7 Ways of speeding up your computer

Here are 7 ways of speeding up your computer

1. Defrag your computer (Click here to find out how)
2. Delete start up items you know you don’t need (Click here to find out how)
3. Make sure you check your pc for virus (More info on anti virus here)
4. Get rid of old temporary files (Click here to find out how)
5. Upgrade your computers memory (Sometimes you just need more)
6. Uninstall unused programs.
7. Remove unused desktop icons (or at least organise them in a folder)

If you PC is still really slow after completing all these steps you may need to recover your PC back to its original factory settings, remember to back up all the data you want though as this option will delete all data on your PC.

How to get rid of temporary files

In this tutorial I will show you how to remove temporary files on windows vista and 7

1. Click on the start bar and click “Computer”
2. Now right click on your OS Drive (Usually C:\) and select "Properties"
3. In the new window select “Disk Cleanup”
   
4. In the new windows place a tick next to the items you want to delete (these are temporary files so you won't harm your computer by deleting them all)

How to delete start up items

In this tutorial I will show you how to delete items from MSCONFIG to speed up the start up of your computer

1. Click the start bar and search for “MSCONFIG” then press the enter key.
2. In the new window select the “Start-up” tab (anything which has a tick next to the item will start-up during windows start up and anything which does not have a tick next to it will not start up)
3. From this screen you just want to untick the items you don’t require to start-up with windows (I personally disable things like: I tunes, Adobe reader and other things which I know I can launch if I need to use them)

How to de-fragment your computers hard drive

To de-fragment your computers hard drive in windows vista and 7 follow these steps:

1. Click the start bar and in the search bar type “Disk Defragmenter”
2. Select Disk Defragmenter
   
3. in the new window select the hard drive your want to scan (in this tutorial we are going to scan the OS hard drive), then click “Defragment Disk” and let the computer defrag your hard drive

ATX Reset

If you have had any issues with you computer and phoned the help line number one of the common things they will ask you to do is an ATX reset, Basically this just resets the power supply in your computer and in most cases can solve some power issues.

How to perform an ATX reset:

1. Disconnect the power from your computer.
2. If possible remove the battery and external devices.
3. Hold the power button for about 15 seconds
4. Put the battery back in the computer
5. Reconnect the power
6. Press the power button to turn on your computer

If this does not solve the power issue it may be the hardware its self which is faulty and will need repairing or replacing.

Create your recovery disks!

If you have purchased a new PC one of the main things you need to do is create your recovery disks.

If anything was to go wrong with your PC (even if its under the first years warranty) the first thing they will ask is if you have created your recovery disks And in most cases if you haven't created your recovery disks they expect you to buy a set from them.

So remember as soon as you get a new PC create your recovery disks!

Anti virus Software.. Do you have any?

What kind of anti virus software do you have on your PC?

I have had to remove a lot of viruses from PC's even though they had some sort of anti virus software installed, 9 times out of 10 the anti virus which was installed on the infected computer was a Free Antivirus which did not catch the virus in time and so ended up infecting the computer.

I have used a few free anti virus software but always ended up using the paid version and depending on which anti virus you go for you tend to get a lot more extra features included for example:

I now use Norton 360, with a free anti virus it just scanned my pc for viruses but with Norton 360 it will scan my PC for virus, tell me what website are safe to view, correct registry issues on my computer as well as a few more cool extra features.

So when you are thinking about protecting your PC look into the benefits of purchasing am anti virus.

Backup! Backup! Backup!

If you are like me you will have some sort of data on your PC which is important to you, but have you got this data backed up?

If your computers hard drive was to ever go faulty you could be at a high risk of loosing all your important data (like Pictures, Music or Home videos) but not if you have this data backed up in another safe place, if you search on the internet you will find most sites tell you if you don’t have your data saved in at least 3 places your data isn’t safe!

For Example I am also an amateur photographer so I have loads of photos which I want to keep safe, so in order to make sure I have these backed up I save them in more then one place:

Originals – These are on my computers hard drive.

First Backup – These are stored on an external hard drive.

Second Backup – These are stored on Recordable DVD's.

Now if I was really unlucky and I lost my backed up DVD's and my computers hard drive went faulty I would still be happy knowing my photos was safe on my external hard drive.

So please remember if you have any important data on your computer BACK IT UP you never know when something will go wrong until it is too late.

Windows Vista or 7 won't boot? Try this

Warning - This WILL delete all data on your PC including Music, Pictures, Videos and Documents.

If you have a PC with either Windows Vista or Windows 7 Installed and your PC has decided one day not to boot or keeps hanging, instead of taking it to be repaired try this:

Most PCs have something called a Recovery Partition which can be accessed during the boot sequence. Once you access this you can put your PC back to its factory settings (in most cases fixing the problem with windows not booting or hanging, as it deletes all the data)

How to access the recovery partition (Don't worry this is pretty straight forward)

1) Turn on your PC and keep tapping F8 (you will find F8 at the top of your keyboard)

2) After tapping F8 a few times you should see a black screen with white text, the top option should say "Repair your computer" press "Enter" to select this option.

3) Once in the recovery partition you may need to log in (if you haven't set a password just click "Next")

4) You will now see your computers recovery partition. Each PC is different but you just want to follow the steps to Recover your PC (Also known as Destructive Recovery)

From experience this option tends to be the one on the bottom on most PCs.  Another thing to look out for is you computers Manufactures name on the list as this tends to take you to their custom recovery screen which is a lot easier to follow.

If either your PC does not have the option "Repair Your Computer" or does not have an option to recover your PC in the recovery partition screen, then i am afraid you may have to purchase some recovery media from your computers manufacture (that is if you have not created these already). If you have created your recovery disks then you will also be able to follow the instructions supplied with your computer to recover using the disks you have created.

Free games!

Why pay money for games?
You can simply search on google for free online games and also offline games, try typing into google "free FPS" for first person shooter games or "free racing games" you will be surprised how many free games are out there.

Quick task manager

In windows vista and windows 7 you can press - cntrl alt and esc, to quicky get task manager