Yesterday we talked about cleaning out your temporary Internet files. Today we’ll look at preventing unnecessary programs from loading at start up. These programs load into memory and can cause your computer to be slow and sluggish.

99% of these programs do NOT need to load on boot. Adobe updater does not need to load. Quicktime does not need to load. All those Dell support programs, yeah, definitely don’t need to load. All these programs that load on boot can be launched by you when you need them. It’s not necessary for the program to be always ready and taking up valuable resources. Disabling these programs from loading at start up will enable your computer to boot faster and run more efficiently.

Using MSCONFIG in Windows XP.

1.Go to Start -> Run
2.Type msconfig and click OK or hit enter. This fires up the Microsoft System Configuration Utility
3.Click on the Startup tab.
4.You now have a list of all the programs loading on startup.
5.Disable all programs you recognize as not needed. They are just wasting memory.

If you are in doubt if a program is necessary then leave it. Only disable those you recognize and don’t need to be loaded and running at all times. Do a Google search for any programs in question. The leaner you get your startup the more resources you’ll free up to use.

Cleaning up your startup will significantly increase the performance of your PC. Throw in another 1GB or2GB of RAM and it’ll feel like a new PC again.

Something else to look at when trying to speed up your computer is defragmenting your hard drive. Over time your hard disk gets fragmented causing it to work harder and inefficiently. Your hard drive has an arm that moves over the disk reading the data. When your hard disk is fragmented that means the files are not in one contiguous are. That one document you saved could have parts in 14 locations on your hard drive. You can see how that could cause performance issues.

We recommend JKDefrag. It’s much more efficient and quicker than the built in Windows defragmenter. It’s also free! Install and run JkDefrag once or twice a month and your hard drive will thank you with a performance boost.

Do you find yourself frustrated rather than enjoying your computer time? Does opening Word, your digital camera software or your favorite application take forever? We hear that a lot.

There are a lot of factors that can cause a PC to perform sluggishly. More often than not it’s due to an infection of some sort. A virus, malware, spyware, etc… is eating resources causing the PC to seem slow for no reason. There are things other than viruses that can cause sluggishness.

Have you cleaned your temporary internet files lately? 80% of you are going to answer no! Temporary Internet Files are copies of the web pages, images, etc… you’ve browsed too. So every time you get online, a copy of the sites you visit is saved to your hard drive. Those files build up over time and bog down your system.

If you use Internet Explorer:

1. At the top of the browser click “tools”
2. click Internet Options
3. In the middle of that first tab(General) click “Delete Files”
4. Check the “Delete all offline content” checkbox
5. Click ok and wait. It may take a bit if you’ve never done this.

The next thing to look at is how many programs are installed and what truly is needed. Over time you download this, install that, and before you know it your overloaded. In particular older computers purchased via various online PC providers, cough Dell cough, come pre-installed with unnecessary software. If you also purchased it with the default base memory configuration then it’s probably not enough for todays software.

So now your lacking in RAM(memory) AND you still have that expired 30 day trial of Norton installed. You’ve upgraded MS Office from 2000 to 2007 and at boot up your computer is using 487MB of the 512MB’s of RAM installed. Yes, your computer should be slow.

512MB of RAM is barely enough to run Windows XP. So what do you do now?? Uninstall those unnecessary applications!

1. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs
2. Select any program you don’t use and get rid of it, like that 30 trial of Mavis Beacon or Norton Anti-Virus.
*If you are unsure then DON’T uninstall. Please ask someone you trust to be knowledgeable enough to know.
3. Uninstall any game or software you haven’t touched in forever. Sure you may want it someday but realistically will you ever use it?

Doing this and cleaning out your temp directories is a good start to speeding up and maintaining your PC. We’ll discuss how to prevent applications from loading into memory at start up and consuming resources in a future post.