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Is your Computer Running Slow? |
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Try These 5 Solutions… One of the biggest complaints we hear from computer users is that their PC runs as slow as continental drift. If your computer is a couple of years old and you don’t have the money to invest in a new one, these 5 tricks will help speed up its performance. 1. Free Up Disk Space. If you are running Windows 98 or ME, use the “Scan Disk” utility. If you are running Windows XP, the tool is called “Disk Cleanup”. These utilities find files taking up space on your hard drive that you can safely delete to free up space and improve performance. ¨ Temporary Internet files ¨ Files in the recycle bin ¨ Microsoft Active X controls and Java applets that were downloaded ¨ Windows temporary files ¨ Optional Windows components that you don’t use ¨ Programs you no longer use In most cases, temporary Internet files are the biggest disk space bandits because your browser caches (stores) each page you visit for faster access the next time you go to that site. These files are not necessary and can safely be deleted. How to use Disk Clean Up: ¨ Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. ¨ Scroll through the dialog box that pops up and select the files you want to delete or compress. ¨ When prompted to confirm that you want to perform those actions chose “yes”. 2. Defragment your drive. When Windows stores a document, it starts to save the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive. When it runs out of room in this initial space, it fragments the file and stores the rest of it on the next space available, and so on, until the entire document is stored. When you try to open that file again, your computer has to find all of the fragments and piece them together before it will display the document. This takes longer and results in slower performance. The Disk Defragmenter utility consolidates fragmented files and folders on your computer's hard disk so that each file is stored on a single, adjacent space on the hard drive. This enables your system to find and access to files and folders much faster. Disk Defragmenter also consolidates your hard drive’s free space making it less likely that new files will be fragmented. How to defragment your hard drive: ¨ Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. |
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