Whether you got your computer from a store, online or built it yourself, you’ve probably noticed over time, that its performance has started to decrease. Windows takes longer to boot, programs take longer to open, web pages take longer to load, and you might even get an occasional error pop up while working on something. Hopefully it hasn’t gotten bad enough that you’ve lost any important work.

My goal for this hub is to walk you through a few items that will make your Windows XP based PC run better and to clean your system of unwanted items that you didn’t necessarily install.

Performance:

The performance of Windows depends on several things:

- Amount of programs running in the background

- Virtual Memory (Page File)

- Fragmentation of your hard disk

- Internet settings (Temporary internet files, add-ons etc…)

Usually over time, many of these items can be affected by everyday use. The only things that aren’t affected are the static items, or hardware.

Do you have a lot of programs loading at startup? Look at your system tray just to the left of your clock. Are there a lot of icons loaded down there? It’s best to only keep essential items loaded at startup so that your system isn’t bogged down. Every program that is loaded down there is eating up valuable system resources. I try to keep things to a minimum and the only icons I have in my system tray are my volume control and antivirus. You may need more than that, but these suite my purposes.

To get items out of your start up there are three ways to check and remove items. If the item is in your system tray, right click on the icon. If there are preferences that can be set, check to see if there is a setting to keep the program from loading with Windows. Not every program offers this feature. Next, check your startup folder. Click your ‘Start’ button and then go to ‘All Programs’ and then ‘Startup’. I there are items here that you do not want to load with Windows, simply right-click each one and select ‘Delete’.

This next method is a little trickier and I think it deserves a bit of seperation. It involves the Windows Registry. Caution should be taken if using this method. To open the registry editor, click on ‘Start’ then ‘Run’. When the ‘Run’ window appears type ‘regedit’ and press ‘Enter’ or click ‘OK’. The Windows registry looks much like a folder structure on your hard drive. It contains all of the information that lets Windows run. In the left pane of the editor, you will want to navigate to the following folder or ‘Key’:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Run

Clicking the plus symbol next to each folder expands it.

I recommend backing up the key before modifying it in case you want to revert your changes. To do this, right click the key name that you want to back up in the left pane. In this case it will be ‘Run’. Then click on ‘Export’. Give the file a name like ‘run.reg’ and save it somewhere that you will remember later.

Once you have the ‘Run’ Key selected, look to the right pane. This is a list of programs that are launching when Windows starts. To remove them, right-click the item you want to remove and then click ‘delete’.

Your page file acts as virtual memory for windows. When you run a program and then close it, windows actually keeps some items running in this virtual memory so that the next launch of the program will be faster. If your page file is too small, you may receive ‘Out of Memory’ errors. If it is too big, your programs may take longer to load or you may end up with low disk space. To check and modify your page file, right-click on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties’. When you see the ‘System Properties’ window, click on the ‘Advanced’ tab, then click the ‘Settings’ button under the ‘Performance section. In the ‘Performance Options’ window, click the ‘Advanced’ tab again. Near the bottom, you will see ‘Virtual Memory’. Click on the ‘Change’ button. General rule of thumb is that your page file should be one and a half times the amount of physical RAM that your PC has. So if your PC has 3 gigabytes of physical RAM then your page file size should be around 3,072 MB. You can set this yourself by selecting ‘Custom Size’ but I recommend selecting ‘System Managed Size’. I would also HIGHLY NOT recommend using ‘No Page File’. I tried this one day and my system literally came to a halt. I often wonder why this option is even available. If you have made any changes to your page file settings, click ‘OK’. You will need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Over time, the files and folders on your hard drive will become fragmented causing Windows to take longer to find and open programs. This happens especially if you install and then uninstall programs frequently. Windows does not reorganize files and folders on the fly, so you can end up with ‘Gaps’ in your open hard drive space and files and folders end up scattered across the drive. You can fix this by running the Disk Defragmenter. To do this, right-click ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Manage’. When the ‘Computer Management’ window opens, look in the left pane near the bottom and click on ‘Disk Defragmenter’. Click the ‘Analyze’ button in the right pane near the bottom. This will tell you whether or not you need to defrag your drive. If you get the message ‘You should defragment this volume’, click ‘Defragment’. This process may take a while depending on the severity of fragmentation. Take a break and get a snack or a cup of coffee while you wait. After the defragmentation completes, I recommend restarting your PC.

If you have an abundance of unwanted or unneeded programs on your computer, it is best to just get rid of them. There are probably some things installed that you don’t even remember installing. Go to the Windows Control Panel and open ‘Add and Remove Programs’ Uninstall anything that you don’t want anymore. Pay special attention to applications that you don’t remember installing. These can often carry spyware or adware and should be removed. Look for things like free screen savers or toolbars in particular. These will usually cause a HUGE slow down on your PC.

I hope that these steps help you to get your PC back in good running order.  This doesn’t cover removing Spyware or Viruses, but it’s a good start.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please post them.

Thanks for reading!!!