Speed up your Computer (Desktop/Laptop)

I had been facing a severe slow down of my Windows Laptop for about a month, even after increasing my RAM. I googled a lot to improve my Laptop and did a series of actions to correct the issue. Now my Laptop as good as a NEW One. :)

Do you want to improve yours as well ? Go ahead and follow these steps that I did for myself.

DISCLAIMER: All these steps were already done by me in my Laptop and had no issues so far. Yet, if you are doing these steps, YOU ARE DOING IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. All the steps are done for a WINDOWS Laptop only and not for any other Operating Systems. I will not be responsible for any damage/problems caused by these steps, even though these are regular windows operations.

1) Take the backup of all the files that you need. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP, DONT SKIP IT. You may need to restore, if something goes wrong in this process. Please take all backups to some other HARD DISKS or other storages, and NOT TO SAME DISK OF YOUR SYSTEM.

2) a) Delete all Unwanted files from your system. You can use the Softwares like 'Auslogics Duplicate File Finder' to locate and delete the duplicate files in your system. You can also use software like 'Treesize Free' to find the huge files of your system and delete if not required. You can also use the Windows inbuild Clean up softwares also.
b) Clean the temporary files of your system using tools such 'CCleaner'.

3) Use software like 'Eusing Free Registry Cleaner' to clean up your registry. Use the option of this software to backup the whole registry before doing this.

4) Use software like 'Eusing Free Registry Defrag' to defrag your Registry.

5) If your System Pagefile (Pagefile.sys) is in your 'C:', please move it any other Drive of your System. This will definitely help in reducing your hard disk data lookup speed. For doing this, please refer to this link LINK You may need to restart your system after this. Continue with the next step after restart.

6) IF YOU ARE USING A WHOLE DISK ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE LIKE 'POINTSEC', please check with the provider before doing this step. I am using POINTSEC and found no issue doing this step. Use the software 'SmartDefrag' from this LINK, or 'Disk Defrag' from this LINK. Both of them are excellent Disk De-fragment softwares, very very quick that the windows defragmenter. They can also do automatic disk defragmentation quietly in the background, when your system is idle. This option will keep you system fast always. I recommend having this auto defrag enabled always.

7) Once disk defragmentation is done, you have now defrag your System Files such as Pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys etc. You can't do this with regular defrag softwares, since these files are locked by Windows. Use the software 'PageDefrag' from the LINK. This will also really help.

8) Weekly once, Use the 'Optimize' Option of the 'Smart Defrag' or 'Disk Defrag' Softwares mentioned in Step 6. Again, please be cautious if you are using WHOLE DISK ENCRYPTION Softwares like Pointsec or any others.

9) Check your disks for errors/Bad Sections and fix them if required.

10) Scan your whole system for Virus, Worms, Trojans etc. Always keep your antivirus, AntiMalware Softwares Updated with latest definitions.

11) If none of these seems to be work, consider re-formatting your hard drive. If your laptop/Desktop is old, consider replacing the hard disk with the ones with more RPM.

12) Last, not least, add more RAM to your system if you can afford.

Quick Actions:

Apart from these steps above, you can do some quick steps that will boost your system Performance immediately.

1) Do a quick Reboot of your system. Some applications are badly coded and wont release the memory that they don't need.

2) Close all unwanted Applications that you are running.

3) Check your Taskbar and consider closing some applications that you may not need immediately. You can also check the 'Startup' Applications and close the ones that are not required at the startup.

4) Open the 'Task Manager', go to 'Processes' Tab, sort the list by 'CPU' and see if any particular application is using the CPU most. If you notice that applications is not behaving right, consider closing it. Now, sort the List by 'Mem Usage' and check for the application that uses most memory, if you dont need it running.
CAUTION : Don't kill any process if you don't know what you are killing.. :)



Let me know if you think anything more can be added, or any errors found in these steps.

Hope these steps help you regain your Windows Laptop/Desktop Speed. All the best. :)

Keep Smiling,
Senthil Kumar .A