Spyware, Adware and Viruses

These are one of the main reasons for slow computers.

To get rid of them, you will require a number of scanners for your computer.

A few free scanners you can download are; AVG Free, Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware.

Temporary Files

Temporary files on your computer clog up space and slow down your computers efficiency.

If you are running a version of Windows, you should have installed "Disk Cleanup".

This will do the job of clearing the temp files of your computer.

Running Programs

A key thing you must check whilst using your computer is what programs are running in the background. Many people never check this, but should as it slows down your computer speed.

To check your running programs, look in the bottom right hand corner of your computer. (Windows users)

Hard Disk Occupants

One of the main reasons that a computer runs slow is the programs installed on the hard disk are spaced out all over the disk, or fragmented.

This means the computer must search through the whole drive to find what it is looking for.

To cure this, a Disk Defragmenter will push all the files up to one section of the drive, allowing much quicker access of your programs.

You should have a Disk Defragmenter already on your Windows computer, but if you do not, you can find one here.

A Disk Defrag could take around a day to do, but it is worth it for a faster PC.

Windows Updates

Be sure to update your Windows computer every so often.

You can find new updates and downloads from Microsoft Windows here.

Good luck with speeding up the performance of your PC.

To do this, we first go to our start menu. There should be something called "control panel", click on it, and then navigate to Programs, once you are on that window, you go to turn windows features on or off. Take off some things that you will never ever use, such as: Windows fax and scan, or windows meeting space, just browse things that you won't need in vista. After that, just hit ok, and give it 10-30 minutes to update. My laptopgoes from the welcome screen at start up to my desktop, in under 10 seconds.

If you want your computer to shutdown fast, go to your start menu-all programs-accessories-run. Once run pops up, type in regedit (stands for registry edit) then once your there, only do what i say unless you want to risk serious side affects.

Go to- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then select SYSTEM after that, double click CurrentControlSet, then finally single click "Control" To the side of that look to the bottom of the part that says Name and you want to find "waitToKillServiceTimeOut" The data should be at 20,000, then set it to 5000 by hitting modify and typing it in. Anything below 5000 WILL RISK DATA LOSS, OR CORRUPTION.

Now to generally speed up performance, every once a week, use disk cleanup (start/all programs/acessories/system tools/Disk cleanup, and also you can use disk defragmenter after that by going to start/all programs/acessories/system tools/DiskDefragmentor.

By doing all of this, you will have a healthy, fast, reliable system.

Go to Start,Run and enter gpedit.msc into the box. Navigate to Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Network/QOS Packet Scheduler/Limit Reservable Bandwidth. Enable Reservable Bandwidth and alter it's value to zero. Now XP will only use the bandwidth it requires for packet scheduling,rather than hogging it for itself. Now you can zip around Facebook or play your favourite online games up to 20 percent faster than before.

Happy Surfing!

You probably have a ton of files sitting right now on your PC from surfing the internet that you didn't even know existed. Help speed up your computer by cleaning those files out. There are a couple of options here for you if you are running a Windows based PC.

Start by going to your internet options first. You can get there by Clicking on “Start” then “Settings” then “Control Panel” and then finally double clicking “Internet Options” from the control panel list.

On the “General” you will see the option “Delete” under the heading “Browser history”. Clicking that button will permanently delete all of the files in your temporary internet directory.

On this tab you can also erase your cookies as well. That is entirely up to you. Ok so that gives you a start but it is not the be all end all of cleaning up your computer. Windows provides a nice utility called Disk Cleanup. To run this program, click on “Start”, then click on “Program Files” (or “All Programs” depending on the version of windows you are running, then click on “Accessories”, then “System Tools” and finally click on “Disk Cleanup”.

If you have multiple hard drives you will be asked which hard drive you want to clean up. The default is normal your “C” drive. Choose your “C” drive for now and click on “Ok”. The system will begin analyzing your computer. It may take a while depending on the size of your hard drive and how “messy” it is.

Once your computer has finished analyzing your hard drive a window will pop up giving you information on what should be done in order to free up space and clean up your computer. The computer's recommendations should be checked and is normally enough to go by. Click the “Ok” button and the clean up process will begin.

Again depending on the size of your hard drive, speed of your computer and other factors this could take a while. Once it is complete, you will have cleaned your hard drive up nicely.

If you do not see an increase in your machines performance you may need to run disk defrag to optimize your hard drive. You can learn more about disk defrag in my other article.

You can defragment your computer using an absolutely free program JkDefrag. You can download the following program here. Make sure you read some crucial information on that page. A defragmentation improves the speed of your computer by freeing space on your Hard Drive so it will take less memory… I recommend using JkDefrag because it has a feature, the screensaver feature, this feature automatically starts defragmenting when you make JkDefrag as your screensaver. To know how to install it as a screensaver, go on the website, and it will teach you how to do so.

Notes on JkDefrag:

You can close the defragmentation safely at anytime. If you see giant lines,



don't worry its normal.

Thanks for reading this and I hope you liked this tutorial.

1. Sign up for TalkTalk

   TalkTalk is a great phone company for various reasons. Firstly, it gives you unlimited calls abroad for free and internet up to 10+mbs for free!

2. Download Safari for Free

   Why does everybody say that macs have the best internet in the world? It's because of Safari! Safari has been proved to be over 3-4 times faster than Firefox and even 12 times faster than Internet Explorer.

3. Cool your modem down if it is hot

   Each time your modem is hot it makes you lose connection especially if you have used the internet for more than 3 hours in a row. So the solution is just to turn your modem off and take a break for 10 minutes.

4. Empty Cache

   Especially in Macs, users can empty cache in the option under the safari icon which will empty the cache which the computer keeps each time you go to a website. This will facilitate the browsing a bit.

5. Never use Internet Explorer

   Internet Explorer is the probably one of the slowest internet browsers around up to 12 times slower than Safari and 4 times slower than Firefox. However, Internet Explorer can be very useful but it is a bit slow.

6. Go on 192.168.1.1 and change the setting

   By accessing 192.168.1.1 will allow you to enter the preferences of your router but do not touch some of the settings but only the details of your account with your internet provider.

7. Change your bandwidth to 0%

   On your PC click on Start then run and type in gpedit.msc and expand the administrative templates, then the network tab and high light QoS Packet Scheduler and click on the limit reservable bandwidth and click on the enable option and change the bandwidth to 0% which should increase your internet speed by a lot after restarting it.

8. Trash undesired files

   Files take up space and so slow down your computer so if you trash the undesired ones you will free up some space in your computer which will let you browse on the internet much faster and let you enjoy more the internet.

9. Call your broadband provider

   Even though your internet provider might deny it, they are lying because the internet provider have your file with the allowance of your internet speed so they can decided to give you 1 mb as they can to give you 5 mb or 2 mb.

10. Turn hotspot off

    In countries such as France your hotspot is turned by your internet provider to act as a transmitter to other people using it. If you turn it off on your router (192.168.1.1) you will not only have faster internet but also it will stop people from stealing your internet service next to your house.

Try and you won't be disappointed.

For advanced users

1. Take a look under the hood (for IDE owners). How are your IDE devices configured? If you have more than 1 hard drive, put the master hard drive on the primary IDE channel and the secondary hard drive on the secondary IDE channel (most motherboards have two IDE channels).
2. Place all CDROM drives, DVD readers etc. on the secondary IDE channel (or SCSI bus, etc). This will reduce I/O contention with your master hard drive which should have your OS and apps installed...
3. Remember when I mentioned the location of the swap file? OK, if you have 2 hard drives and you have one on the primary IDE channel and the other on the secondary IDE channel, move the swap file to a partition ON THE SECOND hard drive (on the secondary IDE channel). This will greatly improve system performance as the PC can write to the swap file while loading and running OS and system commands without I/O contention on the primary IDE channel!
4. Take a look under the hood (for SCSI owners) What kind of SCSI do you have? If it's the newer Ultra 160/320 etc cards then guess what? Any devices placed on the same bus will automatically default to the slowest drive on the chain...this means that if you have say, an Ultra 160 SCSI card, and it has an Ultra 160 drive (capable of transferring 160 mb/sec) on the same chain as a SCSI cdrom drive (capable of only 40 mb/sec) then the whole bus slows down to the 40 mb/sec speed...use different chains for the slower devices and maximize those hard drives!
5. Run a utility like WCPUID and check the settings...is your CPU/front speed bus/AGP port running as fast as they should be? If not, check your drivers and BIOS configuration options. Also, are all of your chipset features enabled? If not, then enable them! (usually done in your BIOS!)
6. Dig in to the BIOS...check settings like boot order, for example...is it checking the floppy first? Change this! Select your order to reflect the hard drive first, then CD, then floppy for a noticeable boot time improvement. Also disable any non-used on board peripherals...for instance, - does your motherboard come with an on-board NIC card? Guess what, if you don't use that NIC card and it is enabled it will eat up valuable CPU cycles and can be detrimental to your systems' performance. DISABLE THAT MUTHA! Also, see if you can play with memory timing and CPU clock frequencies (NOTE! This is for expert users only!) Set these timings to "Aggressive" and see what happens in your games and apps...Also, check to see what your video aperature is set to. If you have a video card with 128 megs of on-baord memory, your aperature should be set to this amount too. Read the BIOS owner manual for further non-general performance tricks or improvements! Do you have the latest BIOS firmware version?
7. Under hardware properties, check to see that everything is working properly, and fix any hardware contention issues. You'll see the dreaded yellow exclamation point (!) beside any hardware componenet that is not working correctly.
8. Evaluate the potential for system/hardware upgrades...usually, the best bang for the buck is adding memory so buy all that you can afford (don't go much above 512 megs for Win 98 or ME). If you have a motherboard with an 8x - capable AGP port but you are using an older 4x video card, consider upgrading to an 8x card. You get the idea here...
9. Quit using software pigs like Norton system utilities, etc. These place files everywhere and can be a real system resource hog on lower end PCs.
10. Did I mention to make a good backup? Do it now! Also, while you're at it, run a good virus program with the latest definitions.
11. There are more options to make your system faster, such as overclocking, etc. but (just about) everything I've mentioned in this tech post costs you nothing and will result in faster system performance! Good luck and if you have any questions on how to do anything mentioned here, ask a knowledgeable friend or consult a book, - don't mess up something trying to do something you are not sure of!

Good luck and I'd like to dedicate this post to all of WorldWarez which has given me so much! You're all great, peeps!

When you want to speed up your PC there are several effective tips and steps you can follow.

Five common tips to speed up your PC are altering your network settings, purchasing hardware specifically designed to increase speed, purchasing software programs to maximize speed, tweaking your computer yourself, and by simply removing your spyware.

1. To speed up your PC, use a disk cleanup utility. It's available in most Windows. Disk cleanup utility can clear your computer of any unnecessary files. Files that are old compress files, temporary files, and located in the recycle bin are deleted through the cleanup utility process.
2. The second step to speed up your PC is to uninstall unnecessary or unused software on your computer. Old unused software utilizes the system resources which forces the computer to run slower. Uninstalling these type of software will instantly increase the speed of your personal computer.
3. The third step to speed up your PC is to increase your memory size. Increasing your memory size automatically improves the speed and performance of your PC.
4. The fourth step to speed up your PC is to use firewall. Using firewall will allow you to control both incoming and outcoming internet traffic on your PC that can be causing it to function slow.
5. The fifth step to speed up your personal computer and internet connection is to eliminate all Index.dat files. These files slow down your computer's speed when you are surfing the internet. Deleting the Index.dat files will give your computer the space it needs to function quickly. The seventh step to speed up your personal computer is to use a proxy.

Using a proxy is a simple method to speed up your internet access up to 30%. A proxy gives you the ability to surf through a server. It eliminates the need for slow bandwidth access because they are pre-loaded.

So you're fed up of downloading torrent files at 5kB/s? Then you have come to the right place. I'm going to go through the process of setting up ports to allow your torrent program to download at top speed! The first half of this article is for all windows users. The second half is for windows users on a wireless network. So here we go, for all the windows users who want to give their torrents a little boost:

Go to the control panel and open the windows security center. From here, look at the small security settings section at the bottom of the window. See the windows firewall? Click on that. If you're using any other firewall and the windows one is off, open that firewalls settings instead. This process should be almost identical.

After this, click the exceptions tab at the top.

Now, we're first going to make sure the torrent program itself is being allowed by the firewall. Just go through the exceptions and try to find it. If it is, it's being accepted. If it's not, click "add program" at the bottom and either select the program from the list that appears, or browse to its location. Now, once your program is being allowed by the fire wall, it's time to set it's default port as an exception in the firewall. Open up your torrent program (I'm using Utorrent).

Click options/preferences. In this window, go to the connection tab on the left, then look at the port number. Highlight it and copy it!

Now, go back into the exceptions window in your firewalls properties and click "add port". Call it what you want, but I would recommend something related to the torrent program, and then paste in the number in the port section. It should look like this:

Do the same thing again, but give it a slightly different name and select the UDP option. Now you've opened your firewall ports for your torrent program! Those of you using a LAN or other wired connection can now go and enjoy your improved torrent speeds. Those of you on wireless, continue reading. Your time with me is not yet over.

Next we're going to open up the ports exactly as we just have done, but instead of doing it in the firewall options, we'll do it on the wireless routers options. You should still have the torrent's port number ready to paste, so open up your web browser and access your router through the routers IP address. This is usually either "192.168.2.1" or "192.168.1.1". If one doesn't work, try the other. If neither work, continue without this for now and I'll show you where to get it in a later picture. Now, I'm going to be giving screenshots of my routers virtual servers (ports), if you need instructions for your specific router I recommend going to PortForward.

Now, the first thing we need to do is find your static IP address. The shortest and easiest way of doing this is just to double click on your wireless connection in the tray, then clicking the support tab.

This is your static IP address given to you by your Router. Remember it for later, or just keep this window in your taskbar. The default gateway is your routers IP address, in case you didn't find it earlier. Now, with this new found information we're going to be jumping into the inner workings of your router. Get on your web browser and type in your routers IP address. Log in.

You should see a section about a firewall somewhere in the routers settings. In this section, you should find an option called virtual servers, ports or something like that. Click on this and you should see a big list of empty boxes like this:

or something similar.

Now, we're going to open a port just like we did in the windows firewall. First, check the grey box on the left to enable the port, then type in a name for it. The same names as before will do, or you can think of something new. Depends how creative you're feeling. Next, in the inbound port, put in your torrent programs port number. Do this for both boxes. You should still have this copied. Do the same thing for the private port, then finally put in the extension for your private IP address.

Do the same thing for the next port down. Give it a new name, fill in all the rest of the boxes exactly the same, and then select UDP from the dropdown box. Apply the changes and you're all done! Go and enjoy your full download speed like you were meant to! Just to double check though, this is how it should look (not the same for every router though).

Hope you enjoyed the article! If you did, give it the thumbs up!