Why is my computer so slow?

There are several reasons why a PC starts to run slow. Background programs that are still running in your computer could make the execution of other programs slow down. This is due to the background programs taking up quite a large amount of your RAM. The icons in your system tray are some of the background programs that are taking up the memory. To have your PC run optimally, you need to take care of the background programs and set the minimum which you need to run. As you boot your computer, some of these programs start by themselves. To configure the programs or to stop them from running at the time of booting, you should use the Start/Search function and either remove or delete them from “program start up”.

For your computer to function normally, it is always desirable that your hard drive has free space for your computer to use when executing tasks. If you do not have enough free space left in the hard drive, your computer may get slow. In order to be safe, you should allow 3 to 4 MB of free space available on your hard disk. Some computers have more than one drive installed. In this case, you need to have the space available in your “C” drive or any other drive in which you have installed your Windows operating system. In case you do not have any free space, or the space that you have in your drive is not enough, you should delete some of the programs.

At times, the updates of your Windows operating system or any other software may run automatically when you are browsing the Internet. This mostly happens at the background, rendering your computer to run slow for as long as the update is not completely downloaded. As soon as the computer finishes downloading, your computer should come back to normal speed. In order to avoid this, you would need to disable automatic updating.

Your Windows operating system scans your hard drive to retrieve required data at the time it is executing assigned tasks. If data in your hard drive is fragmented, Windows takes longer to scan the hard disk in order to find that data. This makes your computer run slow. You need to regularly de-fragment your hard drive, so the data remains contiguous. By de-fragmenting the data in your hard drive, your Windows operating system takes less time to scan the hard drive to retrieve the required data.

If you regularly play games on your PC and find your computer is running slow, it could be that the RAM in your computer needs to be upgraded. Games require lots of RAM spaces to run, and you would need to upgrade your RAM suitably to run games software in your PC.

You must not have device drivers in your computer which are conflicting with each other. For example, if you have two different video drivers in your computer, your Windows operating system would not be able to decide which one to use. This would cause your computer to run slow. To run normally, you should remove one of the drivers from the system. When you open your “system” from the control panel, proceed to the “hardware” tab and then to “device manager”, you may find some of the conflicting device components marked in yellow with an exclamation mark. Either re-load the drivers for those devices, or remove them from your system if you find them of no use.

One obvious reason for your computer to run slow is the accumulation of viruses and spyware which came in either while you were browsing the Internet, or through attachments in your emails. You should have proper ant-virus and anti-spyware software installed for scanning, detecting, and removal of any such threats. Spyware are programs that self-install in your computer and may run in the background transferring all your personal information to an outsider through your Internet connection.

The Windows registry is a database which holds important information for your Windows operating system to perform. As you use the computer and install and remove software from your system, the registry develops errors. These errors make your registry grow larger. Your windows operating system looks for data in the registry to execute any assigned task. If your registry has grown large, Windows takes time to sca, making your computer run slow. You need to remove the errors from your registry with a proper registry cleaning software which would also optimize the registry.