by Jimmie Russo

Is your computer driving you crazy today? After all that you have read about how quick computers are supposed to be are you constantly frustrated by the fact that it cannot even keep up with you? If you can relate to these things here are a few easy tricks you can use to make your computer run faster.

We have here are five things that when you do them you will find make a big difference in the speed of your computer. The best news is that the cost for most of them is free or minimal. What makes them even better is that if you were to take your computer to your local neighborhood geek and ask him to speed up your computer these are the things that he would do but charge you $100 or more simply for his time and labor. You can do them for free.

If your computer is a year old or more the first thing you should do is run the defrag program that Microsoft package with your Windows operating system. It is fair to help your computer runs quicker. As your computer ages and stores more files it begins breaking files into pieces and storing them in various parts of your hard drive. This will make your computer run a whole lot slower. Running the defrag program will enable your computer to gather up these bits and pieces and store them closer to one another. It's quick and it is free.

Having run the defragmentation program or your hard drive then the next thing you should do is run your disk cleanup utility. This program also comes along in your computer when you bought it new all you have to do is tell the computer to run and do its job. It will then examine your hard drive for what are called bad sectors. The only thing that you have to know here about bad sectors is that they can slow your computer down and sometimes even make it impossible for you to retrieve important parts of files that you have stored in bad sectors. This program will identify and in some cases repair those bad sectors for you. Again another quick and easy and free fix for you.

Another problem for anyone using their computer on the Internet is the existence of spyware programs. Spyware programs are installed by people who want to spy on your actions and attempt to control the websites that you visit. Almost no one ever invites these programs on to their computers. Evil people sneak them in when people do things like downloading free screensavers, backgrounds for your desktop, and many other sneaky tricks. To protect yourself for free you can use Microsoft's Internet defender program or on your computer. Or, for a bit more of protection you can buy a commercial anti-spyware program to protect you. Yes, it is true that this software may cost you $30 or $40 or more but it can be well worth the investment.

It will be also worth your while to clean off the thousands of files that are stored on your computer that you never ever use. These files include temporary Internet files that your browser stores to speed up your access to websites many of which you will never ever visit again, also Windows temporary files, optional Windows components that you simply don't need, and even software programs that you installed intentionally but you have not used for the last year or two. Removing all of these things will also speed up your computer dramatically.

Another thing that you can do to make a massive difference in the speed of your computer is not free but it is relatively inexpensive. Check the instruction book that came with your computer and see if it is possible to add additional memory to your computer. I'll most all modern computers do have additional capacity. Just do a little homework on the Internet and you will probably be surprised to find out how quick and easy it is for anyone that can use a screwdriver to add their own memory to their computer. Additional memory will probably cost you in the range of $50-$100 but it will make a tremendous speed difference in your computer.

These have been just a few obvious things that you can do; mostly free, to have your computer running faster in no time at all. Mostly these are, or should be, regular maintenance things that you do once a week or perhaps once a month if you do not use your computer too frequently. They don't take a whole lot of time but they won't make a big difference in the way your computer performs.

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Additional free stuff to make your computer faster are available here. An excellent commercial anti-spyware program is one smart move. You can get a unique content version of this article. SEO Links Directory.