Speeding up your PC

[Roscoe]

SWMBO's PC is running slow so I suggested some things to do to speed it up:

Remove .tmp files.
Empty the recycle bin.
Disable programmes not required in start up.
Uninstall programmes no longer using.
Defrag.

Is there anything else that should be done to speed things up? Her PC is fairly new (from about May) so should be running the latest version of Windows.

Thanks for your help.

[Bryan]

If the computer is fairly new, what type of hard drive does it have? If it is an SSD, the recommendation is to not defrag it. If the hard drive is an older mechanical one you would get very much more speed by replacing it with an SSD.

[wainuitech]

More info --- What are the actual system Specs ? CPU , Memory , HDD type and Size ????

Check the HDD Storage, make sure it hasn't got some tiny Drive thats almost full. Many manufactures these days put in a small SSD, with a larger Std mechanical drive meant for storage.

Run Disk Cleanup - Select System, remove everything ( make sure downloads is not ticked unless you want to remove them as well)

Open Task Manager -- Bottom Left click on Show more- Startup Tab untick everything that you dont HAVE to have running on startup

WARNING -- Where you say defrag. You DONT defrag SSD Drives.

Manually check for Windows updates -- even a brand new Computer will be months out of date.

[gary67]

Put an SSD into SWMBO's laptop and it went from a 4 minute boot to a 5 second boot as is now very snappy, I would do mine but the case is damaged and I can't close the lid so not worth it as will replace it soon.

As an aside to what everyone esle has said a lot of manufacturers don't put in the fastest speed standard HDD either ours are both 52000 rather than the 72000 speed

[dugimodo]

If you are using windows tools to defrag it doesn't even give you the option on SSDs any more, just has an "Optimise" option that runs a trim operation - not particularly useful for most people as windows does it in the background often enough anyway.
It's also been many years since defragging a hard drive really made much difference, if you have a look at what files are actually fragmented it tends to be stuff that doesn't matter. Windows also does defragging in the background.

Anyway enough of that; Checking how much free space there is on the drive is worth doing, if there's a reasonable amount clearing more won't do much for the speed but if it's almost full you need to clear some space. Also worth checking task manager and seeing how much RAM is in use and what's using it. Check for CPU usage also and see if anything is hogging that.

Maybe run a malware and virus scan.
Is it the computer in general that's slow or just certain things? if browsing is slow for example and you use an add on browser like chrome or firefox etc just give edge a try temporarily to see if it's better. If it is your browser might need cleaning up or resetting. Some people seem prone to installing every browser toolbar and addon known to man and you need none of them (well maybe a good add blocker)

Also what antivirus are you using, some of them can cause issues.