| If your PC has been very sluggish lately, frequently | | | | greatly reduces disk delays and greatly improves your |
| locking up, and even crashing, then it is time to give | | | | system performance. |
| your PC a tune-up. But before you take your PC to | | | | 4. Run a firewall on your PC - A firewall is necessary |
| your local PC repair shop, here are 5 things you can | | | | in this day and age of 24-hour Internet access. |
| do yourself to give it a tune-up. More often than not, | | | | Unfortunately, not everyone out there plays by the |
| performance tuning Windows with these 5 tasks alone | | | | rules. There are people who are intent upon hacking |
| can cure most computer ills: | | | | into other people's machines all the time. And now, with |
| | | | wireless networks, it is becoming easier for |
| 1. Run a full anti-virus scan - If a virus has infiltrated | | | | unauthorized people to gain access to your computers |
| your system, you need to run a full scan to kill it. | | | | at home. The title of "hacker" conjures up images of |
| Viruses can severely slow down your PC's | | | | some teenage computer genius in some exotic foreign |
| performance. If you already have anti-virus software | | | | country anonymously breaking into your computer. |
| on your system, you should download the most | | | | With open wireless networks, it is easy for even your |
| up-to-date virus definitions from the vendor and | | | | next door neighbor with average computer knowledge |
| manually run a thorough system scan. This is the most | | | | to gain access to your PC without you ever knowing it. |
| common approach to performance tuning Windows. | | | | A firewall is designed to block unauthorized access to |
| 2. Run a full anti-spyware scan - Viruses are similar to | | | | your PC from the outside world. |
| spyware. Both infiltrate your PC through means of | | | | 5. Run a registry repair scan - The Windows registry is |
| stealth and both exist purely for malicious intent. But | | | | the master database that stores all of the information |
| both accomplish different things. (Viruses are intent | | | | about all of the hardware and software that has ever |
| upon destroying your system whereas spyware | | | | been installed on your system. Over time, this |
| exists with the purpose of stealing information from | | | | database can grow very large, and errors can creep |
| you or spying on you.) Spyware is a huge memory | | | | up within the database. Because your operating |
| hog in part because it is constantly making connections | | | | system and most of your application programs depend |
| to the Internet to send or receive data from | | | | on this database, your computer can freeze up, run |
| unscrupulous websites. It can literally cripple your PC. | | | | very slowly, or even crash ad reboot, if searches |
| Spyware is one of the most common problems that | | | | against this database become unoptimized. A registry |
| can be easily combated by performance tuning | | | | repair utility can scan your registry for errors, fix them, |
| Windows. | | | | and optimize the registry. Performing a registry repair |
| 3. Defragment your computer hard drive - As your PC | | | | scan, can, itself, buy you a significant performance |
| writes data to the hard drive, it looks for whatever | | | | increase. If you need a quick and easy approach to |
| available spots it can before committing it to disk. | | | | performance tuning, a registry repair scan can cure |
| Oftentimes, this data is not stored in one contiguous | | | | many of your PC's ills. |
| location on the physical disk. This means that your PC | | | | Performance tuning Windows can be done easily at |
| has to jump around from one point hard disk to the | | | | home. No need to take your PC to the repair shop or |
| other in order to retrieve the data. Disk | | | | even to call one of those computer technician services |
| defragmentation shuffles all of the data on your hard | | | | that make house calls. All the tools you need are right |
| disk so that it is contained in contiguous blocks. This | | | | at your finger tips. |