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With so many cheap computers out there, it's tempting for business professionals to just buy a new PC anytime their existing machine becomes a lemon. The costs of a new machine may be dropping, but a few small steps toward good PC maintenance can extend its shelf life and ease your finances a bit. Disable File Indexing This indexing service gets info from files on the hard drive and creates a "searchable keyword index." If you don't use the XP search feature often to look for documents, you can turn this feature off, and the difference you'll notice is a slight increase in the time it takes for your computer to find a file, but an overall increase in general speed for everything else. How to : From My Computer > right-click on the C: Drive > select Properties. Clean Up Prefetch, temp, and cache files Windows stores a lot of temporary files that can be safely cleaned out once a month or so. This is also good to do before running virus or spyware scans, as it clears many things out of your system that would need to be scanned. How to :Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then clickDisk Cleanup. Install some RAM If you are running 128mb or 256mb of Ram, it's pretty cheap and easy to upgrade to 512mb. This is the only suggestion I will make that will actually cost money, but it's also the one that will best improve performance. How to : Not sure how to install Ram, or even what kind you need or where to get it from? Remove Programs & files you no longer need or use Having old games or other software you no longer use can take up a lot of space on your hard drive, which can lead to an overall decrease in your PC's performance. How to : Removing old programs is easy. From the Control Panel click on the "Add or Remove Programs" Icon. You can safely remove programs like games, demos, and other software you no longer use. If you are not sure what a program is... don't delete it just yet. You can do an internet search to find out more about any mystery programs installed on your PC to decide to delete them or not. Remember: Mp3 music files and videos you download can take up a lot of space. Go through your media files once a month or so and delete the ones you no longer use. Turn off Windows Animations and Visual Effects Fancy sliding, fading and animated effects that windows uses by default are easily turned off, and will make the reaction time of simple tasks like opening and moving windows, taskbars, etc... much quicker. How to : From the Control Panel, click on the "System" icon. Click on the Advanced tab. Click the "Settings" button underneath "Performance". Uncheck the options related to animations, and other unneeded visual effects. Get a Virus, Spyware and Malware Clean System Chances are you have some sort of virus, spyware or malware on your computer. How to : Get Adware and Spybot S&D in addition to a Firewall and Antivirus program. |
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