No one wants a slow computer! Why is your machine not performing the way it should?
There are so many factors that can contribute to a slow computer or laptop, and it can be so frustrating when you’re trying do simple things like surfing the web or create word documents. You might be thinking; well my machine is only a few months old and it is fairly new, so why is it being slow?
When you purchase a new laptop off the shelf from PC World, you unpack it and set it all up, and yet a few months down the line you experience the dreaded sluggish hard drive.
How does the hard drive affect my computer’s performance?
Specific mechanical hard drives with low read/write speeds cause your machine to underperform. Shockingly, users are not made aware of hard drive speeds when purchasing a new laptop- this information isn’t available anywhere on the packaging. One way to avoid purchasing a laptop with a mechanical drive is to look out for laptops with a Solid State Drive installed, these drives are much more reliable and have no moving parts, they can also be up to five times faster than a standard drive.
I already have an SSD installed but still have a slow computer, what can I do?
Windows does slow down overtime if you don’t maintain it. When you use your system all day to send emails and make excel spreadsheets look pretty, performing manual maintenances and updates on your machine is imperative. Clearing old temporary files and installing latest Windows 10 Builds are some of the key resolutions to getting your machine back up to speed.
What else should I be checking?
Background processes are another contender. You can get a rough idea to why your machine has just suddenly crashed or froze, through monitoring the resources being used by your system. This can be either CPU usage, Memory usage or even high disk usage. Pinpointing the culprits and taking the right actions to reduce them can dramatically change its bad behaviour- it may even mean you have some out of date drivers, so it is worth checking out.
Have you ever installed software and just skipped through the installation process by clicking next, next and next. If you have, then its these unwanted programs will clog up your system by taking up resources, imagine how many times you have done this. It might be time to target these and get uninstalling.
PCs take longer to start and sometimes freeze on your desktop seconds after logging in. Having too many start up apps causing this to happen. Simply review your start up items and restart your PC.
Updating AV (Anti Virus) software and periodic virus scans is a must. Virus’ on your system are there to disrupt how you, the end user, interacts with your machine. By eliminating viruses you could see some major improvements… And this goes for malware too.
Finally, when everything has been tried and there is nothing obvious standing out, system files could be corrupt which can lead to other issues in the future like blue screens and booting issues. Repairing those system files or reinstalling Windows to start a fresh would be the way to go forward with this type of issue.
By Oliver Trifunovic