Give New Life to Your PC Without Upgrading
By Kumar Gandharva Jha
How about making your PC faster without upgrading it? Sounds exciting! It is possible
as we have brought you a list of easy-to-perform tips that not only give new life to your
PC but also save you from spending a great deal of money and time searching the right
alternatives. Below are the simple steps that help your PC gain massive performance:
Change Power Settings - Windows, by default settings, puts battery-run computers
(e.g. laptops) on the "Balanced" power mode that maintains balance between battery life
and computer performance. The battery life seems to be useless if you have your system
plugged in all the time. Therefore, you can choose to enhance the power settings of your
laptop with an advanced power plan that is hidden by the Windows by default.
For that, you need to right-click on the battery icon presented in the system tray on
the bottom right hand side of your laptop. When a list pop ups, click on "More power
options", then click on "Show additional plans", and then select "High performance". It
will disable sleep mode among other features in your laptop and save enormous restarting time.
Run Antivirus Scans - You need to run antivirus scans frequently on your PC even
if it has no virus infection. You can schedule a weekly full scan for your PC during the
night so that it does not affect your daily activities on computer.
Clean Hard Disk Drive - If your hard disk is overloaded then it will slow down
your computer. So, if you have lots of stuff on your PC, transfer it to external hard disk
drives or archival storage etc. and then run 'Disk Cleanup' utility to remove all the
junk⁄temporary files, installation programs, as well as "Recycle Bin" junk.
To get to the "Disk Cleanup" utility, click on "Start", then type "disk cleanup" in the
Search box, and hit [Enter] on the keyboard. A list of the all the programs will be
populated, select the programs that you want to remove and run "Disk Cleanup". It will
make your PC faster than you expected.
Disable Search Indexing - Available in Windows Vista and Windows 7, the "Search
Indexing" feature enables you to search through your PC at a search engine-like speed. So,
if you are using indexing service, your PC will slow down extremely. To modify indexing
settings, you need to click on "Start", type "services" in the search box, and then hit
[Enter] on the keyboard. Run the services application, scroll down to "Windows Search" and
right click on it, select "Properties" from the list. In the "Properties" window, click to
modify the "Startup type" to "Disabled", and then click on [OK] to close the window and
let the change take effect.
Registry Cleanup - Registry cleaning can be considered as a good option to make
your PC faster and enhance its efficiency.
Uninstall Programs - If your PC is loaded with various software, programs, and
applications, most of which are not in use, then you can choose to uninstall such programs
as they clog your PC and make it go slower. For uninstalling programs, you need to click
on "Start", go to "Control Panel", and then select "Programs and Features". Remove any
program or application that you don't use. Keep in mind that when you remove any program,
it will prompt you to reboot your PC again. Therefore, removing many programs would
require you to reboot your PC every time.
ReadyBoost - If your PC is an old one having very low RAM (random access
memory), then you can use ReadyBoost, a disk cache component from Microsoft. ReadyBoost
allows you to attach a USB thumb drive to your PC and use it instead of actual RAM
modules. For using ReadyBoost, you need to have a high-speed USB interface along with a
large, high-speed USB drive. Provided that the USB drive is compatible with ReadyBoost,
Windows will offer an option to activate it once you plug it in. Once the "AutoPlay"
window is up, click to choose "Speed up my system" and follow rest of the instructions to
make your PC faster.
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