Slow Computer? Here’s the Rekall Fix…

In trying to think up new posts to write, I often think about experiences that I have with my clients. On a pretty much often occasion, Rekall is asked to speed up old PCs, get them running quicker and better than they currently are. I have been doing the same fix on these old machines for a while now and it works great. I’ve already talked about a few things I do in the current Slow Computer? series which can be seen on this site. I do a bit more and the steps I take matter the most, they have to be done in order for maximum performance.

We want to prep the PC for a reboot and when the PC reboots we want it to act and respond quicker so that we can run cleanup software without it taking a year and a day. The first thing I do is something I mentioned in Slow Computer? Pt1, I disable the the start-up applications, these are the icons on the bottom right next to your time. All those applications you see start up with windows making the PC drag. There’s 50% of your slowness right there. If your unsure how to do this, check out the article. The second thing we do before we reboot is to disable all the windows visual affects. I only do this for XP machines and old Windows 7 machines. New Windows 7 machines I feel I can let this go, the user can have a bit more time with things looking pretty as doing this will take away all the cool visual affects that Windows comes with. If your unsure how to do this check out Slow Computer? Pt2. At this point I like to restart so the machine comes back up fresh. Once it’s up, you’ll notice that its actually much faster than before, but we’re not done.

At this point I like to grab 2 pieces of software from the web, Cleanup! &SuperAntiSpyware. Cleanup! will clean and delete all the temp files on your PC, my record is 16GB in temp files! The longer you have your PC the longer it will run, and the more it will delete, so download and install that. A quick caution, this will remove cookies saved passwords, web history and all that stuff from Internet Explorer, back it up if you want that stuff. It will not remove your favorites. A quick tip to help it run faster is to make the Cleanup! window as small as possible, do not maximize or minimize it or make the window big, keep the window open, on top, and small, trust me. Once the application is done cleaning it will say Done, and let you know how much space it just saved you. At this point we are ready to install SuperAntiSpyware. It’s a legit software I assure you. Install, update and run it. Chances are, you’ll find a massive amount of spyware on your PC, even if you have antivirus. Let that run, it may take 30 mins, and when done, it may want to reboot to get rid of some more nasty pieces of spyware, trust me, you want to let it reboot so it can do it’s thing.

Once your back up it’s time for the final step, defrag. I mentioned defrag in Slow Computer? Pt3. but I want you to use a better defrag application. The Windows defrag is not that great, Defraggler works best. In fact, all the software that’s hosted by Piriform is great, CCleaner is awesome too, check it out. Download, install and run defraggler, analyze and defrag your C drive. It may take a while, the more red you see the more time it will take to defrag. And that’s the whole deal. So what we’ve done by now is speed up your PC, remove spyware, increased storage, cleaned old files, and reorganized your data to make your PC run faster. The process takes about 1.5hrs depending on your PC. If this does not help then you only have 2 options, and I can safely say this because of the experience that I have. If following this process does not increase your performance, you need a new hard drive. Drives spin 24/7, over time, they wear out, it’s just the nature of the beast. You can either buy a new hard drive for $100, re-install your operating system and all your data, or buy a new computer. I say buy a new computer. Computers are disposable these days. If you absolutely must fix the PC a new hard drive will do the trick most of the time. Some people may say that a reinstall may work, and it may, but it’s only a matter of time until it gets slow again with your old hardware. If you like tech things and you like computers, format the PC, and have fun, just don’t forget to backup your data before hand. If you just want a working PC without playing around with tech B.S. just get a new PC.