by Th Chan

Created on: December 13, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Normally, 1. Defragment hard disks 2. Clean registry with a Register Cleaner (such as Register Mechanic) 3. Uninstall unneccessary software, or components of software taking up system resources 4. upgrade computer hardware.

1. Hard disks after long use need defragmentation. It is good to check once a month or so. Fragmentation occurs when files are moved frequently, i.e. add, change, delete, etc... Due to how the hard disk works, a very small section of the disk becomes unusable as a result of changes to the files in the drive. Also, many files may have not been placed at the optimal position when first put into the drive as the position could be occupied by other files. Hence, defragmenting the disk, will optimise file positions, therefore reducing seek times (physical time taken to get to file location), and produce slightly more space.

2. In Windows installing and reinstalling software throughout use, will create corruptions and files left behind in the registry. Records of installation often remain even if the software is uninstalled. Consider a huge directory, like the yellow pages but with most of the items within no longer available. We go through the book calling each one in turn, until we finally get to the right one. The registry cleaner will help fix the wrong ones, and hence speed up the computer.

3. Often installing software packages give 2 options - default/standard or custom install. By choosing custom, you can select which specific items required. For example, installing Microsoft Office, the default installs many features that aren't needed for your use. If you uninstall them, not only does it save space, but will make launching office faster. Also, many of these software packages, take up system resources. For example, MSN Messenger usually is a system process in the Task manager in Windows regardless of you running the program or not. So, installing components totally unnecessary will make the computer faster, yet still allow you to run everything just the same.

4. This is the last step. Normally, the speed of the computer is mainly affected by the speed of the CPU, the speed and amount of RAM (and video card for graphic-intensive applications), and Hard Disk space and speed. If normal use is fine, CPU should not be an issue. If running applications for long time, or when having applications needing to load a lot of data, then more RAM and Hard Disk will come in. More RAM means able to store more data before going to hard disk. If you ran simple programs without things such as large databases, and suddenly ran a statistic program with huge amounts of data, then RAM will be the key. Hard Disk speed will only aid each time the data is first loaded, as if there is RAM that will be stored there thereafter.

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