How to speed up your PC and become more efficient

Posted on 19. Dec, 2008 by admin in Workplace productivity tips

Please note that this is quite different from you slowing down because your PC isn’t set up as effectively as it could be. That’s a different subject for another day.

We’ve outlined a 5 step process below…

Step 1) Clear your desktop

Clear all those unneeded shortcuts and files you don’t need off your computer desktop. They should be filed away somewhere useful… There is school of thought that says PC’s perform better with fewer files on the desktop. If anyone would like to confirm in the comments – that would be great.

Step 2) Uninstall unwanted programs

The single biggest hog of resources and the thing which slows the PC down more than anything is having dozens of programs installed, which you never use. The best PC is a PC which has no software on it… Not very practical, but there we go.

To get rid of unwanted programs – trials etc – go to CONTROL PANEL>ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS and

Step 3) Sort out your startup!

Stop programs you never use from starting up automatically and hogging memory and processor time.

This can be done by going to START>RUN and typing “MSCONFIG”, which will bring up a dialogue box called System Configuration. Click the startup tab and untick the programs which are starting up which clearly should not be… demos of trials etc… If in doubt – don’t untick – you could cause some damage here – so tread carefully…

To help you with this, you could use a PC cleaning tool like CCleaner It is free and works a treat.

Step 4) Clear cache!

The scourge of the hard drive – ‘Temporary Internet Files‘ need to be removed – which could take up as much as 1GB of space on your hard drive.

In Internet Explorer 7 goto TOOLS>INTERNET OPTIONS>BROWSING HISTORY DELETE> and then DELETE TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES.

Step 5) Give your hard drive an electronic massage

Once you’ve cleaned everything out above, make sure your PC is plugged in, pour yourself a nice glass of something one evening, and hit the defragmentation button and leave it running over night.

If that little lot doesn’t speed up your PC, then maybe it’s time for a new one…!?