Programs to Improve Your Computer's Performance

You click Internet Explorer. After a full three minutes of grinding sounds coming from your hard drive, your computer crashes from a sheer lack of resources. It’s time to do something.

But don’t hand over your computer, or your hard-earned cash, to a technician for what amounts to a simple tune up - this is something you can handle yourself, even if you’re not a computer person. Let’s look at some of the ways to enhance your computer’s speed without ever having to open it up.

Any good computer technician will try the easy fixes to a problem before breaking out the screwdrivers (“is it plugged in?”). And if your PC is performing poorly, is it because you’re simply using too many programs at once? Try running only what’s immediately useful; closing Word after you’ve saved your documents will free up system resources for other programs.

If applications aren‘t the problem, sometimes nothing more than a reboot is necessary. When you reboot, it clears everything in RAM - bad news if you forgot to save that spreadsheet you worked on all morning, but great if you want to get rid of “garbage” that can collect in memory. It can even resolve strange errors your system might be experiencing, but that’s another column.

If your computer is connected to the Internet, and you regularly download new programs, your computer may have spyware or adware on it. These programs vary greatly in their effects; some adware is more of an annoyance than a performance impediment, but spyware can seriously impact speed and even pose a risk to your privacy.

Tools like Ad-Aware by Lavasoft scan your hard drive and wipe out malicious software, often improving the system’s speed and security. Best of all, many anti-spyware programs are free for personal use.

But no matter how much you scan for spyware or reboot, you’re still not getting the performance you want. Have you defragmented your hard drive?