Learn How To Make Your Computer Faster By Trevor Johnson At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Computers always seem to be slower than you'd like. So how to make your computer faster again?

1. Make sure your anti virus software is up to date

New computers often come with a trial for popular anti-virus software such as Norton. But since viruses come out all the time, you need to make sure that you keep your anti virus software slap bang up to date. If you don't do this, there's a chance not only of getting your files or data corrupted but also of a nasty program running itself on your computer and slowing everything down.

2. Keep your firewall on

Most recent versions of Windows come with a firewall to help protect you whilst you are connected to the internet. Make sure that this is always switched on so that malicious programs can't creep in and use your computing power for their own ends.

3. Watch out for spyware

This is different from viruses, so there's a good chance that your anti virus software won't pick it up. Spyware does exactly what you'd expect from the name - it spies on you. Its cousin is Adware, which flashes up unwanted adverts or new unexpected browser windows. Both these types of software can be sloppily programmed and can therefore cause crashes and memory leaks, generally slowing down your computer.

4. Switch off unwanted background programs

Lots of software programmers assume that you will always want their program immediately to hand. Even if you only use the program once in a blue moon. It would dent the programmer's ego to learn that you weren't always using their program, so they often make sure that the setup program asks Windows to run their software every time it boots up. Sometimes they will ask your permission during the setup routine but often they just tick the "yes" box for you and let you decide that you'd prefer the program doesn't run all the time. The trouble is that all these different programs are using up computer power and memory. So they will be slowing down your computer, often without you knowing. Get ruthless - you probably don't care whether or not you have absolutely the latest version of iTunes or Adobe Acrobat so long as the software works. Double check online but you can almost certainly turn off the auto-updaters for most software programs and free up your computer power for yourself again.

5. Clear out the Registry

Specialist software is the safest way of doing this. The Registry is Windows equivalent of your attic storage combined with your garage combined with a handful of actually useful things. It stores information about your machine. But whilst most software is quite happy to install settings in the Registry, it's less happy to uninstall them when they are no longer needed. Quite often, even uninstall routines will leave scraps of completely useless information in the Registry. Which will slow Windows down when it comes to trying to find the settings it really needs.

6. Buy more memory

Modern software is memory hungry. Feed it more memory - you'll be grateful!

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