How to Maximize Your CPU Speed

As your computer ages, its CPU speed will gradually drop and tasks that were once quick and responsive become sluggish and sticky. The truth is that your computer is probably just burdened with unnecessary tasks or unwanted startup programs and the data on your hard drive has become disorganized and untidy. Dust will also tend to build up inside a computer over time, making it less effective at cooling itself; hot electronics are not efficient electronics.

You will need:

• Small Screwdriver
• Compressed Air Canister
• Dust Mask
  

• Step 1 - Clean Out The Dust

  Cleaning out the dust from your computer’s tower unit will help keep your computer cool and will help towards ensuring that your CPU is operating within its optimal temperature range. It is advisable that you take your computer’s tower unit outside. Open up the unit by unscrewing the fastening screws on the back and there should also be release clips that hold the panels in place.

  A compressed air canister is necessary for cleaning electronics because touching the circuit boards could result in damage from static electrical discharge; moisture has to be avoided at all costs and a vacuum cleaner is risky because it is cumbersome and could suck components loose. Blow the air off of the circuit boards, cables, fans, heat sinks and out of the air vents, then wipe the dust off of the panels and replace.

  Step 2 - Virus and Spyware scan

  Malicious programs can be responsible for consuming a your computer’s resources so be sure to run regular scans to help identify and deal with these problems. If you don’t have any virus protection and don’t want to spend money on Symantec or McAfee antivirus packages, try using free anti-virus software such as Avast or Ad-Aware.

  Step 3 - Hard Drive Clean-up

  Go to “My Computer” and right click on the icon for your hard drive, select properties and under the general tab, you should see a button marked "Disk Cleanup". This will delete unnecessary temporary files, installation files, error memory dumps and it will also empty your recycle bin, depending which options you select.

  After you have done that, go to the “tools” tab and you will find a tool for error-checking your disk and a tool for defragmenting your hard drive; it is worth taking the time to run both of these. Over time, as files are saved, deleted and copied, the data on your hard drive becomes fragmented and disorganized. Defragmenting your hard drive reorganizes everything, which makes data retrieval faster. Error-check simply searches for bad sectors on your hard drive and attempts to repair them.

  Step 4 - Disable Unwanted Startup Programs

  Go to the start menu and open the run dialog box, enter “msconfig” into the text field and click OK. This should bring up the system configuration utility. Go to the “startup” tab and you will see all of the programs that start up automatically when you enter Windows. Go through the list and un-tick the ones you don’t want. If you’re unsure about a program, a quick Internet search will usually yield some clues as to its nature. However, its best not to disable something if you don't understand its purpose.