Speed up that slow computer

You’re so excited, you just got a new computer and it’s fast, super fast. However, a couple of months later, it doesn’t seem as fast, and you’re not as excited.

Why does that happen? It’s because of a couple of things. One, it’s due to the installation of programs, as programs are installed they take up room on the hard drive, and the hard drive has to search harder and work harder to find space to put the programs. You say “But I bought a 300gb hard drive, and I’ve only got 133 gb on it.” That may be true, but FREE SPACE isn’t the issue, contiguous space is the issue. (Please see my post on defragmenting a hard drive: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/defragmenting-a-hard-drive/ ) Defrag your hard drive on a schedule. What schedule? That’s a good question, and it’s not that easy to answer. The answer is it depends on how frequently you write (store) files. If all you use your computer for is to surf the internet and you’re not creating files, then once a month would probably be OK. If you are someone that creates a lot of files a day such as spreadsheets or documents, then you may want to defrag daily. (See my post on defragmenting, and notice my recommendation of JKDefrag.)

Another reason is temp files. There is more than one type of temp files and all can have an impact on the speed of computer. What are the types of temp files? When Windows starts, it creates some files to help it operate, these files are normally deleted or done away with when Windows shuts down, but it doesn’t always do so. Another type of temp files are when programs are installed, some temporary installation files are created. When the installation is finished, those files are supposed to be deleted, but again, sometimes they aren’t. Another type of temp files is Internet temp files.

Windows temp files – there are two types of Windows temp files. (Starting to get the picture why temp files can be an issue?) Some temp files are stored in the Windows\Temp folder (directory for computer old timers, I may accidentally use that from time to time) and some are stored in the “USER” temp folder. (In different versions of Windows, that user folder is in different places, in WindowsXP, it’s in C:\Documents and Settings, and is your [user]name.) You can safely delete all the folders and files that are in the C:\Windows\Temp folder, though when you try to delete them, you may get a message that they are in use, just skip the in use files and delete the rest.

The other type of Windows temp files can also be safely deleted, but they can be hard to find. I stated in the preceding paragraph that they are in C:\Documents and Settings\[username], but they are in some subfolders under that that you may not be able to see, the true to them is: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temp and sometimes there’s even another folder called C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files. If you can find those folders, then you can safely delete everything in them, also.

Now to the temporary installation files, a lot of those are stored in two places I’ve already discussed, the C:\Windows\Temp folder, and the C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temp folder. There is another place they can be stored, but I’m not going to discuss that one, because if you delete the wrong folders from there, you can really cause yourself some headaches.

The last kind of files are the temporary internet files. There are two ways to delete them (in Windows there are almost always at least two ways to do anything), and I’ll cover the easiest way. Launch Internet Explorer, click on Tools, and click Internet Options. You should be on the Internet Options page, the second section down is the Browsing history section, click the “Settings” button. Set the disk space to use at 75 or less, I like to use 50. The bigger the hard drive you have, the larger that number will be, but it doesn’t need to be above 75, ever. Click OK to save your changes there, and to go back to the Browsing history section. Click the Delete button, in this section you want to click the “Delete files” button and the “Delete cookies” button. (What are cookies? Check out my post on Internet Explorer “stuff”: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/internet-explorer-stuff/ ), then, before you get out of Internet Explorer Tools, click on the “Advanced” tab, scroll all the way to the bottom and check the box next to “Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed”.

A lot of people in today’s computing environment do a lot of downloads, free games, music, videos, etc. Those types of files are really big and can lead to slow down. Be sure you clean up (delete) files of those sorts from time to time.

Another common disk space usage is installed programs, whether they came with your computer, or you downloaded them, or it was something you used to use but now doesn’t. Periodically go through the Add / Remove Program list and remove programs that you aren’t using.

Then, remember to run a defragmenting program periodically, see my post http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/defragmenting-a-hard-drive/ for how to do that.