Fix Computer Performance – Clear That Clutter!
Why Less Is More :
If you are even slightly interested in computer optimization tips, you must have heard it a thousand times before.
To fix computer performance issues just “Run a Defragment tool” and “Do a Check Disk to scan for Errors!”
Yes, of course these are both essential parts of a computer maintenance routine, but there’s a lot of other things you should consider that might fix computer performance issues.
You might even be able to stretch the useful life of your PC for longer than the currently expected 24 months! It is possible to keep a computer running smoothly and speedily for a lot longer than that in fact, with just a little regular PC maintenance.
Fix Computer Performance – Clear That Clutter!
A simple step towards improving your computers performance is to get shut of all the clutter on its hard drive.
If your disk drive is full of files, folders and programs that are unused and unwanted it is having to work harder than it should, causing wear and tear unnecessarily.
You can use (and should be using regularly) Disk Defragmenter to alleviate the stress that working around this data causes to the hard drive, but that isn’t actually curing the problem.
All that defragmentation does is to reorganize the data blocks in a systematic approach that makes them simpler and quicker to find, and access when needed . This cuts down the workload in dealing with them, but doesn’t affect the root cause.
Every few months you ought to look through the list of programs on your PC, and decide which have earned their place, and which could go. As a general rule of thumb any program you haven’t used in six months you probably don’t really need. If it was a “paid for” program perhaps back it up to another, external drive before removing from the hard drive.
All these unnecessary files should be deleted – it’s no use just tidying them up!
For a lot of people deleting datafiles is too worrying to attempt, and often is totally avoided. It’s true that it does help to know which of your PCs files can be safely deleted, and which should be left well alone.
You certainly musn’t go digging around in your computers systems, deleting anything unfamiliar! This has been known to take perfectly good computers and render them in need of a complete OS re-install.
If you are not sure of a files importance it’s always best to play it safe, so that you can’t possibly corrupt any programs that are essential to the operating system.
So it’s generally a good idea to use a program to help you delete files safely, instead of trying to do it manually. Using Uninstallation software you can be sure that only unimportant data will be deleted. The Uninstallation process should check over your PCs system and scan the programs to be uninstalled to discern those files which are being utilized by other systems on your computer, against those files that can be deleted without effect.
All Windows computers come with the “Add/Remove Programs” software, accessed through Control Panel. Add/Remove or Uninstall helps you delete programs that are no longer wanted, along with extra files used by some programs, such as databases, registry keys, desktop icons and dll files.
However, even using Windows Add/Remove isn’t without consequences. It will safely uninstall most programs and their associated files, but even after a complete program removal it does tend to leave a few stragglers behind. These stragglers, more properly “orphan files”, are left after each uninstall process and can build up to become a real source of problems.
This certainly won’t help fix computer performance or prolong your PCs working life.
The reason that orphan files are left after uninstalling the program is that they aren’t actually part of the programs files. The uninstallation process can only uninstall the exact program files that were originally installed.
So many files, like temporary datafiles, user created files, damaged files left after a forced shutdown, and assorted other file types become orphaned after uninstalling the original program.
In order to remove these orphan files you will need to use another program designed for the task. Most good registry repair utilities will not only fix computer registry problems, but also include a scan for any files that have no associated program, and will select them for deletion if you wish.
Some orphans you don’t want to delete :
There are times when you don’t want to take action on the orphans, for instance documents or photos created before uninstalling a program will become orphans, but you won’t want to lose them.
The best way to avoid issues with losing data you have created if you decide to uninstall a program, is to change their format before uninstalling the parent program.
If you have decided to replace the program with another of the same type it’s simply a matter of using “save as” to alter the format to that of your new program.
Otherwise, you can often use a standard Windows format which will allow you to access them with many different programs, though possibly not saving every feature.
Another workaround is to save them to an external hard drive, CD or USB pen drive. That way they are still available to you at a later date, but in the meanwhile won’t be cluttering up your hard drive as random, inaccessible data blocks.
Having made sure that you won’t be losing any orphans you care for, you can then go ahead and run your registry fix software to clear out all the clutter left behind after the uninstall process.
Running a registry repair utility like this can release anything from under one MB up to possibly five MB and more of your hard disk. It might not sound like it will make a big difference, but that much less clutter to push around is that much less work for your computer to do.
It won’t on its own fix computer performance issues, but it will help to keep your PC running smoothly and speedily for longer.
