Tricks to Get Your Desktop to Move Faster

Is your aging PC acting a bit out of sorts? Perhaps it’s slower than it was when you first bought it or maybe not quite as reliable as it was during its youth?

These are signs of old age. But not to lose hope. There are tonics you can use to breathe some vim and vitality into that PC of yours between now and the time you eventually send it into retirement.

The problem might be that the computer does not have enough memory for the programs you are running. If you bought your machine a couple of years ago, it may have come with 64 megabytes of memory or even as little as 32 megabytes. Today’s software works better if you have 128 megabytes of RAM.

Fortunately, memory is cheap and relatively easy to install. But before you start plugging in memory modules, check to see what you can do by fine-tuning your operating system and software.

Your first step should be to make sure you’re using anti-virus software and that it’s up to date. Many viruses won’t destroy your files but instead do things in the background that slow down the operation of the computer. That’s not to suggest that your problems are virus related, but even if they’re not, this is a good preventive measure.

The next thing you need is a software and operating system tune up. Although there are all sorts of utility programs you can buy or download, your first strategy should be to use the ones that come with Windows.

You’ll find these programs in the System Tools folder off the Accessories menu (listed under Programs in the Start menu).

Begin by running the Scandisk utility. Scandisk will examine your drive for certain types of problems such as file names with invalid characters and extraneous files that were left on the drive when the machine was shut down improperly.

Your next step should be to defragment your hard drive. Over time, pieces of files on your drive get put in various physical locations all over your disk. It’s a big cause of slowdowns because extra time is needed for the disk drive heads to find the pieces needed for an operation. Disk Defragmenter, which is in the same folder as Scandisk, puts everything back together. The process can take an hour or more, and you can’t use your PC while it’s running.

Then use the Disk Cleanup utility that gets rid of unnecessary temporary files.

Once you’ve done these three tasks, reboot your machine and see if things are better. If not, there are still a few more tricks to try.

Programs running in the background can be a big robber of system performance. There is a chance you’ve installed software at some point that runs automatically every time Windows starts.

For more details on how to search and destroy other start-up files, see “The Lowdown on Avoiding Auto-Loading” at https://www.larrysworld.com/autoloading.htm.

Most modern hard drives support what is called Direct Memory Access, or DMA, which can speed up a drive’s performance, but by default Windows doesn’t turn it on. You can do so manually, but first make sure you know how to restart the machine in Safe Mode in case you have to undo it.

To turn on DMA, right-click on My Computers and select Properties, followed by the Device Manager tab. Then click on Disk Drives, followed by your hard drive. Click on the Properties button and Settings tab. If the DMA box isn’t checked, check it and reboot your computer. If your computer doesn’t boot after this, reboot it in Safe Mode, undo what you just did and restart normally.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to make sure that your operating system and software are up to date. Microsoft has provided an automatic system, called Windows Update, to check for updates in the operating system (Windows 98 and higher) and Internet Explorer. You can access it from the Tools menu in Windows Explorer or just visit the Web page at https://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard between 2 and 3 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) Technology Hour.