It is possible for a computer to slow down over time simply because it gets older but the amount aging slows a computer is generally speaking, negligible. Still, computers becoming slow make up a large part of my computer repair workload.
There are ways to keep a computer from losing speed and get its speed back if it has become slow. This article will talk about getting and keeping your PC’s speed up to its potential.
The Resources
Basically, a computer consists of a motherboard, a CPU and RAM. The inherent ratings of these parts are what will determine how fast the computer will be right out of the box. Of course, if we put a greater demand on our PC by installing more hardware or even software into it, we may have to upgrade it by installing more RAM so we will not lose speed. However, if we haven’t made any extravagant changes to the PC and it still slows down, we have to look elsewhere for our problem.
Resource Thieves
When a computer is suffering from poor performance and slow speed, you can bet there is something that has entered into our computer and is working inside without our approval and is taking our computer’s speed away.
The culprit usually causing this type of computer slowdown is malware. The word malware is a contraction of the words malicious and software. Malware can be any type of computer virus or spyware. These things have the ability to steal a computer’s resources and slow it down to the point it can be difficult to use.
For the purposes of this article, we do not need to differentiate between the different types of parasites. What is important is we realize we must scan our computers frequently for all types of spyware and all types of malware and viruses. This is the first step in computer maintenance because it will keep our PC’s free of these things that destroy our computer’s performance, not to mention the fact scanning for spyware can also save our identity from being stolen.
The Registry Should Be Kept Clean As Well
Equally as important as keeping our computers free of viruses and spyware are keeping our computers free of registry corruption. A computer doesn’t need to be abused in any way to develop registry corruption. Normal use will leave false entries in our registries and these false entries will give our operating systems stumbling blocks it must find a way to work around. This, of course, will cause our computers to slow down and become unstable. These stumbling blocks are what are known as registry corruption and it has to be cleaned out periodically or our computers will not operate at a level that is anywhere close to their potential.
It is also important to take note computer programs can be running in the background without your knowledge. This can happen because when software is installed one of the default options will usually be to allow the program to start automatically when you boot up the computer. Of course, running programs you are not using is a waste of resources. You can find the icon for these types of programs in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Right click any you find and choose the option to close the program. If you ever change your mind and want to run the program, you can do so the same as you would start any other program.
Still, above and beyond anything else that could be slowing down your computer is the major problems of spyware, viruses or any other kind of malware and registry corruption. These are the things most often responsible for a PC losing its zip and possible freezing up. Clean out the malware and keep the registry free of corruption and chances are your computer will perform excellently for a long time to come!