As submitted to http://acanac.org/blogs/geek/
In my line of work, I see it all too often. People
generally assume that because I am an IT guy, I can fix their computer. Well, I probably can, but does it help? Only in the short term. It's better to teach a man to fish so that he may eat for a lifetime, than to give a man a fish so that he can eat for a day. This will be the first in a series of posts for the home user - the average Joe who struggles with computer problems and no personal IT guy. The most common complaint is that the computer is slow. Many different factors can contribute to speed issues, so don't get your hopes too high yet. Some of these include:
- Fragmented and corrupt hard drives
- Low disk space
- Too many installed applications running(especially toolbars & system tray items)
- Excessive applications running on start up
- Viruses
- Outdated hardware
The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. While this list is not inclusive, it does include the most common experience. Where's the good news? The good news is that you can systematically work through many of these problems until the speed is back to normal. I'm going to show you how.
This post will be your starting point. Here we will tackle working with the hard drive to clean it up. I'm assuming that you are using Windows XP as it is the most common operating system. If you are not, the same practices apply, the screens make look a little different to you though. Start by double clicking on 'My Computer' on the desktop. What you are looking for here are the local disks. Most of you will have just one, but some will have more. They are usually labeled like this: Local Disk (C:) or Local Disk (D:). Right click on the C: drive and click properties. On the resulting screen that pops up you will see a pie chart identifying the percentage of hard drive space you are using versus how much you actually have. If the blue area of the chart is larger than 75% of the whole pie, you need to look at upgrading to a bigger hard drive or doing a mass clean up to remove unnecessary items that you are storing on your drive.
Next click on 'Disk Cleanup' and follow the prompts. This will walk you through cleaning up the temporary files on the drive to clear up some space. It takes a little while, but is well worth the effort. Once that completes, click on the 'Tools' tab and click the 'Check Now' button. This will initiate a check of the hard drive to make sure it is in good health. Select the automatically fix errors check box to make it checked. Then click 'Start' in the same window. Most users at this point will get a warning telling them that the task cannot be completed until the computer restarts and asks you if you want to schedule this. Click 'Yes'.
Now click on 'Defragment Now'. This brings up a screen that allows you to analyze your hard drive and help organize it. You see when a file is placed on the hard drive it is stored in several small pieces. After use, these small pieces begin to fragment and become scattered throughout the drive. That makes it harder for windows to access the file because it has to grab the pieces from all over. Defragmenting the drive forces those pieces to be stored in sequence, resulting in faster loading times. Click the 'Defragment' button and let the system do it's thing. This can take a while, so go ahead and get a coffee, or read some more of my writings. = )
When this is complete, you can close the Defrag window and the underlying properties window. If you have more than one local disk, repeat the steps above for each disk. Don't forget at the end of your work to reboot your computer, allowing it to complete the drive checking process. For many of you, this will fix your speed issues. As this series continues, you will find many tips and tricks relating to improving the performance of your home PC.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to send them my way.
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