Solutions for Slow Computers

When people ask, “WHY IS MY COMPUTER SO SLOW?” they are faced with many possible reasons for this. This article will briefly explain some of the top reasons why people experience the annoyingly slow performance of their computers.

Let’s start with the symptoms. A computer works perfectly fine except for the start-up, which takes forever and destroys the user’s mood at the very start, thus ruining his whole computer experience after that. So he asks, “WHY IS MY COMPUTER SO SLOW?” The answer is start-up overload. Some programs, when they are installed, are automatically set to run during start-up, so when the computer boots there’ll be too many programs on queue, waiting for their turn to start running. This process won’t give way for the user to use the computer until all programs on queue have been started.

Now a user notices that his settings have been changed - he doesn’t recall ever changing them; his internet connection is too slow; and also his computer lags every so often. So he asks, “WHY IS MY COMPUTER SO SLOW?” A likely problem with symptoms like these is that the computer has been infiltrated by spyware. People get spyware from free downloads, websites, and even from e-mails. Spyware may alter system settings and give third parties access to the computer. Spyware also sends out information about the computer, even the user’s browsing habits. It uses the computer’s Internet connection to do these, which explains the slow internet connection.

And now a user encounters the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death); He also experiences crashing and hanging of his applications; and on top of that he experiences slow booting, slow shutdown, and a slow system, generally. So he asks, “WHY IS MY COMPUTER SO SLOW?” Facing symptoms like these, it is likely that there is a registry error or registry conflict. As users install programs into their computer, their registry are sometimes changed, depending on the needs of the program, therefore causing registry conflicts in the future - say one of the programs need the registry to be this way, but the other program needs it to be that way, thus the registry conflict, which explains the crashing and hanging of the user’s applications.

What if a user notices that as he runs more and more programs simultaneously his system gets slower and slower, and sometimes he encounters messages telling him to close some programs in order to run another program? Symptoms like these suggest that the virtual memory is running low; for a computer to operate it needs space to store temporary data; space for the system to work about. This space is called the virtual memory. Having too many applications running at the same time would fill this up, causing the system to slow down, as the system would have difficulty running on such little space.

This time a user simply notices that his system is running significantly slower than it did when it was new. He diagnosed his computer and none of the above came out as the culprits. So now he asks, “WHY IS MY COMPUTER SO SLOW?” A situation like this suggests that it is time to run a defragmentation. Computer users occasionally add files, and delete files. This causes your current files to be scattered around in your hard drive. At early stages the slowing effect would not be noticeable, but as this continues further it will become apparent, as the system would take more time searching for the needed files. Running a defragmentation would sort and arrange the files, therefore restoring the system’s former speed.