Each computer, understood as a set of programs and configurations, can be optimized so that it is faster or, at least, does not suffer from sudden slowdowns. To speed up the PC to the maximum it is necessary, first of all, to configure the operating system so as to disable unnecessary and unnecessary functions and by changing the settings in order to make the system lighter.
Secondly, it is important to carry out the basic maintenance activities, those that are necessary to clean up your PC from unnecessary files and keep it free from junk programs that do nothing but slow down all operations by taking up precious memory.
Obviously all the talk about speeding up the PC also depends on the machine you are using, because if this was old and very slow, you cannot expect to work miracles while, conversely, if you have a powerful and fast last generation PC, any optimization can have an efficacy so little influential that it is also superfluous to do.
1) Optimize the system
As for the optimizations to be made on the system in use, we have already explained in other articles what are the operations to do.
Speaking of Windows PC, I can call up guides like
- Speed up Windows 7
- Speed up Windows 8
- Speed up Windows 10
Where it is always recommended to disable animated effects, to limit the indexing service of Windows and to configure energy saving options so as not to limit performance.
2) Improve hardware
Speeding up the PC depends, however, on how the computer is built, and, in particular, on how much RAM it has, on the type of internal processor and on the disk.
In this regard, there are two important factors related to computer hardware that can be improved to speed up the PC.
- Adding RAM is possible on almost any desktop and laptop computer, it costs quite little and gives a huge benefit.
RAM is the computer's memory and a PC with low memory is always slow when you open more than one or two programs at a time or more than 10 browser tabs.
RAM is the most important part of the computer and today you can't really be with a computer with less than 4GB of RAM.
We wrote an article about it, explaining how much RAM to buy, advising to get at least 8 GB (even if it becomes necessary to install 64-bit Windows).
- Changing hard drives and putting an SSD in its place is the best hardware upgrade you can do on a computer.
The most frequent cause of slowness for a computer is the hard disk which, having a mechanical mechanism, is slower than any memory or processor.
The hard disk is therefore a bottleneck in the transmission of instructions and commands and is capable of slowing down operations even on the most modern PCs with a fast processor.
We know what is the difference between hard disk and SSD, so if you want to speed up a computer, whatever it is, you need to replace the hard disk with an SSD, which is possible on every desktop PC and also on some laptops (putting the SSD instead of the DVD player).
- As for the processor, this cannot be changed as easily as it was a RAM or a disk.
In general we can say that if the PC is slow when using advanced graphics and 3D programs, video editing and modern video games, then the problem lies in the processor.
Today the processor is really important only for those who play or those who need a lot of processing capacity for particular programs, but it is not decisive for the speed of operations if you surf the internet or use Word.
For example, my PC works well for almost everything, even if there is a very dated processor, even from 2010, AMD Athlon 2, which is the only piece that I have never changed (besides the motherboard which is irrelevant in the speed of a computer).
3) Optimize the use of memory, disk and processor through automatic optimization software .
To speed up the PC, before the maintenance activities, it is possible to use programs that can optimize the use of resources on the computer.
In particular, we have seen the best free automatic programs to optimize your PC in another article, such as iObit Advanced System Care or Glary utilities.
The best way to optimize the use of RAM on a PC is, of course, to avoid occupying all the RAM memory of the PC and therefore slowing down the performance is to control the automatic start of the programs and uninstall the programs no longer used.
We then saw how to optimize the use of the disk by the programs, also advising to do, every now and then, an error check on the hard disk or scandisk.
To optimize the use of the processor via software, however, there are some tricks to avoid that the CPU is used 100% by slowing down the computer, thanks to programs such as Process Lasso, very powerful.
4) Windows maintenance
Obviously any computer will be slow if Windows is filled with useless and heavy programs that all remain in the background, if it becomes full of junk files because the programs are not uninstalled well and, above all, if the PC is full of adware if not viruses and malware.
The basic computer maintenance operations are important to speed up the PC when it becomes slow and also to maintain high performance over time.
To resume the guide on how to do computer maintenance and fix Windows, let's see what are the basic operations:
- Update your PC and install Windows updates, always, to get all the fix patches.
- Uninstall the programs you no longer use.
- Manage the automatic start of programs
- Eliminate unnecessary files, perhaps even with the help of a program like Ccleaner, which is always useful for tracking and deleting obsolete and temporary files.
- Defragment the hard disk (not to be done if an SSD is used)
- Make sure you don't have malware and viruses by running an antimalware scan with Malwarebytes and removing plugins or adware that slows down your PC using a program like ADWCleaner.
Obviously, an updated antivirus must always be active on the computer.
5) Reset Windows
Both to speed up the new PC that has just been bought but already installed and full of useless programs, and to make the performance of a computer that has been used for some time and become very slow, it may be better to reset Windows and reset it to return to the initial settings and remove in one shot all programs, while still keeping personal files.
In particular, it is very easy to reset Windows 10, where there is also an alternative option to clean the PC of all programs.
