Fast Your Computer

I’ve always wondered why Windows doesn’t allow you to set an arbitrary size for the filesystem cache. What if you have a slow hard drive in your laptop, but loads of available system memory? Shouldn’t you be able to maximize that memory in order to speed up hard drive access?

 Ok, here’s another part in the increase your computer’s speed and performance series: disabling visual effects and setting Processor Scheduling and Memory Usage settings. These are fairly straight-forward and one of the simpler settings to change, I had just forgotten about it since I was trying to think of the MOST useful tips first. What that means is that this tip will increase computer performance minimally on most computers.

 Turning off indexing on your hard drives is another very simple way to boost your computer’s performance. This option is automatically set by Windows XP, but it is very useless. I think we have all had the experience of using Windows Search (not to be confused with Windows Live Search) to try and find a file and having to wait 10 minutes while watching that stupid dog sniff around the screen!

 Ohh how I hate it when I start up my computer only to wait 10 minutes while my programs load up: Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, SnagIT, Google Desktop, my anti-virus program, SQL Server, Java virtual machine, Real Player, QuickTime player, AOL IM, Roxio CD Burning, Windows Defender, Adobe Reader…I think you get my point now…if you have tons of programs loading up that you don’t use anymore, then they are basically doing nothing but slowing your computer down and should be disabled so they don’t load automatically.

 Do you have a computer that doesn’t have a huge hard drive, but you store a lot of pictures, videos, or other large files that’s getting your free space low? Once your computer gets low on hard disk space, normal processes begin to slow down and your computer will run painfully slow. There are of course lots of other reasons why your computer might be running slowly, but this post is specifically for those who know they are running short on disk space.

 Another way I’ve used to save space is to, “Squish” files

(this can be done natively in XP & up, for the older OS’s you need WinZip or some file “compression” utility)