Troubleshooting a Slow PC
The fact that everything requires a PC interface makes a PC the most important gadget in possession. However, having a slow PC can really give you some frustrating moments, and I assure you that your PC will become slow after some time. Blame it on ‘brand’ or ‘grand’ (promotions)! The fact that most people do not know the basic reasons for PC’s slow performance make it difficult for them to fix it and speed it up. Therefore, understanding the root causes of the issue remains to be a primary prerequisite. In this article I outlined the main causes for PC slowness and their resolutions.
Troubleshooting a slow PC cannot be made easier than this. Follow steps bellow and I guarantee your PC will significantly increase in speed and gain the optimum performance.
There are 2 parts in every PC – hardware and software.
The first step is to take a look at your current situation and answer a few basic questions:
1. How old is your PC?
2. What version of Windows is installed on it?
3. What applications are installed?
4. What are the hardware components of your pc (RAM quantity, processor speed, hard drive capacity, etc.)
Once that is done, we can prepare your PC for clean up and optimization. However, in some cases a PC is simply too old for upgrading and this is generally true for hardware 5 years or older. This is caused by the high cost of older components whose price goes up due to rarity. Also, older hardware draws limitations when it comes to newer applications and operating systems.
What version of Windows is installed on it? If you have other than Windows XP or Vista you need to give a thought to change it as Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 95,98,ME long ago. And some programs in order to work require no less than Windows XP.
What applications are installed? There are many programs like Adobe Photoshop or some games that are very heavy and in order to work well require to have better hardware like video card, processor, memory, motherboard, etc…. Sometimes the software that you just installed is buggy and slows down your PC. So the question is: Is your PC slow only while running a specific application, few applications or is it slow in general?
What are the hardware components of your pc? Hardware components play a crucial role in the speed of your PC. Now days it is easy to acquire a very good hardware for very cheap. It is a paradox that in order to buy a newer much better components you need to pay less than those aged and less good components. Sometimes newer components do not fit with some other hardware on your pc, in this case it is better just to buy a new PC. Sometimes changing just one IDE cable can increase dramatically the speed of your PC!
So let’s look into your PC more deeply and see what we can do to increase its speed!
Let’s first revive your friend:)
1. Free up PC resources and its memory
The first and most usual reason your PC is slow is because there are plenty of processes, services and applications are running in the background that are not required and some of them you are not aware of, thus taking up much resources and memory that you even don’t have! In this case when your PC do not have enough RAM to store the data Hard disk is used as a memory place to store the data thus greatly slowing up your PC.
1. Verify how much of RAM (random access memory) your computer uses. This can be done by hitting Ctrl, Alt and Delete simultaneously. When the Task Manager window pops up, bring up the Performance tab and take a look at the Physical Memory section. You will see the total available as well as currently available values. Below on the screen shot you can see the current memory in use (503 MB) and total memory about 981 MB.
If the current availability is less than 30%, usually a memory upgrade would be recommended. But generally speaking if you are running Windows XP your PC can run with 512 Mg of RAM, but minimum recommended to have 1G (1000Mg) of RAM. You also can see the total available memory by clicking right hand button on My Computer and then going to Properties and looking in “General” tab.
Now you know how much RAM you have and whether or not you need to add more. You can add it later on. (we will talk about it later on)
The next thing we need to free up PCs resources and give it some air to breathe so that we can work with it much faster and do some cleaning processes.
2. While you are in the Task Manager, you can as well bring up the Processes Tab then click once or twice on the User Name tab to group all processes that are currently running. You can end any processes associated with unused applications. This will end unused applets and free up system RAM.
Also see if there is any process that uses much of the CPU by looking under the CPU tab and end it. However, be sure that you do not end any System processes as these are mostly essential for Windows to run correctly. It is a temporary solution to free up the RAM and also when you want to forcefully end any process or application that just won’t go away when you want it to so you just turn it off this way through the Task Manager. However when you restart you PC most of these processes will be turned on again.
So how do you turn them off permanently?
Simply bring it up by typing MSCONFIG in the Run tab of the Start menu. You can then easily manage the services and applications that automatically start on boot up. This is found in the Startup tab.
Simply deselect any applications you don’t use on startup, click Apply and go to Services tab.
Select “Hide all Microsoft Services” and unselect all services that are shown now. Leave only those services that you recognize and really need. Click OK and restart your computer (it will ask you to do so).
After rebooting your PC you will feel that the speed is greatly increased! But we didn’t finish yet! There are few more steps to eradicate the slowness of your PC.
2. Uninstall any unnecessary software
Often we have software that we don’t use that either came bundled with our PC or that simply is no longer used. You can do so by accessing Control Panel and then the Add/Remove Programs icon. This will bring a detailed list of all installed software including space they take and when it was last used. You can also consider uninstalling unused Windows applications such as Games, Windows Messenger, etc… if those are not useful for you. In the applications list, click on the Add/Remove Windows Components icon located on the left. Then simply uncheck boxes and Windows will remove unused components.
3. Clean up your temporary folders and registry
From Start, go into Accessories then System Tools and select Disk Cleanup. In the prompt select disk C:\ and then select all the check boxes for items such as the recycle bin, temporary files, temporary internet files and others. Repeat as necessary for all hard drives and partitions.
Clean up the registry as during the time it stores some data that was used by applications that actually was uninstalled long ago. Use CCleaner – a very good software that not only cleans temporary folders and registry but manages startup applications for you as well. Download CCleaner here.
4. Clean up your PC of viruses, adware, spyware, worms, etc…
These are a must-have cleaning tools:
A very good antivirus that takes of few resources and is free is AVG. Download the free Edition and run the thorough scan after updating the virus database. For AVG we recommend to do a custom installation and disabling Link Scanner installation as it slows down internet browsing.
For Adware, one may use Lavasoft’s excellent Ad-Aware. There is a free basic version that does a good job at getting rid of junk.
For spyware, I suggest Spybot Search & Destroy which is available free of charge, it is open source software and is extremely efficient.
Another very efficient software that you should run is A-squared Free, it will pick up things that others won’t!
5. Defragment your hard drives to organize data and reduce seek times
In the System Tools menu, select Disk Defragmenter. Follow on screen prompts and defragment each partition. You may also go to My Computer, click right button on Local Disk (C:), click Properties and go to Tools tab where you have options to defragment and Error check as well (recommended). As defragmentation runs best and most efficiently when other resources are not used we recommend doing this step while the computer is not in use.
Clean up your Desktop
When your computer starts it gives instructions through registry what programs to start or what commands to execute or what items to show, so the less instruction Windows gets the faster it starts. Thus having full or clattered desktop of unused or unnecessary shortcuts, applications, icons, etc… can greatly slow down the PC’s startup. You can run wizard to move unnecessary icons to a separate folder that will be placed on your desktop. Click right button on empty space of your desktop, go to properties and then to Desktop tab, press on Customize Desktop and then click on Clean Desktop Now. Follow instructions.
If your hardware is too old or you don’t have enough memory consider to change the current appearance to the classic one that will free up some memory and speed up your PC. Go to Themes tab and select Windows Classic, press OK.
Hardware
This is the costly part of optimizing a slow pc as it requires physical parts. Given the constant evolution of technology, I usually recommend not upgrading your computer if the cost of the upgrade will be grater than 250 dollars as for that anyone can build a decent computer provided a bit of know how and technical understanding. This is caused by the recent drop in hardware prices. Also, as mentioned before, some older parts such as processors and RAM have become obsolete and difficult to acquire. A good example of upgrades would be:
RAM
Today a minimum of 1GB of ram is recommended for computers running windows XP. You can acquire even old DDR and SDR types of 512mb modules for roughly $25 at online retailers. But how do you know what type of RAM your PC has? Use CPU-Z to determine the memory type.
Video cards
Depending on the age of your pc you will need either a PCI or AGP type of card. Newer computers may also have PCI-e video card hookups. Prices are varied but generally speaking a $50 card will yield substantial performance gains over embedded graphic chipsets or old cards.
Hard drives
Hard drive cost has decreased monumentally over the last 2 years. $40 will easily buy a 160 or even 250GB hard drive that will do the job.
Dose Hard Drive have enough free space?
Hard drive plays very big role in the performance of a PC. It is important that the partition where the system is located has enough free space, usually it is drive (C:). If it has less than 20-30% then you need to change it to a bigger capacity or to delete staff you don’t need from this partition. To check your current partition state go to My Computer, right click on the drive where the system is, select properties. There in General tab you can see how much free space you have. If you have 2 or more partitions you can solve the problem by moving data such as video, audio, pictures from the partition where the system is to the second or third partition to free up some space. Now if you decide to change your hard disc to a new one you can easily do it by cloning your old hard disc using Acronis True Image Home 2009 .
It does excellent job of copying the exact image of your old hard disk to a new one. It also can back up and restore whole hard disk or individual partitions. I used this software many times and it saved me many headaches! I recommend to have this software very much.
Dose Hard Drive have a newer 80-conductor IDE ribbon cable?
If you have old PC it probably has 40-conductor IDE ribbon cable where the signal speed limitation is 33.3 MB/s which can greatly slow down the performance. 80-conductor ide cable has 100 MB/s limitation. To achieve the optimum performance of your hard drive you definitely should have 80-conductor cable. Look inside PCs case and see what cable is connected to IDE.
Make sure your CD or DVD devices have 80-conductor cables as well.
You also can go to the device manager by clicking right mouse button on My Computer then Management then click once on Device Manager on the left sidebar and then click twice on IDE ATA/ATAPI. Click twice on Primary IDE Channel or Secondary IDE Channel depends where you hard drive is installed. You can check both of them. In the new window select Advance Settings tab where you can see what UDMA mode your drive uses. If you see Ultra DMA mode 2 there is probably 40-conductor cable, if it shows Ultra DMA mode more than 2 you have 80-conductor cable.
You also can the current mode type by going to BIOS and looking on the settings of the Hard Discs.
These cables are very cheap and you better upgrade them if you’d like to see the optimum performance of your PC.
However, there is additional cost effective ways of optimizing your current hardware. A good clean up and some inexpensive optimization may just be the help your slowing PC needs.
Physical cleaning and Heat Management
Dust is a natural enemy to all computer components. By simply dusting the inside of your case on a regular basis (every six months) you may significantly improve performance by reducing temperatures. This will also affect the longevity of your components. Use a vacuum cleaner and a brush. Small paint brush will do.
Open case and gently vacuum starting from upper inside part of the PC case. You don’t need to disconnect anything, just go over with the brush and vacuum over all inside components (motherboard, cards, power supply, wires, fans, etc…).
However, you may need to separate a CPU fan in order to brush and vacuum the CPU’s heat sink. If you feel the heat sink moved (unsticked) you should take it off, clean surfaces of both CPU and heat sink and reapply a new thermal paste, then assemble all back. After you finish turn the PC on and enter Power management in the BIOS. There you can see the temperature of your CPU and motherboard. Make sure the CPU temperature is not exceeding 50-55 Celsius. If it does you probably didn’t set the heat sink properly or the CPU fan is not working or you need to update the BIOS.
This is a big issue when it comes to hardware performance, especially so when the CPU and GPU are involved. We therefore recommend that you clean up the old thermal paste from your CPU heat sink and CPU and apply new thermal compound to assure proper heat dissipation.
Air flow
If your PC creates a lot of hit inside of the case you probably need to install additional fans. Sometimes buying a $7 fan that will exhaust hot air out of your system will make a big impact. Simply install the fan on the back of your case and be sure that it blows air out. For optimal performance, you may also consider an intake fan at the front of your case to blow cool air on your hard drive. Tidy up your computer case by tucking away unused cables and tying together loose ends with tie wraps. Less wires in the way will result in improved air flow and lower temperatures.
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These are basic steps to handle a slow PC. Doing all the above your PC will greatly decrease startup time and increase its performance. However you are welcome to leave comments just bellow or have a discussion at our Forums.
Very nice way THANK YOU VERY MUCH
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thnks