Home Computer Talk

If you’ve had a computer for more than six months I just know you’ll know the feeling – it seems that wonderful zippy machine you paid your hard-earned cash for has decided to ensure you work out your karma by learning the ultimate in patience. Everything takes time – it seems like each day the same tasks get slower.

One reason might be the Wintel game where the software bloat of the major companies is designed to ensure an ongoing need for upgrades, first of hardware, then of software, then hardware… you get the idea.

But unless you’ve just added the newest Microsoft bloatware to your cherished baby, the slowdown is more likely to have its source in one of two other problems. Actually three problems, but one of them you can resolve by shutting down and restarting your computer. You’d be surprised how many users don’t shut their computers down these days. They either let it run all night in powersave or, for a laptop, let it go into hibernate or standby mode.

Windows is not a tight Operating System; it doesn’t enforce good housekeeping from the applications nor does it reliably release resources once they are used. So a regular shutdown and restart can do wonders in restoring unallocated memory andclearing the swap file.

So, main source #1:… Fragmentation. Because of how Windows works with files, over time the files get split into small bits, scattered across your hard disk. You don’t notice it (except in how long it takes to load and save documents) because a bit of software called a File Allocation Table keeps track of where all the bits are.

Windows also uses a part of your hard disk called the Swap File to supplement active memory. When you have multiple programs open and swap from one to another, Windows stores the currently active program in the Swap File and calls the background one into active memory where it will run much faster. When the swap file gets fragmented, Windows slows down.

So, on a regular basis, defrag your hard disk. Windows comes with an application to do it on a basic level (check Note that in there also is Disk Cleanup – you should run that first before defrag as it will clean up a lot of temporary files and other hard disk space-wasters. Unless you know for sure what all the items in Disk Cleanup are, just accept the default settings for now – if you’re curious or want to be more efficient, ask here.

The initial disk defrag can take hours, so feel free to start it late at night and let it run while you sleep. The Windows version is pretty bombproof.

It’s also not the most efficient version – if you have a serious need for speed on your PC, check the commercial defrag products like Diskeeper, or google for disk defragmenters. Symantec used to have a good version called speedisk but I’ve only heard complaints about it over the past couple of years.

The # 2 reason for slowdown will be explored in a later post.