Computers are wonderful things, but there’s nothing more frustrating than slow loading times and unresponsive interfaces. If you’re experiencing these things, check out the tips below and you’ll be freeing-up space and optimising performance in no time.
Replace Resource-Hogging Applications
While more well-known applications, such as iTunes and Windows Media Player, get the job done pretty effectively, they tend to come with every single feature under the sun. On powerful computers, this might not be a problem but for mid-range and lower spec computers, they can be quite slow to load and unresponsive at times.
Therefore, it’s good to look at the alternatives. In the case of iTunes, an excellent substitute is the audio player, foobar2000. This highly-customisable program can be as stripped-down as you like and is free.
Take Control of Startup Processes
When you turn on your computer, you will often be unaware of what processes are going on in the background, but in the time it takes to run your computer, many programs will have loaded. To see which ones, you can type “msconfig” into the start search menu to bring-up a list of the startup processes.
If your computer’s load-time is particularly slow, search through this list for unnecessary additions. iTunes, for example, will run a background program for detecting connected devices, which is unnecessary and can be disable without a problem.
Tinkering With Your Hardware
The most drastic change you can make to your PC to speed it up is to actually upgrade your hardware. While this will cost some money, it is a guaranteed fix that doesn’t require any fancy techniques or little-known knowledge of software optimisation.
The cheapest and least-drastic hardware update is to bump-up your RAM, which is a type of memory that will make best use of your existing software.
Removing Unnecessary Internet Files
To make your fiber broadband experience more streamlined and efficient, your web browser will store cache files such as images and documents from recently viewed sites. However, these temporary files will remain on your computer and build up over-time, ultimately clogging up your computer and affecting performance.
To give your web browser a spring clean, CCleaner is a handy piece of file-removal software that can locate and eradicate remnant files from previous browsing sessions, such as cache data and search history.
Reorganising Your Hard Drive
If you are using a standard HDD drive to store data on, then a regular de-fragment will keep it running smoothly. When data is stored on a HDD drive, it can sometimes become “fragmented” due to insufficient blocks of space. Therefore, when you go to retrieve a fragmented file, it will need to be put back together again, making the retrieval process longer.
On Windows, a defragment may run automatically at set times, but if this isn’t the case you can open up your hard drive GUI and start the process yourself.
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