Is it always so easy to speed your computer up?

[jerry12953]

My partner's desk top which is pretty ancient (c 7-8 years) was running so slowly it was virtually unusable.

She was advised to remove any unused software to speed it up, and it worked! it's faster than my laptop now!

 

[PsiFox]

Add more RAM if it can take it. On a model of that age RAM will be cheap and help a lot.

 

[andrewc]

Uninstalling a lot of those silly fonts people accumulate can help as well.

 

[Jim.R]

A nice fresh install of Windows always appears to do the trick. I used to do that about once a year before switching to OSX.

Anyone else remember the old Pentiums that used to have a "Turbo" button on the front? Did they actually do anything, and why did the manufacturers think they were a good idea? When would you not want the machine running as fast a possible?!?!?

 

[Byker28i]

The Turbo button was for compatability for old games/programmes. It slowed the PC down, rather than sped up.

 

[neil_g]

Add more RAM if it can take it. On a model of that age RAM will be cheap and help a lot.

not necessarily.. it its old to the point where the memory is hard to source then new prices are pushed up. however ebay is your friend.. lol

if you want a quick way of speeding up your machine get rid of those million icons down by the clock

 

[jerry12953]

if you want a quick way of speeding up your machine get rid of those million icons down by the clock

How do you do that?

And looking down the list of software installed on my computer, what are the following? Bearing in mind that I use a Canon 5D, Epson R800, Photoshop and Lightroom, could I safely uninstall some of the following?

Adobe Acrobat 5.0
Adobe Reader 9.1.3 (is this for PDF's?)
Photoshop Album Starter Edition
8 separate items for Canon Zoombrowser EX
Epson Photoquicker, Print CD and Image Framer Tool 2.1
Java 6 - 4 separate upgrades
NTI back-up now
NTI CD & DVD maker gold
Omni Pag SE
Quick Time
Real Player

I've no idea what some of these do, or why they're there!

cheers!

jerry

 

[Chaz Photos]

Best think to do is run ccleaner and cleanout the crap and fix the Reg
prog you not use only take up space Oh and lots load part when starting up look in msconfig you can turn them off

 

[Thmaga]

How do you do that?

And looking down the list of software installed on my computer, what are the following? Bearing in mind that I use a Canon 5D, Epson R800, Photoshop and Lightroom, could I safely uninstall some of the following?

Adobe Acrobat 5.0 Older version of adobe reader
Adobe Reader 9.1.3 (is this for PDF's?) Yes
Photoshop Album Starter Edition
8 separate items for Canon Zoombrowser EX
Epson Photoquicker, Print CD and Image Framer Tool 2.1
Java 6 - 4 separate upgrades needed for somewebsites/programs etc
NTI back-up now bog standard bundled backuo software, remove if you dont use
NTI CD & DVD maker gold same as above
Omni Pag SE scanner software
Quick Time needed to play certain video/audio files,
Real Player same as above

I've no idea what some of these do, or why they're there!

cheers!

jerry

You can safely un-install all of these

In general un-installing programmes you don't use will do absolutely nothing to the speed of the computer unless your hard-drive is full, or they're running in the background/have a little icon by the clock.

to remove the programs that run at start-up(and appear next to the clock), you need to go to start>run (or just type in the search on vista and win 7) and type msconfig

Here you can untick the programmes you don't want to load when you start the computer,


and I agree with chaz about ccleaner, brilliant tool.

 

[jerry12953]

Thanks for that. Unfortunately the programs in my MSCONFIG are not identified by manufacturer, so it difficult to tell what they are....!

I think its best to leave well alone.....