How to speed up a slow PC

Here is some information on one of the ways you can speed up your PC.

When you turn on your computer there are a number of programs that start automatically. Some are important such as your antivirus and firewall. However others, like MSN Messenger, are not important. When a number of these unnecessary programs start automatically, it has a negative effect on the performance of your computer. So lets have a look at how we stop these programs for starting automatically. Of course, If we want to use these programs we can just start them from the All Programs list.

The Microsoft System Configuration Utility (MSCONFIG)

The microsoft system configuration utility is a great tool for disabling hidden programs that automatically start when you turn on your computer. To start the utility, click on Start button, then click on Run, then type in MSCONFIG and press enter.

After a moment a small window should pop up. Click on the Start Up Tab. This shows a list of the programs that automatically start when you turn on your machine. It can sometimes be difficult to understand what programs are listed on the Startup tab. Some, such as MSN Messenger are easy to identify, but there are others such as NBHGUI that can be difficult to recognise or decide whether it is important to leave running.

To get more information about a particular listing, expand the width of the Command column enough and you'll see the start-up command that the program issues, including its location, such as C:\Program Files\Nero\Nero 7\InCD\NBHGUI.exe. The directory location should be another hint to help you know the name of the program. In this case it is a Nero 7 file and this can be disabled.

It you are unsure whether to stop a process you could enter the name of the file into google and see what the process is actually for. When stopping programs from running, it is probably best practice to stop each, one at a time rather than stopping them in groups. This way, you are making sure that you are not causing any system problems by stopping them. So stop one, then restart your computer. If it runs fine, then stop another and restart.

So that's it. Give it a go and see what is running unnecessarily in the background slowing down your PC. Remember to write the names of the files you stop so that you can undo anything if it causes problems.

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