by Mike Stanley

Created on: May 15, 2009

At some point, everyone has been frustrated by a sluggish computer. The part that really ruffles peoples feathers is the same computer was running just fine weeks ago, but now is barely moving at a crawl. So you ask, is there anything I can do about this? Sure there is, and depending on what the cause it likely won't cost you anything to fix.

When people use their computers, they tend to install programs and re-configure this and that. As time moves on, the files on the hard drive get shattered out of order, and some files become fragmented. This can cause your system to respond slower as it has to search and wade through the fragmented data to find what it's looking for. For this reason it is a good idea to schedule the defrag program to run from time to time. How often you want it to run will depend on how you use your computer and what is convenient for you. I recommend running it at least once a week. If you have Windows Vista installed, defrag is already scheduled to run once a week, however you may need to change the settings to suit your needs. To run defrag, go to the Start Menu/Accessories/System Tools (Windows Vista users have to point to All Programs at the bottom of the Start Menu) and click on Disk Defragmenter. You can choose to modify the settings or go ahead and run the defrag utility if you wish. You can cancel the scheduled defrag and do it manually to avoid defrag from trying to run at inconvenient times, but I don't recommend it unless your system runs too slow with it enabled. If you do, just try and remember to run it often to avoid slowdowns.

Another thing that can slow a computer are startup programs. Some programs you install like to add entries in the registry or place a file in your startup folder so that it runs when you start Windows. These programs run in the background eating up system resources even though you're not using them. Most of these can be turned off as they rarely provide functionality needed beyond what the main program does anyway. The best way to get rid of these programs is to click (or right click depending on the program) on the system tray icon on the lower right side of the screen on the taskbar and find the settings or preferences menu. In there you'll have to dig around and find a checkbox, or some other method of selecting to disable starting up when Windows starts. Fair warning, these programs tend to not want to go easy, and a lot of them hide the disable

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