Troubleshooting Slow PC Performance Issues

When a PC is new, everything seems to running at its best. It’s only with time that our systems begin to slow down and finally it’s time to address the issue. Here are the most common things to look at for troubleshooting and fixing slow PC performance problems.

1. Spyware, Adware and Viruses

With so many of them being introduced on the Internet everyday, it’s quite possible that your PC is the new home of one of those annoying things. Run a full system scan for any potential traces and presence of viruses and spywares. Our recommendation for spyware is either Spybot or Ad-Aware and for anti-virus, simply update your anti-virus definition files to the latest version and scan your system. You may also consider checking the following:

• Check the Task Manager for CPU and RAM utilization and check the processes which are consuming most of it. Kill the suspicious looking processes and also do a windows search to locate those executables. Right click on the executable file under question and check the summary for it’s vendor. Most of the spyware and adware executables are not signed by its author. Try to rename them and restart the system to check.
• Identify and remove services that are not required to load when windows starts. Some common ones are messengers, utilities etc. Click on Start->Run and type ‘msconfig’, then select Startup tab [last one] to identify and disable services from loading.

2. Problem with RAM

If you have not upgraded your system for very long, it could be a case of bad RAM but if it was upgraded, you must check and ensure that the type of RAM you have on our motherboard is supported by it and also if you have multiple RAM chips, ensure that they have same specifications.

3. Hard Drive issues

One very simple way of identifying failing hard disk is by using the SMART feature on the motherboard. If yours does not has one, here is what you can do. When system slows down or is taking longer time to load an application, listen to check if your hard disk makes ‘tic tic’ sound. This is different from the regular sound every hard disk makes. Run the disk defragmentor program and see if that helps. Otherwise, it might be the time to replace the hard drive.

4. Recent changes to your systems

These changes could be in terms of a device driver update, changes to BIOS settings, newly installed application or a recent power failure resulting in loss of integrity of the file system. Disable the device drives [or better uninstall it], any newly installed services, restore the BIOS to default and run ‘chkdsk’ tool to check the integrity of your file system.

5. Space issues on the hard disk

Click start->run and type %temp% and hit enter. This will open your default folder which stores all temporary files. Highlight all of them and do a shift+delete. Then check for free space on the partition that has the operating system. At any time there should be free space equivalent to two times of your RAM. If your system has 1GB RAM, there should be 2GB of free disk space [Not a must though]. The reason is simple, the OS uses disk space for swapping and if it runs out of free space to swap, it may result in a slow down or crash.

Checking your system regularly for any potential spywares, viruses and other things listed above, keeps your system fit for longer duration.