What steps can i take to get my computer to run at it's fastest?

Question

I am trying to play a game that is runing slowly. I have all of the system requirements. And have tried everything i know.

Answer 1

Here are the standard remedies:

A major cause of slow PC's is fragmentation of the hard drive.
You need to defragment the HD at least once a week if not more depending on how much you use your computer, and what you do with it.

One way is to use the defragment utility built into Windows XP. It is slow but does the job rather well. Go to:
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then click on System Defrag to run the tool. It will take several hours so let it run overnight or simply walk away from your PC for a few hours.

A great program for defragging automatically is Diskeeper 10. It costs $30 but is well worth it. Go to www.download.com and search for Diskeeper. Read the Publishers Description and the tech and user reviews. It can be scheduled to run automatically as the program deems necessary, and if you are using your PC and the program launches itself, it will take a backseat to whatever you are doing and give you the priority for CPU usage. I think you'll agree it's a good program to have. It precludes your needing to remember to defrag at regular intervals.

Also, another major cause of a slow PC is programs that are running in the background. Here's another really good Microsoft tool. Go to Start > Run > type in msconfig in the box and click OK.
This will bring up a window with several tabs at the top. Click on the “Startup” tab. It will list the programs that are running on your PC and eating up resources. Look them over carefully and turn off any that don’t absolutely have to be running. Simply click on the “check mark” in the little box beside the program name. Clicking on it will remove the check mark. Once you have edited the Startup list, click on Apply and then on OK. Once you have exited the window, reboot your PC for the settings to take effect.

Another good thing to have is a little program called FreeRAM Pro. It is free and is available from www.download.com This program puts a little RAM meter on the System Tray and shows how much RAM you have remaining that you are not using at any given time. I think you may be surprised at how little RAM you have to run other programs. Also, once it is installed you can right click on the little meter, then click on RESTORE and it will open the RAM display window. You can tweak the settings so it will display your CPU usage also. Then just click “Minimize” and then “To System Tray” to return to the Task Bar.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

Does it run other games fine? You may have to scale down the graphics options within the game. Check and adjust those settings and see if that makes any improvement.
Also, make sure your game is the only program running; turn off any torrents, downloads or programs running in the background
If it doesn't help improve the performance try the following:

1. Run anti-virus and anti-spyware programs and get rid of any offending matter. I personally use AVG (free) Antivirus and a combination of Ad Aware (free version) and Spybot Search & Destroy (free) All can be found on http://www.filehippo.com

2. Download a (free) program called CrapCleaner. Install and run it. This is a more simplified way of removing temp files, temp internet files, cookies, etc. I find it works much faster than the standard preinstalled Windows Disk Cleanup.

3. Run msconfig. (Start-->Run--> msconfig)
Navigate to the Startup tab. Remove the check mark from any programs that you do not need to run at startup. But if you're not 100% sure about an item there, either don't deselect it or research what it is carefully! As a very, very general rule it's safe to deselect items located in C:\Program Files\.

After making your changes, apply the changes and restart your machine.

4. Defrag your hard drive, using either the Windows utility or a third party solution

5. If you're still having issues, close ALL programs and hit Alt+Ctrl+Delete. Select the Task Manager button and then select the Processes tab. Take note of any processes running that are using an excessive amount of memory or CPU cycles. The exception to this would be 'System Idle Process': it is perfectly normal for it to be using 92, 94 ever 99% of CPU cycles. Google the name of any process that is running excessively and determine a course of action from there in order to deal with the offending process.

Answer 3

Delete all files that you do not use. Defragment the drive. That is about it...You can try shutting down nonessential programs...but you really need to know what you are doing, and what the game requires in order to do this without crashing.

Answer 4

Try shutting down programs that are running, check your available RAM and hard drive space to make sure you are not low.

Answer 5

http://bartman1.blogspot.com/ go to this site and follow the directions