Computer Maintenance - A Few Steps To Speed Up Your Computer's Performance

In my last note, Healthy Computing, I gave some advice on how to keep your computer from getting bogged down with viruses, worms, and spyware. In this note I'll try to explain how to clean your computer if it's already infected. Keep in mind these suggestions are not guaranteed to work, and should only be performed if you are comfortable making some system level changes to your pc. And again, these tips only apply to Windows pc's, preferably Windows XP Service Pack 2.

The following are some steps you can take if you've noticed a decline in your pc's performance:

Prevent Unnecessary Software from Starting: When your computer starts up, so does a number of other software, some necessary, some useful, and some harmful to your systems performance. There's an easy way to prevent the harmful software from starting with your computer, what's difficult is knowing the difference between the useful and the harmful software.

To prevent unnecessary software from starting with your computer you'll want to run the System Configuration Utility, to do this click the [Start] and [Run...] buttons, in the Open: text box, type 'msconfig', and press the {Enter} key. The System Configuration Utility window will appear, click on the last tab, [Startup]. In the Startup tab you are presented with a list of software that starts with your computer. To prevent software from starting when your computer does, simply remove the check-mark in front of the software that you don't want to be started with your computer. Software that you'll want to keep selected is anything related to your anti-virus application, if you are running AVG Anti-virus the startup item will be listed as avgcc, anything related to the Operating System, or anything related to device drivers.

To know what purpose the software serves, and determine whether or not to disable it, you can Google the name of each startup item. This can be a lengthy process, but if you've done this correctly, after a reboot you should notice an increase in your computer's performance.

Remove Unnecessary Programs: Another important step you can take to increase your computers performance is to uninstall any unused, or unnecessary software. To do this open the Add or Remove Programs applet from the Control Panel, look though the list of currently installed programs and remove any software that you no longer use. A reboot is recommend after this step as well.

Remove Spyware: Spyware inhibits your systems performance by collecting data about you and your computer use habits, and sending this data back to the source of the spyware. To remove spyware from your computer you should install and run Lavasoft's Ad-Aware Free (available here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ ). Make sure Ad-Aware is up-to-date. To do this click the the [Update] button form the Status page of Ad-Aware. Once you are confident that Ad-Aware is at the current version, click the [Scan Now] button. From the Scan page, make sure that [Smart Scan] is selected, then click the [Scan] button. Once the Smart Scan is complete, place a check-mark in front of each item in the Critical Objects list and the Privacy Objects list, then click the [Remove] button. After all Critical and Privacy objects have been removed, click the [Finish] button. Another reboot, and you should notice an increase in your system's performance.

If you follow these steps correctly, you should notice increased performance from your computer. Remember, the above tips are not guaranteed to correct every problem with your pc, and it's possible that even after completing these steps your computer's performance will not change. Please be careful when performing these steps, most importantly the first one, because disabling a required service could result in your computer not starting at all.

Feel free to ask questions are offer any comments in the comments section. What software do you typically remove from a computer to increase performance? (Answer in the comments section.)

(Disclaimer: Use the above tips at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage you may do to your computer.)

Published on Facebook 08/13/2007