Speed up your notebook

Speed up your notebook

After many months with your old notebook (now) you finally start to realize that the time has come to look for alternaive means to speed things up and bring the notebook to its old glory self. Here are some tips...

Increase you RAM!
Most noteboks sold come with just enough memory to get started. Upgrading or increasing the RAM to the maximum allowed for your notebook increases the performance significantly. Ram is the single most effective upgrade to any notebook. This is the first step towards notebook nirvana. Also third party RAM is significantly cheaper and most notebook manufacturers allow for increase in ram without voiding the waranty. Adding more RAM will noticeably increase your computer’s speed and let you run more programs at once. Also your boot time will increase.

Defrag
Defragging your drive should increase system performance because your hard drive’s head won’t have to go searching to-and-fro for files dispersed across the drive; instead, they’ll all be packed together in order. Defragging is easy. Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Disk Defragmenter. Click the Defragment button, and then let your computer sit while it cleans up the mess you’ve made. Benefits of Defragmenting your Drive:

• Faster access to your files in your harddrive.
• Faster booting of your computer.
• Better overall performance of your drive.

So go ahead and defrag at least once a week.

Cut the Crapware
Many systems come with free trial software you don’t need, and these programs will often launch automatically every time your PC boots. Having several apps running simultaneously before you even start computing will slow your notebook down considerably.

In both Windows XP and Windows Vista, you’ll need to run msconfig from the Start menu. In Vista, type it in the Search box, and in XP, click Run first. Under Services, remove any programs you don’t need at boot. Users should expect to see quicker program launch times and better multitasking performance, because programs have been freed from RAM and are also consuming less of your CPU’s power. Laptops take less time to load completely into Windows, because fewer programs need to boot.

A free utility program called PC Decrapifier ( Welcome | The PC Decrapifier ) helps identify and remove any startup programs that laptop manufacturers, or you, have loaded onto your notebook. It can also reset your IE homepage if it’s been hijacked by spyware.

By eliminating these programs, you will have more RAM and CPU dedicated to tasks you really want to run.

Disable Search Indexing
Disabling search indexing will stop your computer from indexing file locations, which can slow your system. If you keep files organized and know where everything is, then turn this function off. In both XP and Vista, right-click your primary hard drive, and uncheck the box under the General tab that says, “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching.”

Disabling search indexing will result in faster program load times.

Kill Spyware
pyware is software that runs in the background, constantly sending information back to its host about your usage habits. Worse yet, it consumes system resources. Spybot Search & Destroy ( The home of Spybot-S&D! ), a free spyware-removal tool, is designed to remove these hidden programs. If you run Spybot often enough, you can prevent these issues from ever occurring.

Stop Unnecessary Background Services
Your computer works behind the scenes to communicate with your printer, run TCP/IP services, and more. However, some programs automatically start services that you don’t need running. The Google Updater service, which updates Google Earth, Google Toolbar, and other apps in Google Pack, starts automatically.

In XP and Vista, type “services.msc” into the Run box in XP or the Search box in Vista’s Start menu. A list of services will pop up. If you know of a few you don’t need, right-click, go to Properties, and then change the startup type to “manual” or “disabled.”

Without extra services running in the background, such as automatic downloads, XP and Vista notebooks will run faster because they were dedicating their resources to programs you want to run.

For an even better defrag than the one Windows comes with try JkDefrag

JK Defrag is a free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks.

I use Windows Live OneCare safety scanner: Free online tool for PC health and safety its free and by MS.

Windows Live OneCare safety scanner is a free service designed to help ensure the health of your PC.

• Check for and remove viruses
• Get rid of junk on your hard disk
• Improve your PC's performance

Great online free tool for your Windows XP!