Ways to Improve the Performance of Your Laptop

A computer that is bought new may work faster but as the time passes, its performance degrades and it may not run at the same speed as it was. This generally happens because the system gets filled with the more and more applications over the time and sometimes even the Virus or malicious files in the system can lead to this problem.

There are some tips that you can follow to improve your laptop's performance:

1. Free up your hard disk space.

The Disk Cleanup is one of the utilities available in windows which will help you to clean the hard disk of your laptop by removing the unused files.

To run this utility, click on Start and select Run.

Type "cleanmgr" in the Run window and click on OK.

Now, this will open the Disk Cleanup window where you can select the options like Temporary Internet files or Empty Recycle Bin, etc to clean your hard disk.

You can also open Disk Cleanup by following the below steps:

2. Right click on a disk and select Properties.

3. In the General tab, click on Disk Cleanup.

You also have More options tab where you can remove the unused Windows Components, unused Programs and even remove the old restore points to free the hard disk space in your laptop.

It is always better to remove the programs that are no longer used since this can save some space on the hard disk.

4. Fixing the file system errors and recovering bad sectors of hard disk.

We may not notice the system errors in our hard disk that can reduce the speed of your laptop, removing or fixing these errors can increase the speed up the PC to some extent. This can be done by using the Check Now option.

Select a disk and right click on it and click on Properties.

Click on Tools tab, select Check Now and in the Check Disk window that appears, select Automatically fix file system error and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors and start the process by clicking on Start. 

In the Checking Disk window click on Yes to restart the computer. The disk will be scanned for file system errors after the laptop is restarted.

5. Defragmenting hard disk

When you save a file on the disk, it is usually fragmented into small files and these files are stored on different locations in the disk. When you need a file, the hard drive merges these files present in different locations into a single file and then gives you the original file. This process slows down the speed of your computer and you can avoid this by using Disk Defragmenter in windows that can defragment these files on the hard disk making it easy to retrieve a file.

To open Disk Defragmenter, right click on a disk and select Tools tab.

Select Defragment Now and in the Disk Defragmenter window that appears select Analyze to analyze and after its completion you can start Defragmentation by clicking on Defragment.

6. Removing Virus and Spyware using Antivirus and Antispyware software

Ensure that your system is free of Virus or Spyware as these certainly affect the performance of your laptop. If you do not have antivirus software installed in your system and if you are looking for a free one, then you can use AVG Anti-Virus free version and Spyware that is available for free is Spybot S&D (Search and Destroy).

7. Cleaning the registry can help you to improve the performance of the computer to 

some extent. (If you have a registry cleaning software, use it regularly to keep your system's registry clean).

CCleaner is one of the best software that can be used to delete the temporary files, empty Recycle Bin, delete incorrect registry entries.

CCleaner is a free download.

8. Removing Spyware or Virus using Windows Defender and Windows Malicious Software Removal tool.

In contrast to the various antivirus and the antispyware tools available, we have Windows tools such as Windows Defender and Windows Malicious Software Removal tool.

This tools are similar to antivirus software but not as powerful as the Norton, McAfee, etc.

Windows Defender can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft's download website.

9. Disable the less frequently used Startup Programs

Disable the rarely used Programs from Startup to optimize your PC.

You can remove these programs from Start tab in the System Configuration Utility window.

Type msconfig in Run and click on OK. In the System Configuration Utility window, select Start tab and disable the programs that are not required at Startup.

Note: Do not disable the windows related programs.

10. Keeping your system up to date.

Update windows regularly for better performance and also update the drivers and Antivirus or Antispyware tools.

11. You can tune your Vista laptop by using TweakVI basic free edition to improve the performance of your system and you can use TweakUI (One of the Microsoft PowerToys tool) for Windows XP.

The above mentioned steps will certainly improve the performance of your laptop.

Thank you for visiting my article Ways to improve the performance of your laptop.

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