Perform Computer Maintenance to Keep Your PC Running Smooth

Performing routine maintenance is one of the most commonly forgotten tasks people could do to keep they PC running at optimum speed. If you find it is taking longer and longer for Windows to load programs, startup or shutdown, and connect to the Internet, you can use utilities that are included with Windows to fix those issues. The bulk of the issue here is hard drive clutter and having too many processes running in the background. Your computer runs programs in memory (RAM) and also stores data on your hard drive. If you have a lot of programs running in the background, they consume RAM and need to use the hard drive. If your hard drive is fragmented, the computer will run sluggish.

Start With Routine Maintenance

You should run Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter first. The disk cleanup portion will remove temporary files, empty the recycle bin and free a large amount of your hard drive. Disk Defragmenter will then be used to orginize the data on your disk so the drive doesn't need to work hard to access this information when it needs it. To run both of these, go to Start>All Programs>System Tools.

Prevent  Unnecessary Programs From Loading at Startup

You can prevent a lot of unnecessary programs from loading into RAM at startup by using msconfig. To launch msconfig, go to Start>Run and type msconfig anf hit OK. The Microsoft System Configuration utility will load. Go to the start-up tab and scroll down, unchecking the boxes next to the programs you know do not need to run. You can still manually launch these programs--like Real Player--they just won't load into memory when you boot. Hit Apply, then Ok and when you reboot, you'll receive a message saying that changes have been made to the startup configuration. Check the box that beside that message and it will never come up again.

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