Easy Help For Slow PCs

I subscribe to a newsletter written by Ron Douglas, owner of RecipeSecrets.net, which specializes in copycat recipes for dishes at popular restaurants (e.g. Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Boston Market). Well, today’s message included a tip on speeding up your PC that I thought I’d pass along. They key is two handy-dandy tools that come with Windows. The first is the System Configuration Utility (msconfig.exe) with which you can select which programs load when your PC boots and reduce the number of icons that appear in the system tray (which is on the far right of the task bar). The second is the Disk Cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe) which allows you to free hard disk space by reducing the number of unnecessary files.Before you begin make sure you are logged in as a User with Administrator access, then proceed as described:

. . . here’s a cool tip I recently learned when my computer began running slow. The reason it was so slow was because I had many different programs which were automatically loading and using up the PC’s resources whenever I started the computer. Once I configured my computer start up, these programs now only load when choose to open them. Here’s what I did to fix it (for Windows users). Disclaimer: this is only my experience and not to be considered professional or technical advice.
1) Click the Start button and then click Run
2) Type in msconfig and hit Ok
3) Go to the Startup tab to view the list of programs
4) Type the name of each item in Google to see what it is if you’re
not sure *
5) Uncheck any program that you don’t need to automatically load
upon startup
6) Restart your computer **
7) Go to Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools and click Disk
Cleanup.
Run Disk Cleanup to Remove all temporary files That’s it – now you’re running more efficiently.

* I prefer to look up each program at processlibrary.com, rather than Google as suggested here. ProcessLibrary gives a description and recommendation for each program. And, yes. It’s free.

** Windows XP Note: If there is an HP printer or certain firewall or anti-virus software (i.e. ZoneAlarm, McAfee, or Nortons) installed on your computer, you may receive an error message that reads “An Access Denied error was returned while attempting to change a service. You may need to log on using an Administrator account to make specified changes.” If you are already logged in as a User with Administrator access, then don’t worry – your changes will take effect anyway. Click “OK” and restart the computer. Once the computer has re-booted and you have logged in again, you will see another, larger message box notifying you that “You have used the System Configuration Utility to make changes to the way Windows starts.” Check the box that appears to left of “Don’t show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows start” and click “OK.”

Steps 1 – 6 took me about 15 minutes, plus the time it took to restart my computer. Steps 7 & 8 took less than 5 minutes to get going, but required quite a while to process. However it can run in the background, while you’re doing something else.

Good luck!
Tara

P.S. Check out The Secret Recipe Blog where you can score recipes to some yummy and familiar foods!