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Why is My Computer Slow?

By: One Small Voice

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One of my elderly computer clients recently asked me: “Should I buy this registry repair product being sold via the article": http://www.aralifestyle.com/article.aspx?UserFeedGuid=2891787b-7fcf-4ce7-89ec-599920ae45cc&ArticleId=950&ComboId=0&title=Computer-Slowing-Down-What-to-Do-About-It

To answer his question, I first “asked” Leo at: http://ask-leo.com/why_is_my_machine_slowing_down.html for some background information. Leo always has good reviews and here he gives other reasons why there may be computer slow downs, including impatient computer users. Of course Leo is not trying to sell products in his columns and I like to provide my clients with what ever free products are available that will do what they need to do.

BTW, this registry repair product you asked about will only do 20 repairs for free than it is $29.95 to do the rest. And I not sure if Leo mentions the free safety scan (which does registry repairs for free) via Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/products/computer/safetyscanner.mspx

Microsoft is now hiding this utility because they are selling it as their own www.onecare.com (anti-virus, anti-spyware, disk cleanup, defragger, and registry scanner product) and part of their “live” promotion with “live” meaning that your future (in Microsoft dreams) computing will be done (in the form of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher etc) via the Internet using Microsoft servers (for a price). BTW, I found this OneCare product at Walmart for $10 less than what it costs online. And you can also use it on 3 computers for 1 license!

I tried OneCare for a year as my anti-virus/anti-spyware program (along with Norton and McAfee at different times) but OneCare did seem to slow down my computer whenever it was running (which is always) so I went back to the free anti-virus programs at www.Avast.com (look hard for the free home version) or at http://free.avg.com . Then I run the Microsoft free safety scan when things feel to be slowing down. You can also run a free anti-virus scan called “Housecalls” at www.TrendMicro.com .

I don’t think any of these tools do a very needed scandisk on the hard drive itself to fix what I guarantee your computer to slow down. This scandisk utility is found if you click on “My Computer” (if it is an icon on your desk top) or do a “Win + E” (the [Win] key is often between the [CTL] and the [ALT] key on desktop keyboards) to open your Windows Explorer (a.k.a. File Manager) then right clicking on the “C” drive.

There you will find Tools and Check Now. Click “Check Now” then both check box options. This will not run until you reboot your computer. What it will do is to mark off ( think “X” out) the bad spots on your hard drive so the computer will not use these spots again (and try to recover whatever data is in those bad spots). How does your computer and especially laptops get bad spots? Bump! Scratch! Smoke! Dust! Like a needle on an old record player. BTW bad spots causes your computer to reread the data until it is successful or gives up (even if it a reread is only a micro second, micro seconds can add up into slow minutes).

After the “Check Now” completes upon reboot, then go back to Tools and “Defragment Now” to remove the blank spots on each of your hard disks. Blank spots also guarantee that you computer will slow down!
When you (or the computer system) deletes any file it leaves a blank spot (a.k.a. free space). Then when you (or the computer system) adds a file, it uses that blank spot, then the next blank spot, then the next blank spot to store your file. So you get bits of your file located in various blank spots a.k.a. a fragmented file. And your computer has to go to each fragment to get your whole file and in reading all those fragments takes time (even if it only takes a micro second to jump from one spot to another, micro seconds can add up into slow minutes).

And now that you have done a frequent “Check Disk” and a “Defragment Now”, go back to Tools and do a “Backup Now” because sooner or later your hard disk is going to die. And keep a copy of your important stuff that you have backed up off-site because fires and floods and hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes and terrorists happen too and those events can destroy computers and backup copies at the same time if they are in the same location!

Hint: Do you want a free place to keep up to 25 gb of your data off site?
(Free except it will not save any file larger than 50 mb) check out skydrive.live.com

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

OneSmallVoice@StuffedWidgets.com

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