In the current climate, buying a new one isn’t necessarily a good option, so why not take an hour out of your day today, follow the five stage process below and get things moving faster again.

Step 1) Start things up as you mean to go on

Programs are often installed to check things out… or just appear as part of other installations. Eventually these unwanted programs and processes running in the background really start slow the system down and hog memory.

Stop those programs from firing up when you boot up your PC…

Go to START>RUN and type “MSCONFIG”, which will will show the  System Configuration window. Click the startup tab  and untick the programs which are starting up which clearly shouldn’t be.  If you are in doubt about what to unenable – don’t untick – you could cause some damage here – so tread carefully…

To help you with this, you could use a PC cleaning tool like CCleaner It is free and works a treat.

Step 2) Uninstall unwanted programs

Closely linked to step 1 – the single biggest drain on your PC’s resources  is having dozens of programs installed, which you never use.

Stop whatever you are doing right now and go to CONTROL PANEL>ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS and start culling your PC. It may take a while and a couple of reboots – but you will notice an immediate difference if you get rid of the stuff you just don’t use.

Step 3) Clear your desktop

Get rid of all of those unwanted shotcuts and programs and documents from your cluttered desktop – can you actually see your desktop wall paper or is it obscured by a wall of icons?!

There is a school of thought which suggests your PC will run much more efficiently if you have a neat and tidy desktop. Even if it doesn’t speed up your PC – it will speed up the way you work!

Step 4) Clear your cache!

Your hard drive attracts  ‘Temporary Internet Files‘ like a magnet – and they  need to be removed regularly. They take up a good deal of space, but also hog processor power too.

Give them a spring clean and in Internet Explorer 7 goto TOOLS>INTERNET OPTIONS>BROWSING HISTORY DELETE> and then DELETE TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES.

Step 5) Give your hard drive a ‘massage’

Once you’ve cleaned everything out above, make sure your PC is plugged in, pour yourself a nice glass of something one evening, and hit the defragmentation button and leave it running over night. Do this every three months or so – and give your hard drive time to recover from the stresses you put on it every day

And finally…

If that little lot doesn’t speed up your PC, then find the original disk it came with and (remembering to back up your documents first) reinstall the whole system – you will be amazed at how fast it will run. Think carefully next time you put a piece of software on there – and ask yourself whether you really need it!

If you run a team or a small business and are concerned with employee productivity – why not tailor this guide to your set up, and send it round to your team. Better stil, this employee productivity course has two step by step video lessons on how to speed up your pc amongst many other techniques taught. There’s a free trial available right now.

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Image courtesy of mconnors