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Speed Up XP Using Disk Defragmenter

Posted by Increase Computer Speed on September 10, 2009 under computer runs slow, increase computer speed, speed up xp

Today’s video explains why and how to use the Disk Defragmenter utility in Windows to speed up XP.

As shown in the video, these are the steps to get to the Disk Defragmenter screen:

Click on Start
Click on All Programs
Go to the Accessories folder
Then go to the System Tools folder
Click on Disk Defragmenter

From there, you can analyze your hard drive to see whether or not it needs to be defragmented and start the defragmetation process.

As you use your computer, the files on your hard drive may become fragmented, making it slower for your computer to access them. What defragmenting does is move these fragmented pieces so that they are contiguous, which means that the different pieces of data that make up your files will be placed adjacently next to each other. This will speed up XP access times for your files since it won’t have to go to different areas of your hard drive to piece together parts of a single file.

If your computer runs slow again in the future, you’ll want to run Disk Defragmenter again to see if file fragmentation may be one of the problems with your PC.

If the above video and explanation doesn’t make much sense to you, here’s a video by Andy and Sean of Lab Rats that visually explains what fragmentation is and should hopefully clear up any confusion you may have:

Now that you know what fragmentation is and how to defrag your hard drive, hopefully running Disk Defragmenter will help you to speed up XP and your computer’s overall performance.

Technorati Tags: disk defragmenter, improve computer performance, increase computer performance, speed up xp, ways to speed up xp

Tags: disk defragmenter, improve computer performance, increase computer performance, speed up xp, ways to speed up xp

Speed up XP Using Disk Cleanup

Posted by Increase Computer Speed on September 3, 2009 under how to speed up computer, how to speed up pc, increase computer speed, speed up xp

This method to speed up XP was mentioned in a previous post: Increase Computer Speed by Cleaning Your Registry Part 3. Here is the method again in detail in case anyone missed it. This is a completely free way to remove unneeded files from your computer and clean up your hard drive. The more free space you have on your hard drive, the quicker your computer can find and access the files it needs to work with. Running Disk Cleanup along with a few other tools as part of basic PC maintenance can help increase computer speed if you remember to run it when needed.

Here is how to get to the Disk Cleanup utility in Windows XP:

Click on Start > All Programs

Go to Accessories

Then go to System Tools and choose the Disk Cleanup option.

If you have multiple drives or partitions on your computer, then you may see a screen that looks like this:

Choose the (C:) option if you are presented with this screen. Disk Cleanup will then calculate how much space it will be able to free up, it will look like this on your screen:

Once it has completed calculating the amount of disk space that can be freed up, you will then see a screen that looks like this:

Check off which options you want disk cleanup to perform and it will tell you the amount of space that can be recovered using your chosen options. Click OK to perform the cleanup.

Your PC may not appear to be much faster than before after doing this, but when combined with other tools and methods to speed up XP, Disk Cleanup is definitely one of the things to add to your checklist when you need to increase computer speed. We will be covering other topics to help boost your PC speed in the future, so check back in the future for more helpful articles, screenshots, videos, and software overviews.

Check out the resources below for more tips on how to speed up XP:

Ten Quick and Simple Tips to Speed Up Our Laptop! – There’sa simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start …
Speed Up Xp Pt1 – optimize xp for the best performance.
How to Speed Up Windows XP…(Part I) – Windows XP is aguably the most popular Operating System today. Even with the launch of Windows Vista few months back, most of the PCs still run on Windows XP. But many of the regular users of the Windows XP complain about it getting …

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Increase Computer Speed by Cleaning Your Registry Part 3

Posted by Increase Computer Speed on August 30, 2009 under computer runs slow, how to speed up computer, how to speed up pc, increase computer speed, registry checker, speed up xp

Welcome to part 3 of our series on cleaning your registry to increase computer speed. For parts 1 & 2 of this series, see these previous posts:

Increase Computer Speed by Cleaning Your Registry Part 1
Increase Computer Speed by Cleaning Your Registry Part 2

In part 2, we covered using Registry Easy. Here is an alternative to using Registry Easy, this program is called RegDefense – it can be downloaded by clicking here. It’s always nice to have more than one of the same tool, whether it be antivirus, antispyware, or registry cleaners. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and they all scan things differently and can find different results when scanning.

Here is a video showing how to use RegDefense and also how to use the Disk Cleanup tool in Windows XP.

As you can see, using RegDefense is just as simple as using Registry Easy. With free trials of both software available, you can test them out and see which one has the features you like better or provides you with the best results. Download links: RegDefense & Registry Easy.

Also mentioned in the video was Disk Cleanup, which is an excellent free tool that is built into Windows XP. To run Disk Cleanup, just click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. If you have more than one hard drive, Disk Cleanup will ask you which one you want to scan. Normally, you would want to choose your primary hard drive, in most cases it would be the (C:) option.

Disk Cleanup then takes a few seconds or a few minutes to determine how much space can be freed up and then you will be presented with a screen that shows you the different options you can take. Check off the boxes for the actions you want Disk Cleanup to perform, then click OK to free up the amount of space that is shown. Freeing up disk space can help to increase computer speed & performance of the programs installed on your PC. So if your computer begins to run slowly again in the future, remember to run Disk Cleanup as part of your maintenance in addition to using software such as registry cleaners, antivirus scanners, antispyware/antimalware scanners to keep your PC running fast.

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Increase Computer Speed by Cleaning Your Registry Part 1

Posted by Increase Computer Speed on August 25, 2009 under computer runs slow, computer very slow, how to speed up computer, how to speed up pc, increase computer speed, registry checker, speed up xp

This is part 1 of a series of cleaning your system registry to increase computer speed. This is just a quick introduction to the system registry and how to back it up.

Slow computer performance can be the result of poorly uninstalled programs. Even if you used the Add or Remove Programs feature in Windows, some programs may still leave behind their settings in your system registry. The system registry is a database that stores settings for Windows and the various programs installed on your system. Increase computer speed by finding unneeded settings in your registry and clean them up.

The system registry is not something that is recommended to be edited manually if you are a novice user. One wrong change could make your computer worse. If you will be working on your registry manually, it is strongly recommended to make a backup of it before you make any changes. To make a backup of your registry, follow these steps:

Click the Start button then choose the Run… option.

Type in regedit then click OK.

You should now see the Registry Editor window.

Click on File, then choose Export from the menu.

Type in a filename, such as registry-backup.

Choose All from the Selected Range option.

Choose a folder where you would like this backup to be saved, then click Save.

You should now have a saved .reg file as a backup in case any changes that are made to the registry result in adverse effects.

Since manual editing of the registry is not recommended unless you know what you are doing, part 2 of this series will highlight some registry cleaner software products that can help you remove unnecessary registry entries to increase computer speed.

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Overview of Ways to Increase Computer Speed

Posted by Increase Computer Speed on August 24, 2009 under computer runs slow, computer very slow, how to speed up computer, how to speed up pc, registry checker, speed up xp

This is just a quick introduction of ways to increase computer speed. Each topic will be covered in more depth in future postings. If your computer runs slow and you want to speed it up, here are a few simple things you can try.

Delete any unnecessary files and programs from your hard drive. If your hard drive is full, it will be slower in accessing data since there is a lot more information that it needs to sift through to find the exact data that is needed at the time. Running Disk Cleanup, removing old files and uninstalling rarely used programs can not only help free up extra disk space, but help your hard drive find the data quicker, which will make your PC seem faster.

Going along the lines with cleaning up your hard drive of unneeded files, another tip for how to speed up computer performance is by checking your hard drive for errors and disk fragmentation. Since this is just an overview, this topic will be covered in more detail later. Basically, if your hard drive is full of errors or is severely defragmented, this can slow down the operation of your PC. You can increase computer speed slightly by running the error checking and defragmentation tools available in Windows.

The next way to try to optimize your PC performance is to make sure it’s free of viruses, spyware, trojans, and other malware. Viruses and malware can severely slow down your PC, so be sure to download, install, and scan your computer with some antivirus and malware removal software.

While trying to uninstall unused software, you may find that some programs will leave behind some junk files. If you know the location that the program was installed in, you can remove these files manually. Some programs will also leave behind changes in your system registry. The registry is the database of settings that your computer uses to run the operating system and any programs that you have installed. Extraneous registry settings can cause your computer to slow down. It is not recommended and can result in doing more damage to manually edit the registry yourself. You can clean up unnecessary registry settings by using a registry cleaner program.

That is a quick overview of ways to increase computer speed. Look forward to future posts as we go into more detail covering the various methods of speeding up your PC, and reviews of registry cleaners, antivirus, antispyware, and more tools to help keep your PC optimized for fast performance.

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Increase Computer Speed