Ways to speed up your PC

So we know that your humble PC is getting old, it appears to be showing the signs of age. There is help though there are things that you can do too speed it up.

Here are a few tips to help.

Your PC may look like it isn’t doing anything but there may be 50 or so programs running in the background. These are the helpful programs, that annoying remind you that there is a new version of Realplayer available, or some flash update. The point is that there is a little program running that is continually checking for new updates to a particular bit of software. Which is all very handy but it seems to me to be a bit inefficient.

The problem is these little programs start up when the PC boots up. Well there is a way to stop them, or at least decide which one you want to start.

System configuration utility

You can get a view of what’s running in the background by hitting CTRL +ALT + DELETE then press the processes tab. It will show you how many processes that are running in the background.

1. For XP users just go the Start or Run for XP owners, and type MSCONFIG.

2. The System configuration will appear and from in there go to the STARTUP tab.

3. Once you've selected the STARTUP tab you'll be presented all the programs that are running in the background of your PC. You can now go through and switch stuff off, the system will still run if you switch everything off.

If you do see anything what you do want on for example MSN massager by all means keep it on but the more you have running in the background the more it'll sap your PC's performance and will also affect you're your Boot times as well.

Still in the System Configuration Utility, go to the second tab called SERVICES and go to and tick the HIDE ALL MICROSOFT SERVICES. This avoids us turning some of the Microsoft services off doing this could screw your entire PC up, best not mess with these. Once again you can turn them all off, unless you see something that you need like MSN messenger.

Give these simple tips a go, you’ll be amazed how much quicker your PC is.