Speed Up Your Computer

Whether you have a Windows 98 or Win XP, here are some things you can do that will speed up your computer so it runs better.

Run disc cleanup on hard drive.

Run the disc cleanup utility on your hard drive. To access this you double click the My Computer icon and right click on the hard drive that is your main drive, usually c. Click the properties button and under the general tab psree the disc cleanup button. It will go through a check to see how much space will be saved by cleaning up the disc.

This will do things like get rid of files you do not need in your temporary folders and compress files you don't use very often. This will also delete your recycle bin and a few other locations that store unnecessary files. Let the computer clean up all of it after it checks.

Put a check in all the boxes that have an amount after them. Then let it run, you can probably go do something else while this runs, go watch a movie or take the spouse out for a dinner. This might take as long as one to three hours to run. Often times what I do is let this or disc defragment run at night when I go to bed. I turn on the utility and then shut off my screen, then go to bed. In the morning it will probably be done and your ready to start your day.

Run disc scan.

Double click on the My Computer icon and then right click the hard drive of your computer. Click the properties button and go to the tools tab. Then click on the error checking. This runs a scan disc to check for errors on your hard drive.

If you have more time you can do the option for fix errors and bad sectors but this will take longer. If you do this your computer might ask you to restart the computer. It needs a fresh start up and no programs running in the background to run.

Otherwise you can just do the regular error check and it will take a few minutes. This will search the hard disc for errors and mark them for the computer to know what not to use on your hard disc as far as spots that are not reading correctly. It flags these spots and uses others for writing to. If you choose to fix errors it will try to overwrite these spots and if that is unsuccessful it will flag the spot as bad, not using it in the future.

Run Disc Defragment.

Computer Cleanup

Credit: jeff gedgaud

Copyright: jeff gedgaud