In today's tech savvy world it is not considered a big thing to have a computer, but having a PC with optimal speed and performance is still considered a big thing. It can provide a good computing experience for the user. With a computer running at good speed and with decent performance you can work faster and efficiently. Every computer is a good computer in the beginning but over a period of time and usage it develops certain problems that can come down heavily on its performance. If we take care and opt for steps to sort out these problems, our computers can become our most reliable companions.

Things you can do to improve the performance and speed of your PC:

Keep your system free from viruses, spyware and malware

Spyware and malware are the leading causes of making your system slow and nonresponsive. Spyware can collect the vital and confidential information from your system to disseminate it among virus authors. It can also steal the passwords you enter to access various websites. Viruses can destroy or damage certain important files to make the system slow. Thus you run the risk for both privacy and security of the system because of them. It is therefore advised to install good quality antivirus software to protect your system from viruses and malware as this directly contributes to the speed and efficiency of your system.

Defragment your hard drive regularly

By defragmenting the hard drive, you would be able to improve the performance of your system. Defragmenting is nothing but getting the files and folders back to the place where they are supposed to be. In the process of web browsing or opening of files and folders these files also get saved at other locations of the drive to occupy more space. This is called fragmentation of the drive. With fragmented files the system has to give more time to find out those files and thus it takes longer to open a file. By defragmenting the disk you get back those files and this makes your system work faster.

Disk cleanup

By using the disk cleanup tool you make more space on your hard disk to improve the performance of your computer. With this tool you can identify the files that are actually not required and unnecessarily occupying space on the drive. Disk cleanup is important because when you browse the internet, open an attachment, file or folder, your system saves a record of the actions you perform in the form of temporary internet files, cookies etc that occupies a lot of space on the drive. This makes the system sluggish. Disk cleanup utility cleans the drive from all these unimportant files to create more usable space and improves the system performance.

By using the disk cleanup tool you can remove temporary internet files and delete program files that you have downloaded (Microsoft ActiveX controls and Java applets). Also consider deleting the Recycle bin content and Windows temporary files.

Remove or uninstall unused or old startup programs

It usually happens that you install certain program for a particular purpose that remains in your computer for long time without any use. We tend to forget to remove or uninstall those programs when the purpose is fulfilled. These programs occupy unnecessary space to make the system slow. You should prioritize the need of such programs and remove those that are unimportant or unused.

Moreover, excessive startup program can also make your system sluggish. You are therefore advised to keep the number of startup programs to the minimum so that minimum virtual memory is used that in turn provides boost to the system's speed.

Consider using ReadyBoost

Users of Windows 7 and Windows Vista can use the Microsoft Windows utility ReadyBoost to boost up the speed and performance of their system. This is an innovative concept to add up additional memory to the system. By using this utility you can use flash memory resourced via a USB Flash drive or a memory card. This way the performance of the memory-deficient system can be improved without using additional memory.

In case you are using an old laptop that has started performing slow and you are clueless about how to fix it then this article will be of good help. In majority of the cases the tips mentioned above work out and you make your computer perform better.