How to Make Your Notebook Run Faster and Last Longer

Newly bought notebook worked fast. Then after a while the performance of your notebook dropped noticeably. Startup process became longer and the software programs that worked fast before became slow. It is time to perform some maintenance.

Normally when you just bought your notebook and started using it, you are happy how it works. However, in most cases, after several months the performance of your notebook starts to degrade noticeably. It takes longer and longer to start up your computer. The software programs that worked fast before become sluggish. And eventually, your overall productivity starts depending on speed of your computer. What happens? How to restore the performance of your “assistant”?

Maybe it is hard to believe but your notebook is slow because it is dirty. To fix this issue you need to clean software and hardware. Yes, the hardware too. The reason is that dust clogs the vents, which causes CPU to heat up. When temperature increases, Pentium 4 and later models go slower until they are no longer at a critical temperature. Your notebook even can burn if you do not keep it clean. Generally, heat is the biggest cause of component failure in computers. So that regular cleaning also can help to avoid costly repair and replacement costs.

For mentioned reason, it is important to limit the use of your laptop at high temperature and to keep your notebook in a open area that has a good air circulation during the power on. Clean your notebook regularly. You may use an old tooth brush to rid of the dust in the area around the fan. Shut it down before cleaning. Keep drinks and any liquids away from your notebook because short circuits by liquid destroy notebooks quite often. Also it is wise to not eat over because crumbs can go easily in the keyboard that cause PC to fail eventually.

Now software. The first step is to rid of unwanted and not-used-anymore programs. Normally programs are provided with uninstall option that can be used to completely uninstall programs and their components form your PC. If some software does not have this option, the best way is to use the Add or Remove Programs tool in the Control Panel of your MS Windows. Doing so ensures that any registry items associated with that application are removed safely.

The second step is not necessary but recommended. You need to find and remove all invalid registry items on your PC. It might be not easy to do manually because it is difficult to determine which items correspond to which applications (you might accidentally remove a valid registry item, causing software crashes and errors). So that for this purpose it is better to use some tool, for example, Windows Live OneCare safety scanner or Norton tools.

The third step is to delete all unnecessary data files. If some files are rarely used, you may archive them. If you have MS Windows XP or later OS, open any folder, right-click on blank area, select New, then Compressed (zipped) Folder. After creating empty zip file, move in it all files that you want to compress. Also as one-time measure to make the next step more effective, it would be good to clean Recycle Bin - right-click the Recycle Bin icon and select Empty Recycle Bin.

The final step to speed up your PC is to defragment the hard disk of your notebook. In case if you have MS Windows XP or later OS, open My Computer, right-click the local disk volume that you want to defragment, and then click Properties. On the Tools tab, click Defragment Now. Click Defragment. If your OS does not have a disk defragmenter, you may use some software tool, like, Norton Utilities. For the defragmenter to properly run, ensure you have no other applications running. Also note, the defragmenter can take a considerable time to run.

© Alex Smartson. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.