How to Improve Your CPU Speed

A slow computer can make it impossible to get work done. You can sit and wait forever when searching the web. You want your programs and applications to start right after you open them. Viruses and other computer diseases slow down your computer's processing speed and disable some programs. Defragmenting your hard drive reorganizes it, partitioning your free space and allowing your computer to run quicker.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Anti-virus program
• External hard drive

1. Purchase or download an anti-virus program. Find a program that scans for viruses, malware, and spyware. The program must have a scan and remove feature to get rid of problems that are already affecting your CPU.

2. Delete all known viruses, malware and spyware found in the scan. Ridding your CPU of these diseases increases the speed at which your computer operates, as well as boosting the overall performance of your desktop.

3. Set up a scan schedule within your anti-virus program. A weekly or biweekly schedule is preferable. This will keep your system running fast.

4. Run a disk defragmenter for your hard drive. This program comes with your operating system free of charge. Click "Start > Programs (or All Programs in Windows XP) > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter."

5. Clean up your desktop. Delete unneeded shortcuts, and organize loose files into folders.

6. Move all your movies, songs, photos, and other large files onto an external hard drive. The more space you have on your CPU's hard drive, the faster it runs. You can access all the files on your external hard drive just by plugging it in to your CPU, but it will not slow down your computer's response time.

Tips & Warnings

• Running a weekly virus scan ensures that your computer stays fast, and you stay in control of what is entering your CPU's hard drive.

References

• The Elder Geek: Disk Defragmenter