The Windows 7 is designed for better speeds. But frequent use as time passes by, the Windows 7 speed might get you wanting for better performance. This may be because of the junk that has accumulated in the system. One other reason is that your hard drive is already stuffed high. Or you might be running a lot of services and programs that are not necessarily needed. Following are some top tips to speed up Windows 7.

Ensure that you have a trusted anti-virus program running on your PC. This will prevent any malware or spyware from planting themselves on the system. If you don’t have this kind of protection, your risk of malware and virus entering your PC is high. These malicious software can cause slowing down of Windows 7, besides eating up precious space on your hard drive.
Make sure that you install only what software is needed to speed up Windows 7. Once you found out that a trial software is not needed, you must uninstall it immediately. If you can’t do this, a formatting of your hard drive may be necessary. Be sure that you have a back up before doing this, because formatting may wipe out your data.
.Minimize the visual effects to speed up Windows 7. To do this, press Windows key, and hold it down while pressing Pause/Break Key. A window will appear, click on Advance. In the Performance Section, click on Settings, then the Visual Effects tab. You may choose the options that are not needed, or just press the “Adjust For Best Performance” button. Finally click on Apply, then OK.

If you are frustrated at how slow your computer boots up or responds when opening programs and files there are things you can do to improve its speed.

When you are browsing the internet history is saved including temporary files and cookies. Removing these will not only free up space on the hard drive it will allow your system to run faster. To remove these items is easy by going into the Tools section of the browser and going to the General tab of Internet Options. Find Browsing History and click the box “delete browsing history on exit”. This will automatically remove history files from being saved on your system.

You can also improve how fast your system runs by compressing files and defragmenting the system. These processes will scan through your computer to analyze the space available. It will reorganize your programs and files in order allowing your system to run faster.

This process is easy to perform as well. However, realize that if you have a large hard drive full of data and are running the disk defragment process for the first time it may take several hours. To begin the process go to the My Computer icon and right click on the drive you want to defrag – usually the C: drive. Check the box “compress drive to save disk space” and then click on the “disk cleanup” icon. After doing this you can then choose “defragment now” being sure all programs are windows are closed.

You can face the same issues with your Win 7 OS computer as with any other operating system including freezing and hanging up. But there are procedures you can perform to improve your Win 7 computers performance.

It is possible to encounter these errors at any time that as well as the fact that there are many things that might cause these errors to occur. Registry errors, deficient amount of RAM, faulty programs could all be the culprits causing the errors. When repair these errors you will see an improvement the performance of your Windows 7 computer.

Problems affecting the hard drive can create problems with your computers performance. You can correct these problems by using the disk defragmenter utility. Many times problems with programs are the cause system problems. If this is occurring you can try un-installing and re-installing the software. Also be sure to have all your software programs updated on a regular basis.

ReadyBoost is another option for Windows 7 computer. ReadyBoost can be used to speed up your PC by adding non-volatile flash memory. It uses a USB flash drive or a memory card—to improve performance without having to add additional memory. This is an easy and inexpensive method to increase the amount of RAM in your PC.

Other things you can do to improve the performance of your computer is to eliminate any unnecessary icons on the desktop. The icons on your computers desktop use up memory depriving it from other tasks that might otherwise need it more.

Maintaining your Windows XP computer will help to insure that its performance will not degrade over time. If you don’t maintain your PC and are experiencing issues with speed you can choose to try to resolve the issues yourself or you can take your PC in to a computer professional. While the latter does not require any time on your part it will cost you a considerable amount of money. Many things you can do to resolve speed issues with your computer are free and easy to perform.

More than ninety percent of all problems related to slowness in PCs can be attributed to problems found in the system registry. Microsoft does not provide a tool to scan or fix registry entries but they do provide a registry editing tool. However, unless you really know what you are doing it is not recommended that you manually modify registry entries.

Adding more RAM (random access memory) to your system will almost always help speed up a slow computer and the act of multi-tasking will not bog down the computer as it would with a lower amount of RAM. RAM is hardware that needs to be physically added and tends to be somewhat costly. However if you plan on keeping your system for a while it is an excellent investment.

For faster browsing speed clear your Internet cache (temporary internet files) and delete your cookies. This causes the computer to gain speed on the Internet and the pop-ups from sites that you have been to will also be less frequent.

Your computers system registry is a critical repository of all the settings and controls that allow your computer it software and hardware to run. While Microsoft only provides a registry editing tool there are many good third-party utilities that will scan, analyze and resolve any issues found in your computer systems registry. When you have a clean system registry you will notice an improvement in the speed of your PC.

Most of the registry utilities will create points from which you are able to restore from. You can choose a back up point prior to when you began experiencing any real issues with slowness in your computer and that would be all you need to do. With the tools you will be able to scan your registry for errors, invalid shortcuts, missing keys and other items and provide you with a list. From this list you can use the editing tool to manually fix the registry yourself or other software may actually repair the issues found.

Remove unnecessary items from the start menu. To do this type “msconfig” in the “run” box and hit enter. Choose selective startup and uncheck all of the programs that you do not need to load every time you start your computer. This will make the computer start more quickly and efficiently. DO NOT uncheck items that you do not recognize. This could cause you computer to run improperly.

Use a browser with an integrated pop-up blocker (Firefox for example) to decrease the amount of pop-ups and increase browsing speed.

Look at the lower right corner task bar, to the left of where the current time is displayed; expand that area to see how many applications are currently running or are ready to run. How many programs or applications are launched during start up? Each one of those applications are using up computer resources.

The more programs and applications running at the same time, the more resources are required and the slower the computer will operate even if they are not immediately seen on the screen. Does the printer always need to be primed and ready for printing? Shut down programs not regularly used and/or remove them from the start up operation.

The registry of a computer is essentially (in its most basic sense), a library of commands and file locations. Over time, through the installing and uninstalling of software, creating and deleting of files as well as surfing the web, the registry becomes disorganized and in need of attention. A good registry cleaner will ensure this area remains in order.

Disabling any auto start in the preferences pages of many software programs will turn off their auto start feature but using the msconfig utility will also accomplish this for you.

Having a good virus scanner and firewall are also important to keeping your computer updated and well maintained. With these items installed you are sure you are protecting your system from malware attacks.

The computer system registry is also an important component of all computers. The registry is where all the critical instructions and information for the hardware and software to run properly. You may wish to rely on an experts help with the system registry as it is such an important component of your computers operating system.

There are several causes that slow computer systems down. Errors on the hard drive, lack of adequate disk space, malware and more. Even your hardware components and the settings of your system can cause it to be slow as well. There are things that you can do to improve the speed of your PC.

Use the defragmentation tool. A hard drive consists of hundreds of sectors which or broken up into clusters and then further into allocations. As a computer gets used the files that are accessed are sometimes not put back to the sector or allocation unit where they belong. The drive becomes “fragmented”. The defrag tool can be accessed by going to the start bar, to programs, accessories, system tools and defragmentation tool. It may take several hours to properly defrag a hard drive, but the resulting gain in speed will make this time well spent. Files will be more quickly accessed and all of the bad sectors on a disk will not contain any information on them. Hence, a user will not wait in vain for a file that is stuck on a bad part of the hard drive.

Errors on your computers hard drive of the system registry can also slow down your computer. Running the Scan Disk and Check Disk utilities will find and fix hard drive errors. For system registry errors you need to download a utility such as CCleaner to detect and resolve registry errors.

If your computer is about out of space on the hard drive then you can run the MSCONFIG utility to find and quickly remove all items that are redundant and safe to remove. Un-installing software that is not needed will also free up space.

There are many ways to diagnosis what may be causing your computer to run slowly. If you are experiencing problems with speed in computers it is a common complaint. After purchasing a new computer you use is for quite some time without any problems then it seems, all of a sudden, to take longer to save files, open applications or start up. The thing that is an issue is there are many possible things that can be the root cause of your computer to slow down. This makes diagnosing the root cause somewhat difficult at times.

If you notice a sudden decrease in the speed of your computer you should think back about any changes you may have made to it recently. Trying to focus on the time immediately prior to the slowness might help you pin down the exact cause. Newly installed software or hardware may be the culprit or even if you visited a new web site that may have installed spy or adware on your PC.

If, however, you have not added any new hardware or software you should reboot your computer to see if it fixes your issues. If none of these are the cause of the problem then you should check to see if your computer has enough resources available. Do you have enough room on the disk drive? Is there enough RAM and do you have an adequate video card? Try clearing out all unnecessary items and defragging the hard drive to see if this helps improve the performance of your PC.

If after you have performed these tasks your computer is still running slowly you many have to consult a computer professional.

It is aggravating when you turn on your computer it takes ten minutes or more for it to boot up. If there are a lot of programs set to automatically startup this could be cause of your slow boot times. But you don’t have to buy a new computer.

You can begin to improve how fast your computer boots up by performing some routine housecleaning. You should do this before you make any changes to your system. It is also important to back up of all the important information on your computer. Routine maintenance functions that are recommended to be performed on a regular basis include: emptying the temporary files and the Recycle bin, running up-to-date anti-spyware and anti-virus software, running the disk defragmenter and chkdsk utilities.

Begin by going to the start menu and clicking on “run”. Then type “msconfig”. This will open up the System Configuration utility. The default tab is the General Tab but you should click on the Startup Tab. Under this tab you will find all the programs that will run when your computer starts up. While some of them may be useful to automatically start many could be eliminated. One rule of thought is to only have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software automatically start up.

Just by unchecking a program you can stop it from automatically starting. Unchecking a program will not remove or un-install it from your computer. Once you have made your selections just click on “ok”. You will have to re-start your computer for the changes to take effect.

There are some simple things you can do to improve the speed of your computer system. When you keep your computer maintained you can ensure that it continues to run at its peak performance. You can improve the speed of any Windows computer whether it is XP, Vista or Windows 7. You should not just be concerned about maintaining your computers speed you want to ensure you protect your privacy as well.

Removing spyware, viruses and adware will not only ensure that you are protecting your privacy and information it will also help to dramatically improve the performance of your PC as well. Spyware if present on your computer will run continuously in the background resulting in dragging down the speed of your computer while collecting personal information about you without your knowledge or permission.

Microsoft offers some tools you can download for free that will scan and remove software from your computer. Live OneCare will help you check your computer for viruses and remove them.

You can also download the Security Essentials from Microsoft that will help to protect your computer from being infected with adware, spyware and viruses. This tool will help to remove these threats and is updated automatically ensuring that you are protected for any emerging threats.

The final tool from Microsoft is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool that will detect and remove Mydoom, Sasser and Blaster.

Being sure that you eliminate and prevent infections from malware will ensure that your system will perform at top speed.