Help, my computer has slowed to a crawl!

Computer problem: I've got a problem with my computer. My computer is slow. It's slowed down to a crawl. After installing some new software, my computer is slower than normal. My computer just died. I installed something new, and now it won't work.

Sound familiar? Try these steps:

Get some decent Anti-Virus software.

Check out McAfee Security for anti-virus, anti-hacker and other protection software. Also check out Norton Anti-Virus at http://www.norton.com/ for similar software plus various system utilities. I've used both. There are lots of other good ones out there, but I have only ever used these two.

Get rid of Spyware.

Install Lavasoft's Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/. Ad-aware finds and removes spyware and other malicious software from your computer. This software, apart from being intrusive, can also slow your computer down. In most cases it is installed without your knowledge, sometimes just by visiting a website, but more usually by downloading and installing so-called freeware or shareware. Most of these programs are designed to run in the background every time you start your computer and they don't display any icons in the system tray. Ad-aware will get rid of them for you.

Delete unused files

Have you got lots of redundant or temporary files on your hard disk? You can get rid of them by double clicking My Computer, right click the hard disk you want to free up space on, then click Properties, and then on the General tab click the Disk Cleanup button.

A small window will open with the message: Disk Cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on %Disk Volume Name (Disk drive:)% Depending on the size of the disk, and on how much other system activity there is, it may take several seconds for this to complete.

On the Disk Cleanup tab which displays next, you will see two categories of file locations where unused files can be deleted from (There may be more depending on your configuration). The first is the Recycle Bin. On the right hand side, it will show how many kilobytes of files have been deleted from your computer.

While this item is highlighted, a description below will tell you that files which have been deleted are not permanently removed from the computer until you empty the Recycle Bin.

WARNING: Files are not permanently deleted when you empty the Recycle Bin. You can't see them with any Windows program or utility, but they can be recovered with third party software

The second item on the Disk Cleanup tab is the Catalog files for the Content Indexer. This contains index files which are used by the operating system to speed up searches for files when you use the search utility.

Having the Indexing Service running slows down your computer, so you'd be wise to turn it off unless you do searches for files on a regular basis. With the Indexing Service turned off, there will be no files in this category. Searches will just take a little longer.

Select either of these categories to view the description, and click on the check box to choose to delete the files and then click OK.

Remove unused Windows components

If there are Windows components installed that you never use, you can get rid of them in several ways. One way is to use the Disk Cleanup utility. Double click My Computer, right click any hard disk, then click Properties, and then on the General tab click the Disk Cleanup button. Click the More Options tab, then in the Windows components section, click the Clean up... button. The Windows Components wizard will open

Another way to get to this wizard is to go to the Control Panel, and double click the Add/Remove Programs option. On the Add/Remove Programs applet, click the Add/Remove Windows Components option on the left hand Explorer bar.

Selecting an item gives a description just below the window. The first item is the Indexing Service I mentioned before. The next is Internet Explorer. You can't actually remove Internet Explorer, the option just removes access to it from the Desktop and the Start Menu.

Some options will have sub options. When you select these, the Details button becomes enabled. Click on the details for a listing of the sub options. If one but not all of a sub option is selected, then the check box will be ticked, but shaded as well. You can click the box to remove the tick and the shading, that removes the option that's selected. You can also click again to select all of the sub options without going into the details pane.

Deselect any options you want removed by clicking to remove the check mark and then click the Next button. It will take several seconds for the operation to complete.

Remove unused programs

If there are programs installed that you never use, you can get rid of them in several ways. One way is to use the Disk Cleanup utility. Double click My Computer, right click any hard disk, then click Properties, and then on the General tab click the Disk Cleanup button. Click the More Options tab, then in the Installed programs section, click the Clean up... button. The Add/Remove Programs wizard will open.

Select any program which you don't use, and then click the Change/Remove button. Another window will open. This window is generated by the program's installation program, and how they look can vary. They will usually prompt you with a "Are you sure you want to uninstall me" type message, with buttons to continue or cancel.

Stop unwanted programs from running

When you start your system up, various programs start up in the background. Some of these may not be needed. Indeed some can be viruses, key loggers or spyware as described above. Others can be utility programs related to your video driver or other system components.

If you often have to change your screen resolution, then a utility like this might be useful. Otherwise it's just eating up CPU cycles and RAM. To find out what's running in the background, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and click the Task Manager button. Select the Processes tab and you will see a list of all running processes. Select any process that you want to stop, and click the End Process button.

Some processes can't be stopped. They're required for the system to run correctly. I'll compile a list of required processes later.

Check the disk for errors

Double click My Computer, right click the hard disk you want to check for errors on, then click Properties, and then in the Error-checking section of the Tools tab click the Check Now... button. A new dialog box will open with options to Automatically fix file system errors, and/or Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

If this is your system or boot disk, then selecting either of these options will result in a warning that: The disk check could not be performed because exclusive access to the drive could not be obtained. Then it will ask you if you want to schedule the disk check for the next restart.

If you select Yes, then the next time you restart the computer, it will pause during the startup process and bring up a window showing the disk check process. It will also allow you to skip the disk check by pressing a key within the first 5 seconds.

Defragment the hard disks.

Double click My Computer, right click any hard disk, then click Properties, and then in the Defragmentation section of the Tools tab click the Defragment Now... button. A new dialog box will open with all your disk partitions displayed. Select a partition or disk to defragment, and either click the analyze button to just analyze the disk, or the Defragment button to analyze and then defragment the disk.

Note that the Defragment button will initiate an analyze process anyway, even if you selected the Analyze first. So if you know that you're going to defragment the disk anyway, you'll save yourself time by not doing a separate Analyse process first.

The analysis can take several minutes, depending on the size of your disks and the speed of your system.

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The book is chock full of screenshots showing how to set up to connect to the Internet and how to configure your email. The CD-ROM and download versions contain full colour screenshots

The printed book unfortunately only has screenshots in grayscale as it's too expensive to print in colour.

Click the icon to buy the book at Lulu.com