Windows Essentials - speed up your PC

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Over time your pc usually gets slower sometimes to the point of being frustrating.Like everythings else eg your car, your pc oes need some maintenance and tuneup. While not an exhaustive list of solutions to problems, this collection presents six ways to speed up Windows. This step-by-step instructions is intended for Windows XP users, but users of other Windows versions can follow a similar process. 1)Defrag your hard Drive: OOver time, the data on your drive gets scattered.Defragmenting your hard drive puts your data back into sequential order, e.g. a singe document scattered in several places is situated so as to be placed equentially making it easier for Windows to access it. As a result, the performance of your computer will improve. a)Click on Start. b)Click on All Programs. c)Click on Accessories. d)Click on System Tools. e)Click on Disk Defragmenter. f)Start Defragmentation. 2) Scan Your Hard Drive: Has your computer ever crashed or have you ever experienecd a power outage? These problems and others can cause damage to your system files. Windows provides a utility called scandisk that will automatically detect and fix much of the damage, improving your system's performance in the process. a)Open My Computer. b)Right Click C Drive. c)Click on properties. d)Click on Tools on the top e)Click on "Check Now" f)Check all boxes g)Click on Start. 3)Scan For Viruses: Viruses can wreak havoc on your computer and can slow you down to a crawl. Detecting and cleaning viruses is an excellent way to improve your system's performance. There are many antivirus programs to choose from some of which are. a)Nortan Anti Virus by Symantec b)McAfee Anti-virus c)Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal d)PC-cillin Internet Security Suite by Trendmicro. e)AVG Anti Virus More details on Anti virus software will be on my blog soon 4)Scan for Adware and Spyware Spyware is software that allows companies to monitor what websites you visit or even access your computer. Adware is software that displays advertisements. Both use system resources and slow your computer down. Detecting and removing the programs will improve system performance.There are a host of spyware programs available some of which are: a)Spy sweeper b)Spyware Doctor c)Windows Defender (available from Microsoft free) d)Ad-aware 5)Adjust Visual Effects for Better Performance Windows XP provides a number of interesting visual effects like animated windows and fading menus. These effects, however, can slow down your computer. a)Click Start b)Click Control Panel c)Open the Performance and Maintenance Category d)Open the Visual Effects Dialog Box e)Adjust the Visual Effects for Better Performance 6)Disk Clean Up Over time your computer collects files many of whch are unnecessary and can clog your hard drive. Disk Clean up will remove all the unnecessary files a)Click on Start. b)Click on All Programs. c)Click on Accessories. d)Click on System Tools. e)Click on Disk Cleanup f)Check the boxes and click ok to remove the unnecssary files.