How to Speed up Your PC

Windows performs its fastest when you first buy a new computer and load it up for the first few times or if you installed a new Windows operating system in a clean hard disk recently. However, as you begin to use the system more often and add applications, games, and other programs to the mix, you will realize that your system performance is a bit reduced and you might even experience some random crashes as your system ages without proper maintenance.

Some people may advise others to format their computer and start from scratch to restore performance, but that is time-consuming and it needs to be repeated to regulate the performance. The four steps below will keep your system in top condition without much effort.

Scan for Malware
Malware can considerably reduce the system's performance and can hamper the other steps of performance recovery so be sure to get rid of all the malware if any before doing other steps. Malware can include adware and spyware which usually make heavy use of the registry and viruses and trojans that can corrupt the registry and stay in memory to cause a severe drag in performance.

Free up as much Disk Space as Possible
Cluttered hard drives make accessing data more time consuming and defragment solutions taking longer to finish. Reduce some of the clutter by deleting any unwanted files or moving them to other drives or external devices or optical media.

You can also use the "Disk Cleanup" utility if you have Windows XP or greater installed. All Windows users can utilize the "Add/Remove Programs" (or "Programs and Features" in Windows Vista/7) to uninstall any unnecessary applications that can provide relief to the hard disk pie and registry structure.

Do Full Registry Repairs
This step will cause a significant performance boost especially if you never conducted a full registry repair before. You will need to get a good registry cleaner as Windows doesn't have one preinstalled. Find some of the top registry cleaners using your favorite search engine and be sure to check for reviews from professional sites to ensure their legitimacy.

As long as there is a backup function and has positive comments, try out the system to see if it works for you and purchase it. Then perform the fullest registry scan option available and make sure all of the detected errors are fixed. Reboot your system and launch your common applications to make sure they all work properly.

Defragment your System
Defragmenting your system should be the last step since all of the necessary modifications were made by the previous three steps. Disk defragment will sort out the clusters of your files so that they can be accessed much quicker.

If you use a commercial defragging application like Diskeeper, your disks wills stay defragmented making your system perform even better.

Still it is necessary to repeat these steps every now and then to keep the performance levels high and stability good. The end result should be similar to reinstalling an operating system making this set of steps a lot more convenient.