Why Is My Computer Running Slow? Part 1
In many ways a PC makes things easier. The other side of that is we can feel lost without one. The number one cause of computer unhappiness is slow speed. No matter how many people I ask, the constant answer is that they would like their computer to be faster. Often times a slow PC is just symptomatic of a underlying condition. Other symptoms of a badly functioning PC are blue screens of death and computer freezes. Unfortunately there is no magic bullet to make computers run faster. If there was I would copyright it and become rich, but it's more complicated than that. Many times it's a mixture of things that are causing the speed problem. It could be that the computer isn't running an updated version of windows, the PC doesn't have enough ram.
The Bucyrus Computer Repair Ninjas have done it again and brought you a list of things that you can fix to speed up your computer. If your looking for more tips check out my other blog about common computer repair problems.
1. WAY TOO MANY PROGRAMS RUNNING
Windows allows you to run multiple programs at once, but there is a line that needs to be drawn. Running two or three programs is probably okay, but when you try to run five or six at the same time your computer is going to slow down. Think of your computer speed as a pie, each program is asking for a piece, if you cut the pie into too many pieces your going to have a very small amount of speed to go around.
If you are experiencing a very slow speed try closing some programs. Here's a good trick, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to see what programs you have running. You can sort them on the right by CPU Allocation and Memory Allocation. Memory is what you are looking for. If you are using a modern computer having a few programs running at approx 100K is OK, but five or six programs running at 100K is too much. That formula can also be used cumulatively. One program running at 600K is also too much. If you see that you have too much memory being used at one time try to end some of these programs that you are not using. You may realize that you didn't even know they were running.
Finally, if your computer is running slow make sure it is not conducting a virus scan. Virus scans take up huge amounts of CPU and System Memory. What I always do is set my virus software to scan for viruses during a time that I know I won't be using the computer.
2. Excuse me sir, your hard-drive seems to be fragmented
Ok, now for a history lesson. If you create a file or surf the net or install a program or even move your mouse or type on the keyboard there are changes being made to your hard disk. Think of it as a record of everything your computer does. But it's linear, it thinks about everything in order so before do anything else it has to process the list of operations it has, it can't jump forward and backward. So if you delete a program or a file, the hard disk has to delete it from whatever space it recorded it to originally. That will be the temporal space that the hard drive was during the time the file was created. During this process, you computer ends up looking like so much swiss cheese. With tons of empty space where files or programs used to exist in a linear line, it now looks like a dotted line. The computer is smart and will try to fill these spaces up with new files you create, but often times they don't fit so the problem is never truly fixed. This is what computer scientists refer to as fragmentation. To get rid of it you should run a program on windows called the Hard Drive Defragmenter (creative name huh?) What this program does is goes through your hard disk and moves all the files around so there are less gaps or holes in the linearity of your hard drive. Because the hard drive is a physical piece of hard ware this will increase the speed of computer by consolidating all the files and programs in close proximity to each other.
This meme might be better if it said "I don't always break my pc, but when I do I pay myself to fix it."
However I already made it and I don't feel like changing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment