How To Speed Up Your Computer

Here are ten tips for making your Windows computer run as fast as possible. These were written for Windows XP, but most of them will speed up other flavors of Windows as well.

Some of these are settings, some are hardware upgrades, and some are free third-party programs. These tips will add years of life to your old computer, and save you money compared to buying a new computer every couple years. They are in order from easiest to hardest.


1) Set your computer to "Classic View". To do this in XP, simply right-click on your desktop, go to properties, then to the Appearance tab. Then go to the drop-down menu labeled “Windows and buttons”, and select “Windows Classic style”. This gets rid of the childish glossy look that XP was hated for when it was released, and removes the "Aero Glass" effect if you are lucky enough to be using Windows 7. Using Windows Classic reduces the amount of RAM and CPU power needed, so your computer runs faster and looks more professional. This trick costs nothing, takes less than a minute, and is reversible if you do not like it.

2) Set your computer to run for fastest performance. In XP, hit Alt + Break, select "Advanced" tab, select "Settings" under the "Performance" section, then click “Adjust for best performance”. Hit OK a couple times to get back out of the dialog box, then reboot. You will notice an increase in speed, and your windows dialog boxes will be more grey and boxy. You will get used to this look.

3) Turn off Automatic Updates and automatic antivirus updates, and schedule them for a time when you are not sitting there trying to use the computer. I'm not saying do not update them, but set them for once a day, instead of occurring automatically all day long. This way they will not be using up your bandwidth while you are sitting there trying to access the internet.

4) Switch to Firefox or Google Chrome for your internet program, if you are on XP. Just google them and download them from the source. Internet Explorer will lag badly on XP, even on Internet Explorer 8. This is by design, to convince you that your old computer is “slow”, and that you must go buy a new computer with a new version of Windows. Microsoft is furious that hundreds of millions of computer users are still on Windows XP. So Microsoft is handicapping the older versions of Internet Explorer to punish their customers, and preventing XP users from upgrading to IE 9 or IE 10.

5) Install gamebooster. This is a small, free program that can be found on www.cnet.com and many other websites. It turns off unneeded background processes to free up your CPU and RAM. It was intended for gamers, but works great if you are trying to speed up an old computer too. It makes no permanent changes and it needs to be restarted every time you want it to run. If you choose to install it, be sure to read the downloader packages carefully when you are clicking "next", and be sure to uncheck the unneeded toolbars and unrelated crapware they may try to get you to agree to install. Some of the websites that offer gamebooster are sneaky, and will try to install funny toolbars or other junkware you don't want.

6) Reinstall Windows. If your computer has been running the same Windows installation for years, and is intolerably slow, it is often due to the build up of many unwanted programs, toolbars, spyware, registry errors, and other problems. Often the best way to clean it all up is to locate your restore CDs that came with your computer, and just and reinstall Windows altogether. Be sure to copy all your important data to a flash drive or external hard drive first before reinstalling Windows. Make sure you have drivers for other hardware you may have added that did not come with your computer, such as your graphics card or your printer.

7) Update your internet connection from your service provider. Also, you should probably get a faster home modem and router. Internet speeds continue to go up, and most providers are happy to increase your bandwidth for a few dollars more. Newer modems and routers can take advantage of this increased bandwidth and pass it on to your computer. This will make a huge difference in your internet experience.

8. Buy more RAM on your old computer. RAM is cheap, about $20 a GB for used chips. You can use up to 4GB on Windows XP. Vista, 7, and 8 can use 8GB, 16GB, or even 192 GB depending on what version you have. The first 2GB are the most important. If you only have 512MB adding another GB will make a huge difference in speed. Adding more than 2GB will not give you a huge performance boost, unless you are doing graphically intense stuff like watching streaming video. Every type of computer will use a different type of RAM, with funny names like "PC3200-DDR2". The best way to tell what kind of RAM you need is to remove it (carefully, with the power off and the cable unplugged) and write down the numbers on the label. Then look them up in Ebay, craigslist, or www.pricewatch.com (if you want to buy new RAM).

9) Buy a faster graphics card. First find out if you have a PCI, AGP, or PCI-express graphics port. These are the slots on the motherboard that the graphics card fits into. Each type of port is different. Then go on Ebay or craigslist and find a newer graphics card that will fit your type. Video gamers sell their perfectly good graphics cards online for pennies on the dollar. You should be able to upgrade your computer for less than $50, for a graphics card that probably cost some other schmuck $300 two years ago when it was new. Installing them is easy, just unplug the computer, remove the panel on the side, insert the new card in the slot, put the case back on, plug it in, restart the computer, and install the drivers. Be sure to get the CD that has the drivers, or check the manufacturer website to download them. If your new graphics card uses a lot more electricity than your old one you may need to upgrade your power supply as well.

10) Buy a faster CPU chip. First you need to identify your type of CPU. And to do that, you need to identify your motherboard. You can google your motherboard and CPU from the computer model number. If you have DirectX on your computer, it has a great tool called "DirectX Diagnostic Tool", and it shows you everything. You can open the "DirectX Diagnostic Tool" by going to Start->Run and typing "dxdiag" (no quotes). Then on the "System" tab look under Processor, and this is your CPU. If you don't have DirectX, there is another free program you can use called SiSandra. There are dozens of programs that can show you this information, if you don't have these ones. Once you know your CPU type, then look on Ebay or www.pricewatch.com for an upgrade. I replaced mine in my oldest computer for less than $20. Look on youtube to see how to replace a CPU. There are many video tutorials there. Be sure to unplug your computer before you do any electrical work. Also always look for a notch on your CPU chip that lines up with the notch on the CPU socket, so you don’t put it in the wrong way. Replacing the CPU sounds hard, but if you are handy enough to replace your RAM, you can probably replace your CPU too. It can produce a huge increase in performance for a very low price. You may need more power, or even another fan if you use more elctricity or generate too much heat.

There you go. Hope that helps.

It is recommended to defrag your HD every once in awhile. You can use in-built Disk Defragmenter or better yet Piriform's Defraggler: http://www.piriform.com/defraggler. It supports NTFS and FAT32 systems.

The other useful program is CCleaner. It's free, fast and removes all the junk that other applications leave in your system. Also from Piriform. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner.

Thanks Butterfly for the tips.

Yeah there are many other tips I didn't put in here too, like you can use Start -> Run -> msconfig -> Startup -> and select "Disable All". This will turn off a lot of background processes that you probably never use anyway.


Also, if you are stuck using Internet Explorer (if you are on a computer at your job for example), you can speed it up a lot by going to Tools -> Internet Options -> Browsing history -> Settings -> Check for newer versions of stored pages -> change it from "Automatically" to "Every time I visit the webpage"

Another thing a lot of people do is use multiple partitions on their hard drive, and use the first partition for their operating system, and then store all their files on another partition. This tends to make the primary partition run better.

Here's another tip for players still using XP - reformat your primary partition with FAT32.

Don't laugh, I tried it out and there is a significant speed increase booting, opening files, loading anything that requires huge numbers of files. It won't improve your network or your frames per second but your operating system will run faster.

Why? Because NTFS (the modern format most computers use) adds compression, encryption, ownership attributes, etc to the MFT (master file table). This makes it take more time to read large numbers of files.

I figured this out sort of on accident, then I googled it to understand "why" it was faster. I didn't read about it first then try it, but I noticed it first and then decided to research it. So I know it works.

I had bought two identical 64GB flash drives. Both came with FAT32 as the file system. I wanted to use one of them for storing virtual machines. These are "virtual" installations of operating systems that can be run on any computer that has a program called virtualbox installed. I was running Windows 7, Windows 8, and WinServer 2008 virtual machines, and they of course require NTFS. So I had to format my flash drive as NTFS to install my virtual machines. OK so far so good.

A bit later I wanted to add some music to this flash drive, so I copied a few hundred music files to it. I made the same copy of music to my FAT32 flash drive, using the same computer running XP-SP3.

I timed both copy operations and the one with NTFS took literally twice as long to write the exact same files as the flash drive with FAT32. Hmm... Then I noticed when I loaded them all in Windows Media Player (version 11 in case you are wondering, yeah I know the newer versions are terrible) that the files in FAT32 loaded to a playlist and could be played much faster than the same fileset on the NTFS flash drive.

So then I tried an entire XP installation to see if it was faster. And to my surprise the effect works on the entire operating system. The only downside is that my partition size is limited to 32GB, but that's OK since keeping your primary partition small and uncluttered is best for performance no matter what file system you are using anyway.

So that's my story. In my opinion XP runs much faster on FAT32 than on NTFS.

Also, be sure you use the largest sector size available, preferably 64k. Hard drive space is so cheap the old argument of "conserving hard drive space" is irrelevant, so larger sectors are the best choice. The file table has to keep track of what files are assigned to every single sector on your partition, so limiting the number of sectors (by making them larger so there are fewer of them on the same size partition) will also speed up file loading operations.