How to Make Your Computer Run Almost like New (part 1)

This is part one in a series of articles on ways that you can keep your computer working like it did when it was first new. In this series you will learn how to remove unwanted programs. Clean out old system files. Remove viruses. Optimize your system and clean your hardware.

When you first unpacked your computer and hooked it up you were amazed at how fast it was and how quickly web pages loaded.

But as time went on you began to notice that your computer kept getting slower and slower and before you knew it your computer isn't as fast as it used to be. It doesn't boot as fast as it used to and now your web pages are taking longer and longer to load.

Well there are many factors that cause this problem and most of them you can take care of yourself.

As time goes on web pages, computer programs, and the Internet itself grows in leaps and bounds. Twenty years ago if you had a computer with 256 megs of RAM and a 20 megabit hard drive you had a top of the line machine.

Today it is a lot different. You need a minimum of 1 gig of RAM and around a 200 gig hard drive. Not to mention at least a 1 gigahertz processor and as I said this is about the bare minimum.

So what can you do to get some of this speed back? First I will tell you about ways that you can do this yourself for free and secondly I will tell you about some ways that you can do this that will cost you a little bit of money and you might need to seek some help if you are not comfortable working inside your computer.

Every time you go on the Internet you have the potential of getting a virus on your computer. Most computers today come with anti-virus software installed on the computer as a free trial. And after the trial period if you want to keep the software working you have to buy it.

But most people will not purchase the software and the virus protection will stop working so then their computer is unprotected. But you don't have to pay for an anti-virus program if you don't want to. There is a program that I recommend called AVG and they have a free version of the program at http://free.avg.com/ww-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

Now let me explain something about ant-virus programs. They will NOT keep you from getting a virus. There isn't a program anywhere that I know of that will do that. But what anti-virus software WILL do is alert you when you have a virus and help you get rid of it.

If you don't want to pay for the software that's already on there then first thing you need to do is get you a copy of another ant-virus program and even though I recommend AVG you can go with anything you like. But before you install the new software uninstall the old software.

Even though the old software may have stopped working it is still on your computer and might keep the new software from working like it should.

Now that you have your anti-virus program installed go ahead and run a virus scan of your system to make sure there are no problems with your system. Depending on the size of your system this could take from one to several hours and when the scan is running it might slow your computer down even more. So you might want to do this scan when the computer isn't going to be used for awhile.

In Part two you will learn how to clean out your system of all unwanted files and programs.