My computer is running slow what steps can I do to fix it?

**Huccadiedycle** · 01-02-2010, 02:27

**Fragony** · 01-02-2010, 16:45

If you are just using it for work stuff press escape at startup and choose 'safe mode with network'. I assume you have Vista because it's getting slow, games won't do in safe mode but Vista is actually functional for doing basic tasks.

**Judge** · 01-02-2010, 21:13

you could suggest
1. Defrag
2. clean all history/cookies etc
3. More Ram

you do not state what components you have on your current PC.

**LeftEyeNine** · 01-03-2010, 00:04

1- Registry Clean (TuneUp Utilities 2010)
2- Defrag (MyDefrag formerly known as JKDefrag is known to be a good (and free) alternative to Microsoft's built-in one)
3- Review hardware

**CrossLOPER** · 01-03-2010, 00:38

On top of what everyone else posted:

1) Stop surfing shady sites with internet explorer.

2) Post CPU, GPU, RAM (Start>>Run>>dxdiag)

**Beskar** · 01-08-2010, 03:58

Boost Speed - http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/boost-speed

That is a good all-in-one package. There are free-versions of some of the software programs around on the site.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 01-08-2010, 04:55

I'd be wary installing some random ‘crippled’ version of some random ‘boost-speed’ application. Granted that there are a lot of finicky options that (may or may not) improve perfomance of (some) applications on Windows or that of the OS itself; but this is usually accompanied by the disabling of some features/components or choosing settings that actually hurt performance.

According to the short product blurb it is about optimizing for a type of computer use that I would qualify as ‘casual’; and there is IMO too much hand-wavy, trust-me I-know-what-I-do-but-not-really type semi-technical ‘speak’ in the product description. It does not bode well:

This is so typical.

... of marketing:

We buy a new PC and soon it slows down to a crawl. Sometimes we just expect too much perhaps. But all too often, the computer is really running slow.

... really, and...

Why? Remnants of programs you once installed are now clogging the memory and disks.

... So you have been installing badly behaved bloat? No longer installed programs; positively clogging memory? What are those I wonder?

The Windows Registry is filled with junk and rarely defragmented.

And you are not going to help that much, huh? Because in case it wasn't known yet: (a) most of the junk is again the result of badly behaved bloat that commits such atrocities as storing GUI strings in the registry... ? Rarely defragmented.... I suppose not. I also suppose that the amount of changes made to it during uptime of a Windows environment (applications like to store things such as settings/session-state in the registry) would somewhat defeat aggressive defragmentation. A genuine extents based filesystem; now that would actually help.

To top it all, Windows runs services you don't need.

... Such as your speed boost application? A constant background defragmenter to kill my performance by occupying my disk and starving other applications for (e.g. registry) I/O?

Luckily for us, computer owners, most of these problems can be reversed. Auslogics BoostSpeed can speed up your computer by cleaning up and defragmenting disks and the Registry, removing bloated software, and applying performance tweaks.

Removing bloated software? So I boot up tomorrow and MS Office is gone (the myth is that all Office additions since the '97 edition are nothing but bloat with marketing-sauce)? Now, that inspires confidence.

Defragmenting? Either you are going to grind my system to a halt, make it crawl on all fours; or you are going to do a lousy job (simply write contiguous data into available space) which will amount to pretty much the same thing due to disk layout considerations (you will ‘push’ the data into inner tracks of the platters which have lower throughput because of physics) and make my system crawl. Anyone who seriously thinks he/she actually needs this type of software is likely deluded or seriously suffering from disk I/O related problems. In the latter case: starting backgrounded defragmentation when the user is running other programs does *not* help.

Applying performance tweaks? So I boot up tomorrow and I am greeted by a desktop from 1995? That would eek out some more performance. It would also be quite undesirable. IOW: what tweaks? Nothing is more scary than some random stranger ‘tweaking’ my software. That privilege is for the user who has spent his time scouring available sources for documentation, tutorials and other help material -- IOW: someone confident he/she knows what he/she is doing, and reasonably able to roll-back to known-good configuration if things should turn for the worse.

**Beskar** · 01-08-2010, 05:43

Well, you obviously don't know what you are talking about, Tellos Athenaios.

If you taken a lot at the majority of the reviews of the product from independent sources and computer magazines, including the free-aspects (which are not crippled), then you would know that the majority of what you said was utter rubbish.

They even link some on the page for you, if you are too lazy.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 01-08-2010, 07:02

Sigh. If you had bothered to read what I wrote you may have been able to understand my comments on the marketing blurb; rephrased in case I was unclear:
Comments after "I'd be wary...actually hurt performance." are specifically directed at the picture evoked in the marketing language (I thought that was clear from quoting the bits I refer to). Of course you can appreciate hyperbole as well as the fact that -apart from mentioned ‘registry cleanup’; and ‘defragmentation’- there is no concrete mention of features or anything: you have to make do with ‘tweaks’. I am sorry but that is like a Windows shop selling me 7 with the slogan ‘it manages hardware [in general]’. Terribly vague if not entirely useless.

Apart from that: yes, I happen to be wary of trusting products that are accompanied by ill-informed (clogging memory) and poorly worded phrases (removing software).

Especially if the bulk (as advertised) of what these do (as advertised) refers to things that should not be done with other applications running in the foreground if you want to ‘optimize’ performance. And doubly so since most of the finer details appear to amount to little but a GUI on top of settings controlled via administrative utilities available to the Administrator. Try running "Services.msc" as Administrator...

As an aside this (fixing the setting to a value) is positively retarded: http://www.auslogics.com/en/products...ges/shot03.png

As a more casual aside: try this ‘speed boost’ program on a 5 year old ‘laptop’ machine featuring: (WinXP); 512MB RAM; Celeron 1.2Ghz or thereabouts; 120GB disk; integrated (Intel) graphics; generic b/g wifi. Then note what works better: ‘speed boost’; upgrading hard disk; upgrading RAM; or switching OS/filesystem to something that does not employ NTFS and similar. The cheapest? The last. The best for performance? The last as well.

**naut** · 01-08-2010, 09:06

1. Delete unused programs and files on the hard-disk to free up space. You may be close to capacity, which means that there isn't enough space for virtual memory. This will really hurt performance, as your RAM cannot effectively go about paging. (I cbf to explain, here if you want more info).

2. Defrag. A program like JKdefrag as LEN suggested is good and simple to use.

3. Clean/optimise your registry. I would advise using utility software to do so. Such as CCleaner (Free). Tune-Up Utilities 2010 has a good registry defragger/optimiser, which reduces the size of/redundancy in the registry, and as it is a sequential file this boosts performance.

4. Optimise your Operating System visual settings for you hardware. I would advise using utility software to do so. Such as Tune-Up Utilities 2010.

5. Cancel auto start-up on unnecessary programs and services. Software like Tune-Up Utilities 2010 easily allows you to adjust which programs start-up automatically. It takes a little bit more knowledge to do the same with OS services, and I don't know any programs that allow you to do so easily (Anyone?).

6. Turn off your computer while you are not using it. Some programs bloat and leak data in RAM, especially poorly coded Java programs. This means that overtime since the last restart your computer will experience reduced performance.

**Beskar** · 01-08-2010, 11:59

Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

Sigh. If you had bothered to read what I wrote you may have been able to understand my comments on the marketing blurb; rephrased in case I was unclear:
Comments after "I'd be wary...actually hurt performance." are specifically directed at the picture evoked in the marketing language (I thought that was clear from quoting the bits I refer to). Of course you can appreciate hyperbole as well as the fact that -apart from mentioned ‘registry cleanup’; and ‘defragmentation’- there is no concrete mention of features or anything: you have to make do with ‘tweaks’. I am sorry but that is like a Windows shop selling me 7 with the slogan ‘it manages hardware [in general]’. Terribly vague if not entirely useless.

Though as a user of the program I can vouch how significant the improvement can be and I can fully assure you it doesn't delete your entire harddrive or anything of the sort.

Yes, some of the options are simply placed in a simple to use gui, opposed through 20 different windows or using Cmd, but it makes it far more convienant. The program is aimed at more novice users, because obviously some one who is a professional will know the other ways doing some of the things the program does, even I know how to, but the program is far less time-consuming and being able to do things at simple touches of the button makes maintaning performance easy.

Also, the program does not do miracles such as make a Celeron processor work like a quad-core, but the ulities and options avaiable assist you in getting a very high efficiency rating and a significant Everest result improvement.

The Free-Defrag tool on the site is worth the download alone, as it is vastly superior to the one inbuilt in windows (Especially the joke that was Vista's). Since most people don't even know what a defragment tool is, having your harddrive 30%+ fragmented becoming defragmented is like a miracle.

**CrossLOPER** · 01-08-2010, 16:27

I'm with Tellos on this one. I can't see the value of "speed booster" software unless you have very little clue as to what you are doing, in which case you probably shouldn't be downloading installing programs such as the one featured here.

**Beskar** · 01-08-2010, 18:36

Well, since it is person with 1 post starting the topic with a really vague general question, I doubt they are on the way of completing a degree in Computer Science.

Even then, while they didn't give the best name for the programme, it doesn't mean people should automatically fob it off talking about how they know how good it is, when they haven't got a clue.

It isn't just some trashy programme or one of those which is out to scam people, it is by a reputable company which actually gets the majority of that reputable and praise for their free range of programmes, and has one of the best 3rd-party defragmenting software which is also actually free. The "BoostSpeed" programme is a big collection of programmes which perform all sorts of actions and tasks on request of the user which makes very big performance results without "deleting all programmes off hardrive" or "turn your GUI into Windows 95" or very erroreous comments from people who simply haven't got a clue what they are talking about. I wouldn't have recommended that software bundle if I didn't think it would live up to the standards required of such a ulitility programme.

The whole set-up is an simplified GUI which allows a user to make all the tweaks with a vast amount of explanation to what it does and the effects. While you could attempt to do some of these changes through windows itself, it is definitely no breeze in the park, and I doubt some one who opens up with "My computer is running slow what steps can I do to fix it?" will be able to do it without vast amounts of explanation. The programmes within work far more fficently and better than the ones on the Windows Operating system as well.

Here is a few of the reviews about the programme from other sites.

Conclusion

BoostSpeed produces similar results as other PC optimizer tools (SpeedUpMyPC, AShampoo, TuneUp Utilities) in respect to performance improvement. What we like about the tool is the ease-of-use and the rather extensive feature set. Rather than being only a PC optimizer, BoostSpeed is a complete system maintenance tool. And if you know what you are doing you can probably get a little more speed improvement out of the tool using the many tweaks in the tool.

But even if you just want a simple tool to run every month, BoostSpeed can be used with ease.

Here are the reviews on Cnet -
http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-B...99.html#rateit

Here is from the review centre -
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews172551.html

Use google if you really want to find more.