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Slow Computer? Try Collecting Some Data
Friday, July 15th 2011
Slow Computer? Try Collecting Some Data
You have a slow computer, but you don’t know why and you don’t know what to do about it. Here are a few suggestions to help you determine why your computer is slow. Eliminate and Move On
The basic approach to troubleshooting is “divide and conquer†or “eliminate and move on.†You need to localize the problem to whatever extent possible, and you need to be sure you’re on the right track before you start making changes or removing things.
If your computer was fine the last time you used it, and now it’s not, that gives you a little information. Did you do something to the computer? Change settings, add a program, make configuration changes? If so, you’ll need to consider these things as reasonably likely suspects, but that doesn’t mean you’ll need to undo everything you did just yet.
If you didn’t make any significant changes to your computer, and it’s now suddenly unresponsive, you’ll want more information about what’s happening to your computer before you jump to conclusions. First, take note of what applications you’re running. Shut them down and see if that improves your computer’s performance. If not, open up the Task Manager, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Task Manager will tell you what other processes are running, and how much CPU time they’re taking up.
When you open the Task Manager, you’ll see a set of tabs. The first one, Applications, will show you what applications are running. If you manually shut down all of your apps, this tab shouldn’t have anything in it. If it does, you can select the app by highlighting it in the list and shutting it down. The Task Manager can be a useful option when an application has stopped responding to keyboard input, and for whatever reason, can’t shut down normally.
The next tab is the Processes tab, and will show the processes that are running. If you don’t recognize a process, don’t immediately shut it down. Instead, do a little research and find out what it is. Your system runs a lot of processes, so if something is running, there’s a better-than-even chance that your system needs it. Even so, check out the processes you don’t recognize. The Process tab will also tell you how much CPU time the process is consuming. If a process is consuming a lot of your CPU time, and you’re not doing anything in particular on your computer, this may signal that the process has gone rogue and you may want to shut down the process or restart your computer.
In the next post, I’ll talk about the rest of the Task Manager, and how you can use it to determine the source of problems on your slow computer.
Photo Credit: IvanWalsh.com, via Flickr
Disabling Apps Can Speed Up Computer
Friday, July 8th 2011
Disabling Apps Can Speed Up ComputerDisabling Apps Can Speed Up Computer
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked about disabling services that are set to start up automatically as a way to speed up computer performance. This week, I’ll talk about reclaiming computer performance by reconfiguring programs to skip the auto-start. Services v. Applications
What’s the difference you ask? A service is part of the operating system. It could include your network, the ability to log into a computer remotely, audio features, etc. These services are functions of the operating system. Programs may use them, or they may support features in applications, but they’re not applications by themselves.
Services do take up some system memory and they can be a little bit of a drain, but that’s not really where you’re going to get the speed boost from when you disable services. The speed increase comes from not having to load the darned thing in the first place, and not having to wait while the service performs its trick or times out.
There are good reasons other than speeding up computer performance for disabling services. Sometimes, services are just unnecessary and it’s good practice to disable those things you don’t need. Services can conflict with other services, so disabling an unneeded service may reduce the possibility that a conflict will occur. Further, some services aren’t very secure, and can be used by hackers to gain access to or control of your computer.
After you’ve disabled the unnecessary services, you can reconfigure applications that start automatically to wait for a manual start instead. Little utility applications, freebies, toolbars and other similar apps are big offenders in the auto-startup category. Shutting these pests down can give you an immediate performance boost.
To examine your startup items, type msconfig into the search bar and select it from the results. This is the System Configuration tool. The Startup Tab will provide a list of all of the applications that are configured to start at boot time. You can select the apps you don’t want to start automatically by unchecking the box to the left of the application’s name. You can also disable all startup items, but this is normally reserved for troubleshooting since there are a bunch of things you’ll want access to!
Once you’ve reconfigured your startup items, restart your computer and see if you’ve improved your situation. You may also get a significant performance boost from using a registry cleaner, like SpeedUpMyPC 2011, which runs in two minutes and can really give your PC a lift.
Friday, July 15th 2011
Slow Computer? Try Collecting Some DataYou have a slow computer, but you don’t know why and you don’t know what to do about it. Here are a few suggestions to help you determine why your computer is slow. Eliminate and Move On
The basic approach to troubleshooting is “divide and conquer†or “eliminate and move on.†You need to localize the problem to whatever extent possible, and you need to be sure you’re on the right track before you start making changes or removing things.
If your computer was fine the last time you used it, and now it’s not, that gives you a little information. Did you do something to the computer? Change settings, add a program, make configuration changes? If so, you’ll need to consider these things as reasonably likely suspects, but that doesn’t mean you’ll need to undo everything you did just yet.
If you didn’t make any significant changes to your computer, and it’s now suddenly unresponsive, you’ll want more information about what’s happening to your computer before you jump to conclusions. First, take note of what applications you’re running. Shut them down and see if that improves your computer’s performance. If not, open up the Task Manager, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Task Manager will tell you what other processes are running, and how much CPU time they’re taking up.
When you open the Task Manager, you’ll see a set of tabs. The first one, Applications, will show you what applications are running. If you manually shut down all of your apps, this tab shouldn’t have anything in it. If it does, you can select the app by highlighting it in the list and shutting it down. The Task Manager can be a useful option when an application has stopped responding to keyboard input, and for whatever reason, can’t shut down normally.
The next tab is the Processes tab, and will show the processes that are running. If you don’t recognize a process, don’t immediately shut it down. Instead, do a little research and find out what it is. Your system runs a lot of processes, so if something is running, there’s a better-than-even chance that your system needs it. Even so, check out the processes you don’t recognize. The Process tab will also tell you how much CPU time the process is consuming. If a process is consuming a lot of your CPU time, and you’re not doing anything in particular on your computer, this may signal that the process has gone rogue and you may want to shut down the process or restart your computer.
In the next post, I’ll talk about the rest of the Task Manager, and how you can use it to determine the source of problems on your slow computer.
Photo Credit: IvanWalsh.com, via Flickr
Disabling Apps Can Speed Up Computer
Friday, July 8th 2011
Disabling Apps Can Speed Up ComputerDisabling Apps Can Speed Up ComputerFor the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked about disabling services that are set to start up automatically as a way to speed up computer performance. This week, I’ll talk about reclaiming computer performance by reconfiguring programs to skip the auto-start. Services v. Applications
What’s the difference you ask? A service is part of the operating system. It could include your network, the ability to log into a computer remotely, audio features, etc. These services are functions of the operating system. Programs may use them, or they may support features in applications, but they’re not applications by themselves.
Services do take up some system memory and they can be a little bit of a drain, but that’s not really where you’re going to get the speed boost from when you disable services. The speed increase comes from not having to load the darned thing in the first place, and not having to wait while the service performs its trick or times out.
There are good reasons other than speeding up computer performance for disabling services. Sometimes, services are just unnecessary and it’s good practice to disable those things you don’t need. Services can conflict with other services, so disabling an unneeded service may reduce the possibility that a conflict will occur. Further, some services aren’t very secure, and can be used by hackers to gain access to or control of your computer.
After you’ve disabled the unnecessary services, you can reconfigure applications that start automatically to wait for a manual start instead. Little utility applications, freebies, toolbars and other similar apps are big offenders in the auto-startup category. Shutting these pests down can give you an immediate performance boost.
To examine your startup items, type msconfig into the search bar and select it from the results. This is the System Configuration tool. The Startup Tab will provide a list of all of the applications that are configured to start at boot time. You can select the apps you don’t want to start automatically by unchecking the box to the left of the application’s name. You can also disable all startup items, but this is normally reserved for troubleshooting since there are a bunch of things you’ll want access to!
Once you’ve reconfigured your startup items, restart your computer and see if you’ve improved your situation. You may also get a significant performance boost from using a registry cleaner, like SpeedUpMyPC 2011, which runs in two minutes and can really give your PC a lift.
All my files are stored on a different physical drive or partition, so reinstalling the OS means, I lose nothing but installed programs, which can easily be reinstalled. I make sure all my bookmarks are backed up and then... bye bye old OS and hello new and fast OS. 
