10 Tips For Speeding Up Your Computer Without Buying a New One

Properties. Click on the Tools tab and choose to check the computer for problems. If you choose to do a Thorough Scan, this will do the hardware check for physical disk damage or sector damage. Choose to fix any errors it finds.

b. For Windows 2000 and XP, double-click My Computer. Right-click the C-drive and click Properties. Click on the Tools tab and choose to check the computer for problems. Click on Check Now. You will then have two check boxes. The top option is for the file check, and the second option is for the hardware (physical disk) check. Check either one, or both. At least check the top one. Hit ok, and reboot. This may take some time, but let it run.

Tip # 4. Purchase a 3rd party program that improves the speed of your computer and that fixes computer errors. One of my favorites is TuneUp Utilities. This program does a good job of fixing software and physical hard drive problems. It also tunes up your system for increased speed, and streamlines your operating system for peak performance. It can also defrag your registry and do lots of advanced things for speeding up your computer. There are lots of good software programs that you can buy that will speed up your computer. They will fix computer errors as well.

Tip #5. Or, you can do a few of the performance tweaks yourself, if you have Windows XP. By default, everything is turned on in Windows XP which means it isn’t optimized for performance, but rather for appearance. You can turn off a few of the unnecessary features, and Windows will work faster.

To do this, right-click on My Computer and click on Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Under the Performance section, click on the Settings button. On the Visual Effects tab, you will see a list of check boxes. By default, these are all on. You really don’t need any of them for Windows to run. Go through the check boxes one by one, and determine which ones you can and can’t live without.

Tip #6. Turn off Active Desktop. Active Desktop turns your desktop into a web page, and allows you to have things like a real-time calendar, and up-to-the-minute weather or stocks. These are nice, but really slow down your computer. And even if you don’t use Active Desktop for anything, just having it active can cause a performance decrease. Turn it off.

a. In Windows 95, 98 and Me, right-click on the desktop and in the pop-up menu, choose