Pc Clean Up

We all remember when we first got a new computer, we fire it up and it seems to load almost instantly, we launch programs and they start immediately, the hard drive is immense and it seems like it can store the world and then some, everything is just running smooth.

But unfortunately these things never last, the hard drive fills up, the computer slows downs, programs freeze up and stops responding and error messages begin to pop up.

But there’s a reason this happens and that’s what I am going to tell you here today, additionally I will show you how you can avoid the common errors computer users are faced with today and ensure you have an optimized system for years to come.

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So here they are, the top reasons a computer begins to run slow and how to fix it.

To Many Programs

As your computer grows in age, there is a good chance the amount of installed programs grows with it. In this day and age, software grows on trees; you have your freeware, trial versions, bundled software and other stuff you are probably not even aware is installed on your computer.

But each program you have installed uses system resources in one way or another; the most damaging are useless start up programs.

Take a look at the bottom right corner of your computer screen, there’s a < icon, click it. Do you see a lot of icons? These are all running programs, sucking up precious processing power, there could be other programs as well running in the background.

Click Ctrl+Alt+Delete together to bring up the Task Manager, go to the processes tab, here you will have an overview of all running processes on your computer, and in the bottom of this windows you can see the total CPU usage of these processes, if you have a high CPU usage you need to kill some processes to free up power.

Stop Programs at Start Up

The best way to clean up these running processes is to simply stop them at start up.

• Click Win+r and type “msconfig” in the box that appears and hit enter
• Go to the Startup tab and you can see a list of applications that is set to run at startup

Now before you blindly start killing processes, take some time to find out what the process is or you could lose some computer functionality, but this is completely undoable, and if you find that you have ended a process you need, just go back and reactivate it.

Remember to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Too Much Crap on your Hard Drive

Yep, this happens to everyone, we download music, pictures, documents and all sorts of things from the internet and save it to our computers.

This is bad for your computer for a number of reasons.

1. You waste disk space.
2. Your computer becomes unorganized and it’s hard to find the things you need or want.
3. Your computer needs more time to find the things it needs and works slower as a result.

First of all, clean up your temp files and recycle bin, the next thing on the agenda is to go through your browsers default download folder and get rid of things you don’t need, do the same if you download a lot of torrents.

You can read this post for more information about how and what files you should delete from your hard drive.

You should also go through your my Documents folder as this is usually home to the motherload of crap, get rid of any pdf’s, pictures and documents you don’t really need.

If you have a large music collection, you may have a lot of duplicate files, download Duplicate File Cleaner and have it scan your drive for duplicates and see if it can’t free up a few GB’s.

Malware Infections

This is every computer owner’s nightmare; statistics show that 90% of home computers are infected with some type of malware. So malware protection should be the top priority of any computer owner.

If you don’t know much about malware you can read this post and learn about the different types of malware.

Many computers will have some type of antivirus preinstalled on their system, either as a trial version or a fully functional program. While these antivirus applications can be very powerful there are still some distinct disadvantages to using them.

The main reason is that most malware developers will target the largest consumer group available, this is the same reason you should not use Internet Explorer, and because some antivirus applications comes preinstalled on most computers, they will have a large group of users, as a result, malware developers will work hard to develop malware that tries bypass or disable these applications.

You will probably have very good protection from most known viruses, but if there is an outbreak of a very advanced virus, there is a good chance that the first thing on the viruses to-do list, is to attack your mainstream virus protection program and disable it so it can begin its destructive processes without being detected.

Take some time to look into some alternatives to the mainstream antivirus applications, SpywareCease is an excellent choice, you can read more about it here.

Registry Errors

The registry is the very essence of Windows, this is a huge database that holds all operational files, the information Windows needs to run installed applications and system configuration files; there are thousands of files in the registry.

But many computer owners never take the time to learn about the registry and how to take proper care of it, which is a shame because this is commonly the root of all Windows related errors.

How the Registry Works

Each and every time you make some kind of change to the system, this information is recorded in the registry so Windows remembers the change.

For example; when a program is installed, information is entered into the registry about how to run the program, startup information and the settings of the program.

But over time as you add new programs, remove old ones and make system changes, this huge database can begin to contain errors, files become damaged or goes missing and corrupt processes, uninstalled programs still have their registry entries, which are now invalid, making the registry bloated and slow.

Improper registry maintenance can lead to a wide range of errors:

• Your computer slows down, halts and freezes
• Programs stop responding
• You are faced with several error messages during startup and shut down
• Your computer screen turns blue and the system restarts
• Your computer crashes and you risk losing critical system data Windows needs to function properly, further damaging your computer

The best way to avoid these issues is to use a registry cleaner regularly, you can download Registry Easy and get a free scan to see if your computer has any registry related errors, if you do, you should fix them as soon as possible.

You should run a registry cleaner once a week, or at least every time you uninstall a program to clean up any mess the uninstallation process left behind.

So there you have it, if you follow the tips above you can be sure your computer never runs out of space and processing power, you’ll be one step ahead of malware developers and you will avoid the errors most Windows users are faced with because they simply don’t know how to avoid them.

If I were to chose the top 2 important things in the above article:

• Always have good antivirus installed
• Take good care of the registry

That is the best way to avoid ruining your computer.

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