As many of us stayed home in the past couple of years, you may be one of the people who invested in a laptop or desktop computer to use for online learning or work from home setup. After more than a year of use, have you experienced your computer slowing down?
If your computer is not performing as great as it used to before, try these simple methods and see if it can speed up your workflow.
Scan your computer for virus
A virus, such as malware and spyware can consume a big amount of your computer’s memory (RAM), leaving your programs to make use of the limited resources. This can result to laggy, sluggish performance of your internet browser, games, and other applications. Give the trusted antivirus software, like Bitdefender and Norton a try and check if it helps speed up your unit.
Disable startup programs
Is your computer’s boot time getting longer? It might be caused by your programs that are set to run upon starting your computer, like Skype, Viber, Spotify, Cortana to name a few.
Try disabling them by right-clicking on your taskbar and going to Task Manager. Select that Startup tab and disable the software you don’t want to run automatically upon powering your PC. This will surely reduce boot time and will make your computer run faster.
Uninstall unused programs to free up space
Don’t put your disk space in the red. For Windows 10/11 users, maintain at least 40Gb to be safe and to give enough room for OS and program updates.
Have difficulty selecting which programs to uninstall? If you haven’t used a specific software for a year, that might be enough reason to remove it from your computer.
Update your drivers
Getting that Windows update is sometimes not enough. Find out what processor and graphics card your computer has and go to their official websites to check for downloadable updates. This might just fix some issues you’re having, such as unresponsiveness and slow performance.
Defragment and optimize your drives
If your disk space is almost full and you still can’t decide what programs to uninstall, one solution for this dilemma is to defragment and optimize your drives. This will free up some space as this will organize your files that can help your computer run more efficiently.
Simply search your computer for “defrag” and the Defragment and Optimize Drives application should appear. Select the disk space you want to manage and click “Optimize”. Wait for the process to finish and see if this improves your computer’s performance overall.
Get more RAM
The common laptop and desktop computer comes with 8GB RAM nowadays. However, if you’re running on Windows 11, you should consider adding an additional 4 or 8 Gig to your unit as the newly launched OS consumes more RAM which may affect the overall performance of your computer and the programs running in the background.
Our Thoughts
Just like other things, if you want your computer to last and continue to perform better, you should take care of it. Following the tips above will surely make a difference and will help the programs run a little faster for a better user experience.