How do i speed up my PC?

Question

Whenever i run BIT TORRENT or LIMEWIRE the rest of my pc runs like its 10 years old and connected by dialup. I have a 2meg per second broadband connection but every other application i use is badly affected. How do i free up some memory

Answer 1

Here is my checklist, which I observe regularly:

1. Set wallpaper and screensavers to blank or none — they run continuously in the background and use memory.
-----right-click on the desktop, select Properties
-----click the screensaver tab, on the left where it says "screensaver," select none.
-----click the desktop tab, for background, select none
2. Review your start menu – remove anything you don’t need on a daily basis — load games, etc. on an as-needed basis.
-----click Start, Settings, Taskbar and Start Menu
-----click the Start Menu tab
-----select a program you do not want to load at Startup, then click remove.
-----Caution -- do not touch anything you are not sure of or you will mess up your computer royally.
3. From Internet Explorer, click Tools, Internet Options: delete cookies, delete files (offline), and clear history. (You can also set days to store history to 0.)
----- These actions will clear your computer’s cache. (For a description of cache, go to http://help.yahoo.com/l/ph/yahoo/mail/access/access-27210.html )
4. Run Disk Cleanup, Scandisk, Defrag at least every two weeks (the more frequently they are run, the less time they take).
-----These can be found in Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools.
5. Periodically, click Start, Programs, Run — then type ipconfig renew
(that’s ipconfig space renew).
6. Optional: Speed vs Goodies — in the Control Panel, System, Advanced, Performance, Settings — you can have visual effects or let Windows select the best options. I am using “Best Performance.” Your choice.
These things should increase speed and free up memory as much as possible.

Go through all these and you will definitely see a difference.

Answer 2

The Humble One gives some excellent tips but he missed a very crucial one which will make a massive difference to the speed of your PC

Switch of Indexing Service unless you really do a lot of searching for stuff on your hard drive. All Indexing does is constant access you drive and catalogue all the files and the contents.

To switch it off in XP go to My Computer, right click the icon for your hard drive (normally C:), go to Properties, and unclick the box for "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching" and that's it.

The easiest way to speed up after this is buy some more memory. DIMM chips are so cheap these days you can easily double your memory and therefore your PC speed.

Answer 3

First of all: get Shareaza. It integrates both BitTorrent and Limewire as well as other P2P standards into one program.
www.shareaza.com

Secondly: Uninstall programs you don't use, run anti-virus and anti-spyware, disable devices you don't use in the device manager (start, right-click "my computer", properties, hardware tab, device manager), and defrag your hard drive. These are just some of the many things you can do to speed up your performance, and all should be done regularly.

Answer 4

The answer above covers it. But also be sure to run some anti spyware adware and malware programme regularly, some of those things can slow you down more then all the stuff mentioned above. Just an added idea

Answer 5

You need to limit the download speeds of your P2P applications. This will somewhat restore your internet speed. Adjust your speeds until you reach an acceptable compromise.

Also consider more RAM - 1GB minimum when running XP/Vista.

Answer 6

Yes...I hear that limewire slows down the hard drive. I would try deleting any unused applications/downloads/
documents. That should help a bit.

Answer 7

hi ya just gotta go to a shop and tell dem to upgrade u`r ram

Answer 8

GO BUY A iMAC THEY ARE WAY FASTER AND DONT GET VERY LITTLE VIRUSES.

Answer 9

buy a new one