What Can cause My Computer To Run Slow?
By Wolfdave
To understand why your computer is running slow, you need to ask yourself if it has suddenly started to run slow, or has it gradually gotten slower over time, or as it always been slow. I have covered ‘suddenly slow’ in a recent article. There are many reasons for a PC that has always been slow or has had a gradual slowing down of performance. In this article I will focus on the most common causes in these two categories.
First thing I need you to do, is check under the hood of your computer, to see what is powering your machine. So, click on Start then Control Panel. There are other ways to find this information, but this is the simplest. Once you have the Control Panel, look for ‘System’ and double-click to open it. You will now see your system information panel and on this panel will be shown the type and value of the Processor and Memory installed on your PC.
If you are running Windows XP, you need at least a 1Ghz CPU and 512Mb Memory. This will give you an average performance, maybe a bit slow to start-up and load everything, but once loaded will deliver an acceptable level of power. For a faster start-up and a better overhaul performance, I would recommend a CPU of 1.8Ghz or faster and 1Ghz or more of memory.
Check the values on your System Information Panel, if they are lower than 1Ghz/512Mb, then you have found the reason for your slow computer. XP will operate with a CPU as low as 600Mhz and only 256Mb RAM, but it will struggle. This also applies to computers gradually becoming slower. A couple of years ago, your computer may well have performed ok with just 256Mb of RAM. However, many programs and utilities, such as your Security Suite, are now much more powerful than they were even two years ago. And as such, they demand more of your system resources. More memory = more resources.
If the CPU and Memory values are ok, you can close the System Panel and the Control Panel. Next, I would like you to check your hard drive for free space. You may have a ‘My Computer’ short-cut on your desktop, if so double-click on it. No short-cut? Click on Start and then click once on My Computer. Next screen, look for your hard drive, usually labelled HDD (c). Right-click once on this drive. From the drop-down menu click on Properties, near the bottom of the menu. You should now see a Pie Chart of your hard drive’s storage. Blue is Used Space, pink is Free Space.
How much Free Space do you have? Three quarters in pink is excellent, even half still pink is ok, and you have no worries here. However, if you only have a quarter or less Free Space, then you have found another reason for your computer running slow, you will need to take action or performance will suffer further. This is because your computer uses the free space on your hard drive as Virtual Memory, to supplement System Memory to make programs load and run faster. In effect, Virtual Memory is like a Back-Up to the RAM installed on your PC.
You may even get a warning message, Virtual Memory Low! So, the less free hard drive space you have means less available Virtual Memory and a slower computer. Not only that, but your hard drive also needs a certain amount of free space to be able to move files around in. If this space is reduced then programs will also be much slower to load.
Check out my other free articles on Disk Drive maintenance and dealing with Low Virtual memory. As well as several other, Slow Computer, articles.