How to make pc run faster?

[JennyDoe]

Lately I found that my computer is running very slow sometimes. It seems no virus in my pc. Anyone knows how to get rid of such problem and make pc run better?
 
Appreciate your advice.
 

[Manu]

http://www.winaso.com - This works for me!

[SensoVision]

all Windows versions seems to slowdown with time, it's happen because of registry becoming big, driver files left after updates, programs installed and other factors as well.
From experience I can say that the only real working solution in this problem is performing "fresh install" of OS or switching to other OS as I did.

BTW There are a lot of software which designed to speed up computer by optimizing registry and other things but those I've tried didn't bring me big boost in performance, at best it was noticeable result but not more.

I didn't tried program suggested by Manu, so it may work, guess you have to try it yourself to see.

[Andy]

Logically, a Registry cleanup and a Defrag of the hard disk should do the trick rather than resorting to a clean install which is a major operation or a change of OS.

Also, if your C: drive is too full, your system may be slow because of not enough spare disk space. Also, if all your memory is used by running programs then the hard disk is used instead of memory which would make things much slower.

p.s. I read a funny thing about this slow down phenomena somewhere and the scientist person referred to it as the "Windows Half Life" i.e. every X days your OS slows by half. A bit of an exaggeration I think, but funny.

[SensoVision]

Logically, a Registry cleanup and a Defrag of the hard disk should do the trick rather than resorting to a clean install which is a major operation or a change of OS.

Andy, but does it really helped you and you got as fast PC as after fresh install? I agree that defrag was really working solution on FAT partitions but they rarely used on XP nowadays and NTFS doesn't have such problems with fragmentation as FAT had...

Also, if your C: drive is too full, your system may be slow because of not enough spare disk space. Also, if all your memory is used by running programs then the hard disk is used instead of memory which would make things much slower.

here I'm totally agree as low disk space could cause not only slowdowns but even system malfunction at some cases...

[Andy]

The registry stores all the settings for Windows XP so it must benefit from an effective clean up. Badly written installation programs that don't handle the registry properly leave fingerprints of their past presence in the registry. That's why I say it is logical that cleaning up the registry should improve speed.

I use FAT32 so I didn't know about the NTFS file system. I used Speedupmypc software to keep my registry clean and defragged the disk when required. So my PC always seemed fast. I had to do a clean install recently only because something went badly wrong and trashed the OS. But now it feels the same as before.

My Laptop runs XP and seems extremely slow now so I hope to do some work on that soon to make it faster again. I will let you know what results I get when I actually do it.

[SensoVision]

maybe you one of those luckies which able to run Windows without damaging it much Anyway I'm looking forward to hear results of your optimization. But for me I could never get as fast running Windows as after fresh install.

p.s. I read a funny thing about this slow down phenomena somewhere and the scientist person referred to it as the "Windows Half Life" i.e. every X days your OS slows by half. A bit of an exaggeration I think, but funny.

I forgot to tell in previous post that it's really funny and correct observation.

[Andy]

maybe you one of those luckies which able to run Windows without damaging it much

Not really, I just threatened it with an Uzi and the machine just worked.

[donecweb]

Installing software and then removing it will really mess up the Windows registry. There are ways of cleaning the registry some but I have never heard of one that does a good job. This is one of the main reasons for a clean install. If you don't install and uninstall software much then cleaning the registry will probably do a lot to help speed up your Windows computer. If you want to test this install a piece of software like Paint Shop Pro and then uninstall it. Then go and look at the registry and search it for Paint Shop Pro, Jasc and psp. You will find a lot of leftover stuff especially if you use Windows built in uninstaller.

[beamup]

what I have been doing is fresh install till now ........ but I dont think that wverybody would do that........ its not applicable... so  I suggst to defrag the drives oftenly....and check if the registry is full.

[Softix]

I have found great articles wherein you can speed up your computer pc. Anyway do checked this out http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/runbetter.htm

[SensoVision]

Hi Softix and welcome to WMK forums!

I have found great articles wherein you can speed up your computer pc. Anyway do checked this out http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/runbetter.htm

Thanks for sharing, I don't use Windows myself but it could be useful to my friends!

[Andy]

I don't have problems with speed since I reverted back to using my desktop computer rather than my laptop. I think the problems with speed occur mainly when your system doesn't have enough spare headroom with the graphics processing, disk space and memory.

[m1k30rz]

http://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Crap cleaner! It does just that, clears out all the crap that slows down your PC

[SensoVision]

Crap cleaner! It does just that, clears out all the crap that slows down your PC

you mean it will erase Windows totally? LOL