Your PC slowing down is a common occurrence and shouldn’t scare you. Whether your PC has gradually become slower or it suddenly halts, there are various reasons to justify the reaction. One of the quickest options that could help solve some issues is rebooting. It is faster and helps fix a few issues and could make your PC become faster.
How to speed up your PC
1.Find programs that are using a large amount of memory
When your PC runs slowly, it means that something is using up the resources. Sometimes, it could be some applications have a memory leak which makes them use a more substantial amount of memory ad they end up making your computer to swap to disk.
Alternatively, it could be that the application is using the disk a lot which makes other applications slower when loading data from the disk.
Find out if applications are using too much memory by opening the Task Manager. On your taskbar, right-click and select ‘Task Manager’ and press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to open it. The latest Windows 8,8.1, and 10 provide a new Task Manager interface that color-codes applications that are using a lot of resources.
Click on ‘CPU,’ ‘Memory,’ and ‘Disk’ headers to sort the list of applications that are using the most resources. The results will help you close the applications using too much memory. You can also select ‘End Task’ to close the application.
2.Close Unnecessary System Tray Programs
Most often, applications tend to run in the notification area. During startup, these applications often launch and stay running in the background though they remain hidden in the up-arrow icon at the bottom right corner of the screen.
To close the programs, click the up-arrow icon and right-click any application you don’t need to run in the background and close them to free up resources. Other times, you may experience your windows 10 always freezing and probably think the system tray programs are the issue. However, there is an option of downgrading to a previous version and so much more. This should make your computer perform faster.
3.Run a hard drive check
Sometimes, a hard drive on the verge of its lifespan ending is a common issue. Usually, after two to three years of using the hard drive, there’s a high chance that the hard drive will fail.
There’s an option of buying solid state drives (SSDs) as they usually have a lifespan of 8-10 years. And, they are ten times faster than the usual hard drive. They are however more expensive than a hard drive.
To run a hard drive check, go to Computer and right-click on Drive, then to Properties then Tools then Check Now. After that, you can Scan for and attempt recovery of the bad sectors. This will prevent your PC from accessing any bad areas of the hard drive.
4.Free up your hard drive
When your hard drive is full, even at 95 percent full, your computer will tend to get slower because there is no space to save temporary files that are usually required for operating programs. This makes your operating system not run well because programs already take the space.
To check the position of your hard drive, got to Computer> Right Click on the primary hard drive ‘C’ and go to Properties.
To fix this, you can optimize space by moving files to cloud storage. You can also deep clean your computer to remove unnecessary files.
5.Delete Duplicate Files
Sometimes, your PC may take too long to open files or games. It can be quite frustrating especially if you find out that your hard drive is full.
Duplicate files are a common occurrence and can cause your PC to be disturbingly slower. It can be quite challenging to search and find all duplicate files. However, there is software for removing all unwanted duplicate files. The Duplicate Files Deleter 5.8.5 scans and auto selects the duplicate files to be removed.
6.Reduce Animations
If you are a Windows user, then you know that it uses animations which could sometimes make your computer slower. For better performance, you can disable animations.
To disable, press the Windows Key + X you can also Right Click the Start button and click ‘System.’ On the left, click ‘Advanced System Settings’ and click ‘Settings’ under Performance. Choose ‘Adjust for best performance’ under Visual Effects and disable all animations. Alternatively, you can click ‘Custom’ to disable all individual animations you don’t want to see.
This helps make your PC faster, and you can forget about having to wait for it to load forever.
For people who use their PCs for business or for important stuff that needs quick loading time, you have to fix such issues for better performance. The above points should get you started in diagnosing the PC problems.