You spend ages researching all the information, poring over prices, looking at functionality and different configurations. Then when you do finally decide to invest what amounts to a significant proportion of your savings in a computer, you want it to last you a good few years. Even state-of-the-art computers age very quickly, however, and in a year and a half it will be outdated. While your PC may still have reasonably good specifications, its component parts, such as a laptop’s battery, will start to wear out. Some ageing computers show signs of overheating (which affects the lifespan of components) or program errors caused by incorrect usage. In addition, the traces left by innumerable program installations and uninstallations, as well as unnecessary files, place a load on the system. The net result is that your computer slows down and performs much worse. So what can be done to turn it back into the speedy machine you originally bought? There are several ways to give it a new lease on life using both software and hardware.
Installing and using some programs results in a large number of files being scattered across your system. These files often remain even though the program that created them has been deleted. Other types of files, such as temporary files, cookies and your browser cache and history also take up space on your hard disk. Try to remove such files once in a while, preferably using a program that identifies and deletes these unnecessary files for you. That way you will not have to check the files individually and can avoid the risk of accidentally deleting an important or useful file. Norton Cleanup is particularly helpful when it comes to freeing up space on your system.
With the boom in digital photos and downloading audio and video files from the Internet, today’s computers are a photo album, hi-fi system and VCR rolled into one. This sort of usage eats up both memory and disk space: with a two minute video clip weighing in at nearly 2MB, it is easy to imagine how much space is taken up by films that are several hours long! If the computer is also being used to surf the Internet or play computer games, it won’t take long before it begins to reach the limits of its performance. Any such large files should therefore be stored on removable media such as CD-ROMs or even USB keys so that they do not clutter the system. Backup programs like Norton Ghost create automatic backups, making this process easy. You can also partition your hard disk and store your files on different partitions.
There are several factors – deleting programs without uninstalling them correctly, bugs introduced by applications downloaded from the Internet or hardware incompatibilities, to name a few – that can cause your PC to become unstable. If these are not detected in time, they may result in crashes, which can sometimes be permanent! You should therefore check your system regularly so as to avoid unpleasant surprises. CheckIt Diagnostics, which is included with Norton SystemWorks, tests your hardware to resolve any problems, while System Optimizer and One Button Checkup, also included in the SystemWorks suite, allow you to monitor settings in both Windows XP and the whole system at the click of a button.
Computers do not store files in a random order; rather new files are created in areas that are reserved for that purpose. If some of these files are deleted or replaced by others, however, the order becomes jumbled. This results in slower access to data, because the hard disk’s magnetic heads have to move further to locate the new files. Defragmentation allows the files to be reorganised, making your computer run quicker. It should be done regularly – at least once a month – using a defrag tool.
Some “pro” users overclock their system to improve performance. This involves increasing the speed of the processor at a hardware level. Only experienced users should attempt to overclock their computer, as it is not without its risks: chips that are forced to run at faster speeds can overheat and stop working properly. Users who are able to change the hardware in their computers can also add extra memory.
