by Johnathan A. Daniels

Created on: June 22, 2010   Last Updated: June 23, 2010

Have you started noticing a decrease in your computer's speed? Perhaps your computer's not operating as it once did. Instead of a smooth user experience akin to driving the latest sports automobile, it’s become a slow and clunky one – like driving an old beat-up car. Below is a list of things to do and things not to do in such a situation. Following this list (intended for use with Microsoft’s line of Windows Operating Systems) will be beneficial in helping you restore your computer to its former glory and ensuring it's running at maximum speed.

->Do

1) Empty Your Recycle Bin

Contrary to what you might believe, when a file is deleted, it is not in fact, deleted. Instead it is sent to the Recycle Bin, and since files residing in the Recycle Bin still take up valuable disk space, occasionally emptying your Recycle Bin folder is a good idea. You can do this by right clicking on the Recycle Bin icon and selecting “Empty Trash” from the drop down menu.

2) Clean Out the Registry

While the Windows Registry does store information important to Windows, the majority of information within the registry is of no value. In fact, much of the registry entries contained in the registry are useless (such as the entries made when software/hardware is installed or removed). Registry entries can start to pile up and after a time, your computer’s registry may grow rather large. This generally results in a slow startup and system instability, both of which are undesirable and can be avoided by simply cleaning your registry from time to time. If you’re looking for a powerful but free registry cleaner, you might want to try Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, which was rated as a four star product by CNET. It can be downloaded here.

3) Clean Out Prefetch Folder

The Prefetch folder was created to improve your operating system's performance, and it does so – in the short term anyway. However, once the folder reaches a substantial size, it can start to bog your machine down. At that point, it’s best to clean it out. To do this, click on the start button, located at the bottom left. The start menu should appear; click “My Computer” or, in Vista, “Computer”. In the dialog box, click the address bar at the top. Then type: C:\Windows\Prefetch. Now simply click and drag until all the .pf files in the folder have been selected. Once that’s done, press the delete button (which is just above the arrow keys).

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