If you’re a PC owner, I imagine you’ve found that the longer you’ve had your computer, the slower it is? Well there’s actually a few things you can do to make it run faster; they don’t take long if you do them regularly, or you may be given the option to schedule them automatically.
Clean Up The Disk
This frees up disk space and gets rid of temporary Internet files and other files such as error reports, removes unused restore points, empties the recycle bin (you may think it’s empty but its not!) and other such useless data that you don’t need. This is how you do this:
*Start
*All programmes
*Accessories Folder
*System Tools Folder
*Disk Cleanup
It then takes a minute to search for things it can remove and gives you the change to view or check anything before you free up the space.
Defragment The Disk
I always imagine the information in my PC as a library of books and after a while they get all higgledy pickeldy; this tool kind of tidies them all up and compresses them on the shelf so there are no wasted spaces in between.
This should be performed monthly but also if you have less than 15% of free space, have just added a large number of new files or have just installed new programmes or an updated version of Windows.
*Same route as cleaning up the disk – the Disk Defragragmenter is in the system tools folder as well
*You are also given the option to defragment the disk when performing the task below
It will then tell you how long this will take (usually some time!) you should ideally set up a schedule for your PC to defrag itself.
Repair Disk Errors
*Start
*Computer
*Right click on the drive you want to clean (Usually your C drive)
*Properties
*Tools
*Check Volume for errors
*Check Now
*Uncheck the top box and tick the second box down that says ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’
This will take some time if you haven’t done it for a while – my parents had never done this and it took 4 hours to complete!
These are just three simple things; they don’t take long and you should be able to see a difference with your computer’s performance immediately. Just remember to keep doing them – I usually put a weekly reminder on my gmail calendar so I do it at the weekend when I back up.
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