clean as possible. The latest version doesn’t appear to slow the computer down significantly. I’ve had my ups and downs with Norton over the years, but have now got the latest version happily installed on three of my four computers – and will add the fourth when its current system expires. Norton offers essential protection from viruses, hackers and privacy threats. (Click here for the UK site)
* AVG
The free version is pretty good. You don’t get the bells and whistles that the paid-for programs offer in the way of control panels and option, but the free AVG is a pretty good AV solution if you are on a budget. Get AVG here
2. Fix any lingering problems you may come across.
Anti virus programs are very good at detecting and removing the bad stuff, but every once in a while they will come up against a virus or trojan that they can’t remove. Hopefully this won’t happen to you, but if it does, don’t panic! Head on over to Google and type “[virus name] removal” – replacing the [virus name] bit with whatever name your AV program has identified. You will almost always find specific instructions for getting rid of these persistent menaces.
3. Perform a full scan of your system for adware, malware and other undesired ‘ware’ programs.
There are lots of good programs that will make this a really easy process. My two favorites are currently:
* Windows Defender:
This free download from Microsoft is pretty good. It won’t remove everything, but will keep your PC clear of the most obvious threats. Click here to download a copy.
* Spyware Doctor.
This is by far my program of choice – I’ve used it for about three years now and wouldn’t dream of failing to renew my subscription. It is a paid-for program, but it is so much better than the free alternatives that it is in a different class.
Spyware Doctor seems to be able to find junk on your computer that nothing else gets close to – and offers real time protection that is superb.
4. Clean out any obvious junk that is on your computer.
The simplest way to do that is by using the tools built in to Windows (sorry Mac users, I have no idea how it all works for you.) On a Vista machine, go to the Start button then All Programs -> Accessories -> System tools. Select Disk Cleanup and wait until it has performed its scan. You will be offered a checklist of types of file to remove – read the labels carefully and get rid of the stuff you don’t need.
5. Remove unwanted programs.
If your computer is anything like mine, you constantly add new stuff, but don’t ever think to remove the junk that you no longer want.
Go to Start button -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System tools again, but this time click on the More Options tab, and then the button in the ‘Programs and Features’ box. This brings up a list of all the programs currently installed on your PC. Go through the list and remove any that you know for sure you won’t be needing again.
If in doubt, keep it. You don’t want to go removing stuff you don’t know what it is – it just might be important!
6. Set a new System Retore Point.
You do this (in Vista) by going to Start button -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System tools and then selecting ‘System Restore’. A box will pop up and the last line in that box will read ‘To create a restore point, ‘ followed by a link to ‘open System Protection’.
Click that link and another box will pop up (Microsoft haven’t made setting a restore point very easy in Vista – in XP is was more straightforward.)
At the bottom of the new box is a button marked ‘Create’. Click it.
What this does is saves a lot of system settings, so if anything messes up on your computer you can, in theory, wind it back to this point.
7. Back up your computer.
There are lots of ways to back up a computer – it is something we all should do on a regular basis, but which often gets forgotten. Until it is too late.
The best way of all is to use software that byte by byte copies your entire hard disk on to another one. In effect you create a clone of your computer, so if the current disk gets mangled, the backup one can just be swapped in – or copied back.
This ensures that you can never lose more than 24 hours data.
* DriveClonePro6
This automatic backup software is reasonably priced and very good at what it is designed to do. Currently it is on sale at $15 off! Take a free trial here and see for yourself how easy it is to secure your data while you sleep easily.
Stupidly, I haven’t yet installed anything so sophisticated on my workaday PC, but am now investigating a different solution!
* Online backup
This is fast becoming a very serious and convenient solution. For a very low monthly cost (under $5) you can back up 150Gb of data every night while you sleep. There is even a free trial option – which may in itself be enough if you don’t have too much data to keep safe.
I’ve just signed up for this myself and have been very impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
8. Repair and Optimize your PC.
My Mac using friends sneer at Windows, and in one respect at least, they are quite right to do so – as an operating system it is rather prone to getting itself into a muddle. At the heart of Windows (of any flavor) there is a big database called the Registry. This keeps a record of the wherabouts of every file and program on your computer in the most astonishingly complex ways.
In theory, every program you install, and every action you take while using your PC is supposed to ‘register’ itself with the registry and delete its entries there when finished. Unfortunatley, this rarely happens as it should and so the Registry gets quickly filled up with junk – or worse, conflicting entries.
This can slow down your computer, make it work less efficiently and at worst, cause all kinds of crashes and errors.
To combat this, I recently reviewed a piece of software in Kickstart called Perfect Optimizer which cleans, repairs and optimizes the Registry for you – on up to three different computers.
My experience of using the program was very good – some long standing troubles were fixed right away, and the two machines I’ve so far used it on are running much faster and smoother.
As it is possible for anything that works on the Registry to mess up, I would strongly recommend that you perform points 1-7 as listed above before you run Perfect Optimizer, or anything similar. That way, if the worst happens, you should be able to retrieve your data. Dozens of Kickstart readers bought Perfect Optimizer and only one has reported any problems, so I judge it to be pretty secure – but better safe than sorry.
There is a free download trial that will scan your system and tell you just how messy your Registry is!
9. So what next?
By now you have cleaned out the obvious junk, rid yourself of viruses and spyware, thrown away unwanted programs, polished up your registry and backed everything up nice and safely.
The final step is to make sure that all the data held on your hard disk is stored in the best way for your computer to access it.
Computer files are generally sliced up into tiny chunks and stored anywhere on your disk where there is room. This can slow things down a bit as the computer has to search around to piece things back together to run them.
In your system tools folder (yes, that od favorite again) there is a program called Disk Defragmenter. Run that now and it will find all the fragments of files and stitch them together again. It will also identify any programs or files that are run often and will place them on the disk where they can be accessed the fastest. It will then squash everything down into the smallest possible space.
10. Relax … your work is over!
You’ve now done just about everything possible to make your computer run smoothly and efficiently. You’ve also secured your data so that if the worst happens, you are covered.
You might have to go through the process again in 3 to six months time, but meanwhile, you’ll be getting the best out of your machine that you can.
[Please note that while all the processes mentioned in this article are tried and tested, every computer, and computer user, is different and can react in unforeseen ways. I can take no responsibility for any unexpected or unwanted results that arise from following the steps outlined.]
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