Fixing a slow computer or a computer that is prone to crashing can be difficult and time consuming. How difficult it is depends on the nature of the problem.
When is your computer running slow?
It can be difficult to pinpoint why a computer is slow, keeping in mind what you do before your computer starts slowing down and when the problem started can help you find the problem.
Some times a computer runs OK, but the start up and shut down times are unacceptably high. This is a separate problem from computers that generally run slow or are prone to crashing.
Why is your computer running slow?
There are many possibilities when it comes to this question. Lets group them into two classes software and hardware reasons. We will first consider the software reasons because they are easier and cheaper to fix.
1. Software
Spyware, Adware, Viruses: These are unwanted programs that start running when you boot up your PC.
Viruses are just malicious they make your computer run very slowly or crash.
Spyware watches what you are doing and then tries to steal information, like your bank account details. The program connects to other computers online and stores your details there. Thieves then try to make money from that data.
Adware are programs that popup advertising Windows in your browser. The people that make Adware make money from the advertising revenue.
These programs are spread by executeable files that are downloaded through web pages and emails. You can protect yourself from these programs in 4 ways. You can install a good antivirus program, you can be sensible in which executable files you open, you can backup your registry and hard drive frequently, you can keep your Operating System and software updated with security patches as they come out.
Registry: Your registry is the part of your computer that keeps information on all the software that is installed on your PC. Sometimes your computer can run slowly, even after you remove malicious software from it. This may be because the software has damaged your registry.
The operation of your registry can also be slowed down by programs that don't remove themselves well, from the registry, when you uninstall them.
In both cases you should use a registry cleaner to fix your registry.
Too many programs running in the background: There are many legitimate programs that start up when you boot and keep running in the background. An example of this would be anti virus software. It keeps a watch for malicious programs and needs to always be running. There are a number of programs that do this, many of them do not perform any useful function. These programs use your computers resources which means that any software that you start could be starved for resources, causing them to run slowly.
You should be able to test for these programs and stop them from starting when your computer boots.
Software side of your Disk:This refers to how software handles your hard drive. The best positioning for a file on your drive is in consecutive blocks or clusters. As files are written and deleted from a disk the distributions becomes fragmented and the files take longer to read from the disk. The solution is to use defragmenting software to re order the data.
Sometimes clusters on your drive stops working. Software needs to mark these clusters as broken, so that they are not used. If they are used it could cause a crash.
2. Hardware
There are three hardware parts of a PC that affects the speed of the computer. The CPU, the graphics card and the RAM memory.
The graphics card and RAM is usually easy to upgrade and you can do that yourself. The CPU is not easy to upgrade and you should not try doing it yourself, unless you know what you are doing.
