How to Increase Computer And Startup Speed

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By deshmukh
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This article will describe easy ways to boost your Computer startup and operation speed. These are all tried and tested methods.
Computers are composed of electronic components and circuits with Firmware, Operating System and Application softwares. In simple words, perfect harmony of these three lead to optimal performance and speed of a computer.
Let me describe the steps to achieve this balance through this article.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Basic Computer knowledge
Tips and Steps from this article
A little Care

Step 1

REMOVE ALL THE JUNK

Freeing up disk space is the first and most important step in speeding up your computer.
Remove all the Temporary Internet files, empty recycle bin, windows temporary files and unused or rarely used applications.
Every time you visit a website, the internet browser stores all the cache data which accumulates over a period of time and occupies a significant amount of hard disk space.

As shown in the image, I do not usually keep any pages in my history and delete all the offline content regularly to clear stored data.
Step 2

DISK CLEANUP

This is one good method to free some disk space. It is built in Windows XP and easy to use.
Click on Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Cleanup
Choose the files to delete and then click OK.
I usually choose to delete the Temporary internet files, Old Chkdsk files and Temporary files.
Step 3

UNINSTALL PROGRAMS

Go to Start >> Control Panel >> Add or Remove Programs
Check all the installed programs and view their Status. Of a particular application displays Used : Rarely, then it is a good idea to remove it. This will free up a lot of disk space as well as speed up your computer.
Step 4

DISK DEFRAGMENTATION

It is a good idea to defragment your hard drive at least once every month. Over a period of time after you install and uninstall applications, the fragmented files are put together when you try to open a file which takes a long time.
Windows has a tool which allows you to defragment all the files on hard drive so that they occupy a particular space and are lot faster to access and open and modify.
To run defragmenter, go to Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Defragmenter
Click "Analyze" in order to determine if you need to defragment a particular drive and estimated time required.
Click "Defragment" to start the defragmentation process.
This normally takes a long time so I would recommend doing this when you do not need to work on your computer for 1-2 hours.
Step 5

SPEED UP STARTUP

Stop loading unnecessary programs on Windows Startup. You can go to Start >> All Programs >> Startup and delete any unwanted programs from here. This will only delete the startup functionality of the program and will NOT delete it from your hard drive.
It is a good idea to restart your computer after this step.
Step 6

CONFIGURE WINDOWS STARTUP - 1

I love this step. This is where the majority of the problem lies.
Go to Start >> Run...
In the run window, enter "msconfig" (without quotes) and hit enter.
You need to be very careful while performing this step. Go to "Startup" tab and deselect the programs that you do not want to start at windows startup.
Once you are satisfied with your selections, click "Apply".
Step 7

CONFIGURE WINDOWS STARTUP - 2

Go to "Services" Tab on the the menu and deselect services which you do not want to start during windows start up. Click "Apply".
Go to the "BOOT.INI" Tab and in the Boot options, select " /NOGUIBOOT " and "Apply" This will not display the starting Windows logo. This step saves lot of resources and time taken to start windows.