by Harry Burlington

Created on: January 11, 2011   Last Updated: January 12, 2011

Having worked in computer troubleshooting and Information Technology for the U.S. government, for nearly six years, I have seen a lot of troubleshooting issues.  The most common is a slow running computer or sluggish to start-up the desktop applications.  Mainly, it is really a matter of doing some simple steps, on a daily basis, by the assigned user of the computer to ensure "clutter" is disposed of in the recycle bin icon and emptied.  More complicated issues are also to blame that cause a sluggish or slow computer as well, as a virus or an overload of start up applications.  As my company's IT specialist, I do the basic checks first and if these steps are adhered to, then anyone can keep their computers running fast.

First off, keep your security software updated with the latest virus, malware, spyware, worm, and identity theft protection software.  I recommend Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2011 software or McAfee as two that will give the best and most updated virus protection available.  They are reasonably priced and also offer 24/7 customer service if needed.  Installing these security suites will also provide you the ability to "optimize" your computer with the application featurs they included.  Keeping your computer free and clear of the above mentioned malicious attacks will increase a slow computer.

Defragmentation of a computer's hard drive is the next area that would need to be done, which is easy and most computers, if not all, provide this feature.  In the start menu on PC's you will find a link to the control panel, here type "Defragment" into the search box.  Search results will provide you with a list of choices, choose "Defragmentation" and a series of yes or no boxes will pop up.  Click yes and continue until defrag has started and be ready to do something for about four hours.  Defragmenting a PC condenses and archives temporary internet files, cookies, spam, and other clutter stored on the computers hard drive into a condensed package on the hard drive.  This operation will free up memory and space on the hard drive, creating more free memory to be used and speeding up your PC.

Opening up the "Task Manager," by right-clicking on the bottom tool bar and selecting "Task Manager" will open up a box showing a series of named tabs.  Click on "Applications" and look through all of the start-up services that are actively running in the applications tab.  Taking the time to understand what each service does is important, so search online the importance of each start-up application and if something is not needed, like many desktop widgets are not, select it and stop running it. 

There are many more advanced measures that can be taken to speed up a PC, like going into the central brain or "Hardrive" of the computer and writing commands in MS-DOS, but we will keep it simple for this article.

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