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Showing posts with the label Optimize Windows

Speed Up a Slow PC without Buying New Hardware

If a once-fast computer has slowed to a crawl, you can't really blame the hardware. Sure, you may be able to improve speed by adding RAM, upgrading the CPU, or replacing the hard drive with an SSD. But none of those solutions--all of which cost money--address the underlying problem. Your hardware isn't underpowered. It's overloaded. Cleaning out Windows will very likely speed up a PC. And no, I'm not suggesting reinstalling the operating system. There are less drastic fixes. Look for hog processes Your computer may be running a poorly-written process that's hogging a lot of resources. To find out, right-click the taskbar and select Start Task Manager. Click the Processes tab, then the CPU column header. The top items will be the ones hogging the CPU. If you see an obvious culprit, close the program that's running the process (it's pretty easy to figure out what it is). If that doesn't work, click the End Process button and confirm tha