- Click My Computer
- Right-click on the PC drive and select Properties.
- Select General and get Figure 1.
- Click on
- Get rid of junk files (like Temp Files, Temp Internet Files, the Recycle Bin, etc.)
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 above, select Tools and get Figure 2.
- Click on
- Go for a coffee while your hard drive gets checked for errors
- Then do a
- Go for a coffee while the files on your hard drive get reorganized / consolidated
... and hopefully your PC will run faster
System Restore stuff : - Right-click on My Computer, select Properties and get Figure 3.
- Select System restore
- Click
If your computer has begun to slow down after several months of usage, there a a couple of minor changes you can make to your settings that will help increase the performance of your computer. Tweaking Windows is essential to get the maximum performance for your computer. Even on a fast computer, if the settings are incorrect, the computer will perform poorly.
Virtual Memory Settings:
Virtual memory for your computer is hard drive space used by Windows when it fills up the physical RAM. Let’s say you have a computer that has 256MB of RAM and you’re running several applications at once that might need a total of 400MB of memory. Windows will fill up the 256MB and then use the free space on the hard drive to store the rest. This is called the Paging file or Virtual memory and Windows will increase and decrease the size of this file as needed. Writing to disk takes much longer than writing to physical RAM, so when Windows uses the paging file, computer performance degrades.
That’s why you’ll always hear people asking if there is enough RAM because the more RAM you have, the better your computer’s performance will be. However, we can tweak the virtual memory settings also so that the paging file does not get fragmented and so that Windows does not have to grow or shrink the size of the paging file, both of which will cause the computer to slow down, especially on older machines.
By default, Windows uses the boot partition (the partition that contains your operating system files) and it is recommended to set the size to 1.5 times the amount of RAM that you have.
To change the virtual memory settings, go to Start, Control Panel and click on System. Click on the Advanced tab and under the Performance box, click Settings.
On the Performance dialog, click the Advanced tab and then click Change under the Virtual Memory heading.
Now you’ll see the Virtual Memory settings as shown below:
Here are the rules for setting your paging file correctly:
To get the best performance it is best to create a paging file on a different partition than the boot partition (the drive that contains that operating system, which is usually the C drive) and to also create it on a separate hard drive. In this way, Windows can handle more I/O requests because the paging file will not have to compete with the system folder that needs to be constantly accessed as Windows runs.
The only problem with completely moving the paging file off the boot partition is that Windows uses the page file to write out debug info in case your computer crashes with blue screen of death STOP error. This is important for machines that have critical data, but for the average user, this is not a big deal. If you get the blue screen of death, it’s not an easy process at all to get to read the file and even if you can, it can be quite complex. But if you have enough space, then you can leave the paging file there.
So the best solution is to create on paging file on the boot partition that will take care in case of a crash and create another paging file on a separate partition on a DIFFERENT hard drive preferably. If you only have one hard drive on your computer, then just create another paging file on a different partition. Windows automatically uses the paging file that is on the less accessed partition using an internal algorithm.
Even more ideal would be if you could put the paging file in it’s own partition with no other data. This ensures that the paging file will never become fragmented and hence performance will be better. If it’s on a drive that has other data and the paging file must be expanded, and if there is other data in the way, the file will become fragmented.
Another way to reduce fragmentation of the paging file is to set the initial and maximum sizes to the same number. What this does is ensure that the file does not grow or shrink and therefore will not fragment. However, you should defragment the hard drive before doing this to ensure the paging file is all together on the hard drive.
So if you have only one partition, set the initial and maximum sizes to 1.5 times the amount of RAM you have. If you have more than one partition, select the boot partition and set the initial and max to 250MB. The reason for this is because it’s better to create another paging file on the other partition and create one paging file on the boot partition that’s just big enough for the mini dump file, which is 250MB.
On your second partition, select Custom Size and set the initial and maximum values to 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have. You can determine the amount of RAM you have by going to Start, Control Panel, and click System. You’ll see the amount of RAM at the bottom right.
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