How to Speed Up Your Slow Laptop

How to Speed Up Your Slow Laptop

Laptops have a tendency of slowing with age and use. There are a lot of ways to speed up older laptops and computers, even if you do not have the money to spend on a newer or faster PC. There are three main reasons that a computer is slow; there are viruses and spyware on the computer, the computer has too many programs running at the same time, or that the computer’s hardware is too outdated. The first two are reasonably easy and inexpensive to fix.

If you have a laptop that is a bit older, chances are that it has viruses or spyware on it. Both of these issues can make a computer slow to a crawl. There are several free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs available for download, if you are not able to afford a full paid software suite. Programs like AVG and Panda Security can clear out a lot of malicious programs on your computer and free up processing power. You can also find other anti-spyware software on sale with hp coupons. There are many options to consider.

Sometimes a computer is too infected to be cleaned properly, so it may be necessary to reinstall the operating system. If you have an operating system disk or a recovery CD that came with your computer, you can simply use this to reinstall Windows. However, doing this will erase all of the files and programs on the computer, so be sure that you have anything important backed up before doing this.

Having too many programs running at the same time on your computer will also slow it down. Even newer and faster computers can suffer if there are too many programs open at once. When a new program is installed on a computer, it usually will put itself into the computer’s startup. This means that when the computer starts up, that program will open automatically, whether you want it to or not.

The easiest way to combat this is to go through your start up settings. There are programs that you can download that will help you prune through what you do and don’t need to start up with your computer. Another option, if you are comfortable with computers, is to run MSConfig and adjust your start up programs that way.

If you have a slower laptop, there are several options to improve its performance that won’t require you to do hardware upgrades or to buy another computer. By removing viruses and spyware, and culling your startup items, you can greatly improve your computer’s speed.