How to increase speed & maintain optimized PC performance
By following a few easy tips and techniques you can not only make sure your computer is running fast and efficient, but also
maintain optimized PC performance. In this article we discuss how you can use the tools available in Windows Vista & Windows
XP Service Pack 3 to more effectively maintain your computer and safeguard your privacy if you connect to the internet. Most
computers keep a constant internet connection and its very important to maximize performance & protect system resources.
1. Free up hard disk space
By freeing up your disk space you get better performance out of your computer. The “Disk Cleanup” tool will help you free up
space on your hard disk drive. This utility identifies files that can be safely deleted without any negative or undesired
effects. It also enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the disposable identified files.
Use Disk Cleanup to:
• Remove all temporary Internet files.
• Remove all downloaded program or files.
• Empty the Recycle Bin Properly.
• Remove all Windows temporary files.
• Remove optional Windows components that you do not use.
• Remove installed programs that you no longer use.
How to use Disk Cleanup:
1.
Click to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then click Disk Cleanup. If many drives are available,
you may be prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.
2. In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list.
3. Clear all the check boxes for files that you do not want to delete, and then click OK.
4. When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click yes.
After several minutes the process will finish and the Disk Cleanup dialog box will automatically shut down; leaving your
computer clean and also ensuring maximum PC performance.
2. Speed up access to data
Disk fragmentation slows down the performance of your Computer system. When files are fragmented, the computer must search
the hard disk for the file fragments to open the whole file. The reaction time of the computer results in lagging and in bad
case scenarios, freezing and crashing.
Disk Defragmenter is a Windows utility by which fragmented files and folders that are present on your computer hard disc are
stored efficiently end-to-end, without “fragmentation reading and writing” to the disk speeds up.
How to use Disk Defragmenter:
1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools, and click Disk Defragmenter.
2. In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, click the drives that you want to defragment, and then click the Analyze button.
After the disk is analyzed, a dialog box appears, letting you know whether you should defragment the analyzed drives.
3. To defragment the selected drive or drives, click the Defragment button.
4. To show detailed information about the defragmented disk or partition, click View Report.
5. Exit the View Report dialog box, click Close.
6. Exit the Disk Defragmenter utility, click the Close button on the title bar of the window.
3. Detect and repair disk errors
In addition to running Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter to optimize the performance of your computer, you can test the
integrity of the files stored on your hard disk drive by executing the Error Checking utility. If you use your computer
regularly, you should run this utility twice a month to help avoid losing your important data.
How to run the Error Checking Task:
1. Exit all open files.
2. Click Start; then go to My Computer.
3. In the My Computer window, right-click the hard disk you want to search for bad sectors, and then click Properties.
4. In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab.
5. Click the Check Now button.
6. In the Check Disk box, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.