Software Plus

1. Speed Up Your Startup

If an entire pot of coffee can brew in the time it takes for your computer to boot, it’s time to make some changes. Most likely your computer is not slow – it’s the dozens of programs turning on during startup that are slowing it down.

Download a comprehensive tool like Autoruns to easily disable certain programs during your startup. Or try Windows’ slightly less thorough, built-in utility, MSConfig. To find it, go to Search or Run under Start and type “msconfig.” Under the “Startup” tab, uncheck the boxes of the programs you don’t need to run every time your computer is turned on, for instance, iTunes or your printer. If you don’t recognize a program, leave it be. Restart your computer and watch it fly.

2. Clear It Out

If painfully slow surfing is your main problem, there are a couple quick changes you can make.

Are you an Internet Explorer user? Get rid of it. Google Chrome is the best browser on the market now, known for speedy surfing. Under Chrome, go to Clear Browsing Data and check the boxes of temporary Internet files like cookies, cache, download history and browsing history.

To take further precaution, try a program like CCleaner from Piriform. The free software program removes temporary files from all of your browsers, as well as Windows and the registry, to make your PC run faster.

3. Slim Down

This involves more than just uninstalling programs you don’t use anymore. If you’re not totally committed to the usual suspects, like Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office, switch to something that requires less computing power. Free applications can easily replace go-to programs, while speeding up your PC and giving you additional features at the same time.

VLC Media Player is a lightweight, open source media player that rips DVDs, streams video and recognizes any unprotected media format. FoxIt Reader, an alternative to Adobe Reader, does more than just open PDFs all while using less RAM. Edit documents, open multiple PDFs in tabs and more. AbiWord, a free and open source word processor, and Apache’s Open Office, a free and open source full-fledge suite, can easily fill the void of Microsoft Office.

4. Automate Your Updates

Updates are annoying. It’s easy to click “remind me later” and avoid the notifications, until you’re so frustrated with your computer that you finally set aside an entire afternoon to update everything.

Let’s solve this. Go to My Computer > Properties > Automatic Updates. Make sure this is set to Download and Install Automatically. To completely cover your bases, find out if any programs need to be updated manually by downloading Update Checker from FileHippo.com. The fast and free program scans your computer and reports back with any available updates in seconds.

5. Make Some Upgrades

If you’re into gaming, a $150 investment in a graphics card might be worth your while. Forewarning: You’ll have to toy with your motherboard to make this upgrade happen, but there are a lot of online tutorials you can follow.

Finally, the most effective way to speed up your PC – which also requires tinkering – is to add more RAM (random access memory). You can find 4GB of memory for under $50 online. If you have less than 2GB (go to My Computer > Properties to find out), an upgrade should be in your future.

6. Empty the Recycle Bin.

Simply deleting files from the disk doesn't really delete them at all, rather they are moved to a temporary holding area on the hard drive for easy restoration. This area is called the Recycle Bin and is usually displayed on the Desktop. Review the contents before emptying. Once emptied, the space on the hard drive that the data occupied is made available for reuse and the restoration of any files emptied from the recycle bin becomes extremely difficult. Note that this will only speed up your computer if the hard drive is nearly full.

7.Uninstall all applications that are no longer needed.

When applications and games are installed to a Windows PC, some files are written in the Windows directory structure and dozens (or more) changes are made to the Windows Registry file. Most of these changes are not readily apparent to the user, so proper removal requires uninstalling the application through the Control Panel's "Add or Remove Program" or "Programs and Features" icon. There are 3rd party applications that can assist removing applications that do not have uninstall routines - or do not fully remove themselves. Revo Uninstaller Pro and CCleaner are two such popular uninstall applications.

8.Run "De-fragment" on all hard drives.

Right-click a drive icon in "My Computer" and select "Properties" followed by "Tools". Choose "De-fragment" to let the utility clean up fragmented files and consolidate free space on the drive. Note: this is not needed on an SSD drive. Defragmentation should be done at least once per week, or more often if the PC is used heavily. Some versions of Windows allow for the scheduling of this utility, and in those cases could be set to run automatically without ever having to manually run again. This process may take anywhere from several minutes to an hour or more to complete depending on size of the drive(s) and amount of unused capacity or free space. Consider starting the defragment process so that it will run over night or prior to logging off. After completion the speed of hard drive read and write times may improve significantly. There are also stand-alone defragmenting programs available from other developers available for download that may or may not charge a fee for use. A very good example of a free defrag program that allows automatic and scheduled defragmenting is IOBit's Smart Defrag 2.

9.Find and Delete Temporary Files.

Temporary Files are used for supporting some applications for a limited period of time and left unused for later. Go to "C:Documents and Settings<username>Local SettingsTemp" (Windows XP), "C:Users<username>AppDataLocalTemp" (Windows Vista), or "%TEMP%" (any version of Windows) and delete all the files from this folder. If there is a problem deleting one or more files, skip those files and remove the rest. This will free a lot of space on the drive. The Temporary Internet Files directory can also be emptied.

10.Download a Secure Computer Cleaner.

Many programs can clean out your computer and delete Junk Files and fix Registry Errors. Some programs are AVG PC Tuneup, AVG QuickTune, CCleaner, RegClean Pro, SpeedyPC Pro, etc.