Computers and Technology

Just about every home computer deals with the problem of a slow computer at some time or another.

You know how it goes... Your trying to send an e-mail or check out a new web site you heard about, and you can't because your slow computer has 10-20 programs running in the background that you have no idea what they are or how they got installed on your computer.

Almost every computer today has numerous programs and items running in the background taking precious processing power away from what you want to be doing. This article will shed light on all the background processes that happen in your computer so that you can better understand exactly what factors contribute to a slow computer. We will discuss how to eliminate these unused programs and background processes as well as show you how to tweak various system settings to revive your slow computer to the fast sleek machine it once was.

Basically, there are 3 main areas that are the cause of a slow computer. We will discuss each area briefly, in later articles we will get into the details of repairing each of these areas.

The 3 main areas to look at when diagnosing the root of a slow computer are:

1. Resource hungry programs
2. Spy-ware, Viruses and other malicious programs
3. Physical Hardware Limitations

Many times the root of a slow computer can be found by looking at what programs are running on your computer. Many new computers come with what are called trial-ware programs. Trial-ware are programs that are installed on your computer from the factory. Many times these pre-packaged programs are useless, they do nothing more than to hog the precious resources on your computer. I have seen cases of clients where the trial-ware pre-installed on computers was consuming up to 30% of resources of the computer! These computers were running slow from the factory, it is in these types of cases where the computer will actually run faster than what the client remembers it to be due to the fact that we free up this used memory so the overall performance of the computer is increased!

The second biggest resource hungry programs are Virus Scanners.

In today's world you must have some sort of virus protection if you want to be protected on the Internet. Unfortunately many of these virus programs create more of a headache than the viruses they are meant to protect us from.

Most virus scanners do more to create a slow computer than most other items due to the following factors.

• Active Scanning - Virus scanners scan all activities of your computer in the background (File access, e-mail messages, Internet traffic, system services, etc etc.) All this scanning has the overall effect of creating a slow computer.
• Many Virus programs themselves are large programs that load In memory and take up valuable resources that your computer could be using more efficiently.

We will discuss in later articles what to look for in choosing the right virus scanner as well as configuring it to be effective without the side effect of eating up all the resources of your computer.

So the first step in curing a slow computer is identifying what programs you do not use and removing them from your startup. You also need to identify what active virus scanners are in memory and optimize them so that they do not eat up all your computers resources.

Spy-ware, Viruses and other malicious programs

Most everyone has had a run in at one time or another with a virus or pop-up while surfing the Internet. It starts innocently enough, you get a pop-up on your screen asking you to sign up for a free vacation and the next thing you know you have a slow computer, tons of garbage e-mail, and more pop-ups than you know what to do with.

Spy-ware and Viruses have been the root of more slow computers than anything else. These programs consume valuable resources, cause random errors, and basically make you hate your computer.

Physical Hardware Limitations

The hardware in your computer is of course a concern when looking at the root of a slow computer. Although many times you can upgrade your hardware to fix a slow computer, if you haven't addressed the previous issues, the programs that reside in you memory will eventually consume the new resources and you will be left with a slow computer again. I look at it this way, if your computer was a fast machine to begin with, there is no reason that it can't be again.

This article was just an introduction to the basics of what is behind a slow computer. In later articles we will show you how to remove and repair the bottlenecks in your computer.