Cleaning out your PC
by Sharon Wichman

After awhile of normal use your Computer starts running slower and slower. The more things you do on your Computer the more it gets bogged down. 

  • The two things that keep your computer running smoothly and fast, besides the processor speed, are your RAM memory and your Virtual Memory. Most of you already know this but some people think that hard drive space is your memory. They always ask me “How much memory do I have left.”?  Here is the difference between the two. 

  • First of all, this is memory

& this is a hard drive.  Both are physically installed into your computer but one, the memory is temporary & the other, the hard drive is permanent, until that is you delete or uninstall something.

  • Your RAM memory is actual memory installed into your computer. The more RAM memory you can install in your computer the better. To check the maximum RAM your computer can hold will be in the book that came with your computer, under maximum RAM or go to the manufacturers website for your computer and do a search for your model. Most of the time your computer never comes with the maximum RAM already installed.  So adding as much memory as you can to your PC, will greatly improve the performance and speed.  There are several ways to check how much RAM is installed on your PC.

     ----Right click on your “My computer” then properties.
     ----Hold down the alt button and double click my computer    
     ----Push down the windows key and the pause break key
     ----Or through control panel/system

  • The next type of memory is called Virtual Memory. I was trying to figure out a word besides virtual that I can use to describe this type of memory so I checked out Microsoft Encarta to see how it worded it. Virtual memory, according to Microsoft® Encarta, is an illusion of increased computer memory capacity: Good word Illusion—it’s a technique for creating the illusion that a computer has more memory than it really has by swapping blocks or pages of data between memory and external storage, meaning a hard drive. The more hard drive space you have the better because Windows creates a file on your hard drive called a swap file, to make your computer think it has more memory. The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer. But, the more you work on the pc and install programs, copy and save files to your hard drive like photos & music also the more things you do on your PC the more it gets bogged down by temporary files, it fills up the cache, fills up IE with cookies, puts spyware, trackers, adware and yes, even virus’ into your computer the slower your computer gets.

One thing that will help is to restart your PC once in awhile.  It cleans out the Virtual Memory. Here are the other things that are necessary to keep your PC running smoothly and fast.

1.     Check space on C: drive and if need be move files to a larger drive, a CD/DVD or a flash drive to make more space for the Virtual Memory pagefile if you can.
Caution--Only files NOT associated to any program can be moved, like music files, pictures or videos.

2.   If you still need more space on the C drive and you have a bigger internal hard drive you can change the Virtual Memory to the larger drive.  Again open up System Properties as before, then the Advanced Tab and click on the advanced tab there and then Change, specify which drive to use and click OK.

3.    Make sure your computer has all it’s updates. Go to Start, All Programs, then on the top is Windows Update.

4.     Run a Spyware program like Spybot-Search and Destroy, or Ad-aware

5.     Run a Antivirus program like Avast or mcfee

6.     Run disk cleanup. go into My Computer, right click on the C: drive, then properties, now click on Disk Cleanup.

7.   Check for any programs to uninstall. Open up control panel, then add & remove programs. Are there any programs you no longer need? click on remove.

8.     Run check disk under my Computer, right click the C:, then properties, click on the tools tab then Check Now. It will check your disk.

9.   Last, also under properties on the tools tab Run defrag .