How to fix
Speed Up a Slow PC
on Windows

Hi. I would like to try improving my PC’s speed. It became really sluggish…I know that there are way to improve PC’s speed and performance, so I would like to try those ways by myself before running to the professionals. Help, please

PC users don’t stop asking how to increase PC’s speed. This question circulates all around the Internet for many years, and despite the fact that there are hundreds of answers already, it's difficult to pick out the most accurate one. Before we start listing the methods that are typically applied for speeding up PCs, we would like to scold you for not taking precautionary measures to prevent PC’s slowdowns. None of the PCs are slow once bought. If you are using a ten-years-old PC, then it might be slow due to old details, mechanisms, and OS. Sadly, but new PCs often get slow soon too because their owners do not maintain them properly.

There are tens of reasons why PCs get slow. Nevertheless, the most common reasons are:

• PC runs for a long time without a reboot;
• lack of space in hard drive;
• fragmented/corrupted hard drive;
• tens of running background programs;
• virus infection;
• outdated drivers;
• hardware conflicts;
• Windows OS is out-of-date
• memory upgrade needed;
• PC’s processor is overheated;
• old computer.

If you maintain your PC properly, it can become slow due to its age. However, as you can see, PC's age is the last reason that influences its speed. Therefore, don’t be lazy and take care of the item that is so needed these days for work, free time, and fun. In order to speed up your PC, read the rest of this post and see what recommendations do we have.

How to Increase PC's Speed?

Restart your PC

Do you remember when was the last time you rebooted the system? Probably not. Very often people forget to reboot PC due to various reasons. We admit that it’s faster to keep PC running overnight and find it active in the morning. This saves you about file minutes. Unfortunately, but that may cost you hours because a PC needs a reboot regularly to finish up with the software installations and updates. Therefore, reboot your PC every day.

Create more space in hard drive.

Lack of space in hard drive doesn’t mean that you will not be allowed to download software, apps, upload pics, and other data that is in use. Hard drive space is the one that can be written to. It is advisable to have more than 20% free hard drive space. If you find it less that 20%, free up hard drive. You can find how to do that here.

Defragment hard drive.

It might be that the files in the hard drive are stored inappropriately. Sometimes system may scatter files in a messy way due to incorrect shut down or other reasons. Therefore, it’s advisable to run defrag from time to time to assure that system files are stored in the best way.

Turn off unnecessary background programs.

It might be that you have a whole pack of startup programs that run automatically when Windows system is booted. Therefore, disable them or remove. In order to check how many background programs are running and how many CPU memory they are using, open Task Manager by clicking Ctrl + Alt + Delete.

Check the system with anti-malware.

As we have already mentioned, PC speed decreases due to virus infection very commonly. Therefore, it’s very important to install a professional anti-malware, check the system with it, and update regularly. Be aware that not only serious viruses like keyloggers, spywares, rogue anti-spywares, etc. corrupts registries and burdens the system. Adware, browser hijacker, and other PUPs may also inject corrupted files and slow down the system.

Run Device Manager

In some of the cases, several devices on the PC are trying to use the same resource, hardware conflict occurs, which is why the system starts delivering error messages related to missing .dll or .exe files. Besides, you may be disallowed to use certain programs. Therefore, to prevent hardware conflicts, you should run Device Manager:

• Click on Start Meniu – Type Device Manager in the search bar – Click on it to open
• Select System – Properties
• When the list opens, try to determine which resources are used and which devices ran into a conflict. If you manage to find them, change configurations of specific device to troubleshoot the issue.

Update Windows

It might be that you haven’t updated Windows for ages. Thus, make sure that you have the latest Windows version. You can do this by accessing the official Microsoft web page.

Check if your PC’s processor is not overheated.

Specialists warn that too hot processor can significantly decrease PC’s speed and performance. The processor may become overheated due to fan or temperature-monitoring software failure. Before taking your PC to the IT technician, you should try to turn off your PC and clean it with a vacuum. It might be that the fan got clogged by dust.

Open Task Manager and check memory requirements

A normal PC should have at least 1GB of memory. If you have some free memory slots, add new or replace the old one with new. This may help to optimize and speed up the system.

Change computer

If you are using a very old computer and none of the aforementioned tips have helped to increase PC’s speed, then the only thing that you can do to enjoy a fast computer is to buy a new one.

Install PC optimization tool

We would like to encourage you to optimize PC automatically. Programs like [rev id=”Reimage”], [rev id=”SpeedyPC Pro”] or [rev id=”RegCure Pro”] are developed for maintaining PCs. Thus, any of these apps can help you with system defragmentation, driver updates or even virus detection. We hope that this article was useful for you!