Every proud owner of a laptop computer asks a very common question, at least once in his lifetime, ‘how to clean my laptop to make it faster.’ The reason is that it does not matter how fast your computer was when you bought it, after six months or a year, the computer seems very slow all of a sudden. You may not even be a very heavy user of your laptop, yet it seems to slow down after some time. In today’s article, we will discuss and give you some pointers on why computers slow down and how to make it faster.
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The first step to answering your question ‘how to clean my laptop to make it faster is to try finding out the physical or software-related reasons behind the slowing down of your laptop. This is called troubleshoot. Let us first talk about the physical aspects.
Check if the ventilators of your laptop are clean or not. If there is a layer of dust, clean it properly with a laptop cleaner – aerosol blower. If the vents are blocked, your laptop may start slowing its processor speed to minimize the heat. Think for a moment – when you are not fresh, your clothes are dirty and heavy from your sweat, and you have not washed for many days – you would not be running or walking at your maximum ability, would you? You cannot because your body will heat up very quickly because the heat you generate from your body will not be able to leave your body as all the pores of your skin are blocked, and clothes are already heavy from the layer of salt-forming on them. The laptop hardware works the same way. Clean it properly first, then try rerunning it.
Next, check your hard drive. Often your hard disk parts wear down because of overuse. From excessive rotation, it starts to show signs of slowing down. So, remove the hard disk and check it by attaching it to another computer and see if the speed is ok. Check if there is an error in the disk or not – fix the errors. If the hard disk is at fault – try changing from SATA to SSD. Try faster memory options.
With time, there are more updates to the programs you regularly use. After a year or two, even your OS is updated. As a result, your current RAM may become inadequate. Check your laptop manual to find out its upgradability. What is the max front-side bus speed supported by your laptop processor or motherboard? What is the current bus speed of your RAM? Can you upgrade to a faster RAM? Can you increase the size of the RAM? Upgrading to a bigger RAM and also upgrading to faster FSB, if possible, will give a definite boost to your laptop performance.
If you have recently upgraded your OS and the laptop slowed down significantly: then the problem is with your OS. Downgrade the OS and keep the old one. You need to consider your hardware compatibility. You need to above, over, and beyond the minimum requirement if you want your OS to run like a hot knife cutting through a slab of butter. For example, every laptop manufacturer will advertise like this ‘Windows 7 compatible.’ From my practical experience, if that is the case, you can at best upgrade to Windows 8, but you will see a significant slowing down of your laptop’s performance. For beyond-compatible OS, you need beyond minimally required hardware. On top of that, there will be updates with newer apps, and these will, for sure, slow your computer down. So, stick to your compatible OS. Don’t be greedy.
Now, let us focus on the windows startup programs. Usually, when you install a lot of programs, your OS registers them as Startup items. This means these programs will automatically start when you start your OS. So, find them and keep only the OS-related services active during the startup process. Turn everything else off.
I remember my newbie days. I was so excited about all kinds of program software. For example, just the other day, I suddenly felt like drawing with my digital pen. I worked on MS Paint a few times. Then I thought, wait a minute, I need to try out many other programs. See what they have to offer. And suddenly, my hard disk was full of free and trial apps. Today, I am uninstalling them. So, you could have installed a lot of apps but never use them. Go ahead and just bid them goodbye for your laptop’s performance’s sake.
Maybe you are a heavy gamer and just have installed Call of Duty. It took 130 GB of your hard disk space. The moment you start the game, you feel a significant lag. Yes, your file system is cluttered. Defragment of the drives for a cleaner and faster file system.
Yes, you are right. Cleaning a hard disk is also one of your divine tech duties. Clean the system files, recycle bin folders, and everything. For example, from your system drive, you can remove the old OS files or downloaded updated files. They are huge and take up a significant amount of your hard disk space, and there will be less space for Virtual Paging File. The bigger the space for your Virtual Paging File, the faster your computer will be. You will not be asking the question – how to clean my laptop to make it faster – ever again.
Another way to make your computer faster is to turn off all the OS visual effects and animations. If you are using an integrated graphics chip that shares RAM, then you have to do this. This will show significant improvement in your laptop performance.
I have been testing my computers with various hardware and program software, and I can assure you that the points mentioned above are the answers to your questions ‘how to clean my laptop to make it faster.’
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