When your PC starts its steady decline into
sloth-like speeds, the first thing you’d love to do is head straight to the mall for a fancy new
machine. But the reality is there are easy changes you can make to speed upyour computer.
From startup to surfing to gaming, here are
five ways you can clean up an old PC to make it look young again.
1. Speed up Your Startup
If an entire pot of coffee can brew in the
time it takes for your computer to boot, it’s time to make some changes. Most
likely your computer is not slow – it’s the dozens of programs turning on
during startups that are slowing it down.
Download a comprehensive tool like AutoRun
to easily disable certain programs during your startup. Or try Windows’
slightly less thorough, built-in utility. To find it, you can go to Search or
Run under Start .Under the “Startup” tab, uncheck the boxes of the programs you
don’t need to run every time your computer is turned on, for instance, iTunes
or your printer. If you don’t recognize a program, leave it be. Restart your
computer and watch it fly.
2. Clear It Out
If painfully slow surfing is your main
problem, there are a couple quick changes you can make.
Are you an Internet Explorer user? Get rid
of it. Google Chrome is the best browser on the market now, known for speedy
surfing. Under Chrome, go to Clear Browsing Data and check the boxes of
temporary Internet files like cookies, cache, download history and browsing
history.
To take further precaution, try a program such
as cleaner from Piriform. The free software program removes temporary files
from all of your browsers, as well as Windows and the registry, to make your PC
run faster.
3. Slim Down
This involves more than just uninstallingprograms you don’t use anymore. If you’re not totally committed to the usual
suspects, like Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office, switch to something
that requires less computing power. Free applications can easily replace go-to
programs, while speeding up your PC and giving you additional features at the
same time.
VLC Media Player is a lightweight, open
source media player that rips DVDs, streams video and recognizes any
unprotected media format. FoxIt Reader, an alternative to Adobe Reader, does
more than just open PDFs all while using less RAM. Edit document, open multiple
PDFs in tabs and more. AbiWord, a free and open source word processor, and
Apache’s Open Office, a free and open source full-fledge suite, can easily fill
the void of Microsoft Office.
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