NON-FICTION
TIPHow to Restore the Taskbar to
|
Fix Your Slow Computer - in a flash!
Is your faithful old Windows PC, laptop, or tablet creaking at the seams? Does the cursor – or perhaps everything – freeze or crash from time to time? Does it exhibit a ‘go-slow’ protest whenever you make it work too hard? Does your Wi-Fi link sometimes appear to be far slower than you expect? If such happenings plague and annoy you then you’re not alone. Modern software puts greater demands on your old computer than it was designed to handle. And that’s upsetting if you now feel you need to buy a new computer when you were once very satisfied with the PC or laptop you’ve already got.
All that will improve for the better if you use this brilliant and simple Microsoft-approved solution. Why fork-out for a new computer when there is probably several more years of life in the one you’ve got? Best of all, it doesn’t take a computer-whizz to perform this fix. If you know enough to use File Explorer to find your drives and files, then YOU can easily do this! It does not even put your computer at risk if you make a mistake. Imagine the joy of no more freezes, crashes, breakdowns or wasted time! Read this little book before chucking out your previously reliable Windows computer and buying another one. It is suitable for Vista or Windows versions 7-10. This solution can save you hundreds of pounds/dollars and significantly improved the performance, reliability and speed of your computer – in a flash! And amazingly, it will cost you less than £10/$10! YOU can do this WITHOUT ANY TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE. (If you do have a problem or are too wary to undertake this, just get your grandchild to read this book and then fix it for you!) The fix only takes a few minutes once you have read what to do. What’s more, you can’t mess anything up, and you can easily revert from any change. Afterwards you will be truly amazed at how this makes so much difference to an old Windows computer. You will think it has suddenly been turbo-charged! In fact, it will feel like NEW again. |
TIPS
This book is designed to speed up your Windows computer if it is struggling to process your requirements fast enough due to RAM limitations. (The 3Gb or 4Gb of old PCs and laptops is not really adequate today.) But firstly check that your problem is not due to too much data on your internal disk. To do this, simply right-click on the C-drive using File Explorer and then select 'Properties' from the pop-up menu. The resulting pop-up window specifies the 'Free Space'. If that is say less than around 15% of the 'Capacity' then the disk is getting too full. If so, you need to address this problem by getting rid of some of that data bloating. Consider:
Ways of creating archive memory involve copying files or images to alternative memory, checking this has been satisfactorily achieved, and then deleting the originals (perhaps a few days later, to be quite sure all is well). Suitable external memory includes an external hard disk drive (HDD), external solid state drive (SSD), or cloud storage (eg OneDrive).
Here is a comparison of data security:
Here is an analogy to help you understand the problems associated with a nearly full disk - and why you should not burden your computer with it. (If you do it slows down.) Imagine an almost full airport carpark into which a company's fleet of 20 cars has been parked. One in which many of the cars are blocked-in. If they are asked to extract them all at once, a lot of shuffling around takes place and it is difficult to achieve this quickly. Now imagine if they were all readily accessible and parked side-by-side. That is a bit like the data a given application needs to access on a computer's hard disk. When stuff is deleted from the disk it frees up areas in random places. A bit like random cars being removed from that car park. The trouble is, new data in a nearly full disk then gets poked into those random places. Creating the problem of finding them and joining up all that data the right way in order for a given program to work correctly. It gets slower and slower as the disk fills up. [A facility called 'defragmentation' can improve the organisation of your data, but it cannot do much about a totally bloated disk!]
So check your disk has a decent free capacity to work with as described above. And if it has, and you are still having problems, then my book is for you! The Microsoft-approved method described will allow your programs to work more efficiently and quickly. It can give new life to a flagging computer. And that could save you hundreds if the alternative is to buy a new computer!
- Deleting redundant files
- Archiving old files (eg images, old documents, or music files that do not need to be retained on your internal disk). You can always access those files in the future from 'archive memory'.
Ways of creating archive memory involve copying files or images to alternative memory, checking this has been satisfactorily achieved, and then deleting the originals (perhaps a few days later, to be quite sure all is well). Suitable external memory includes an external hard disk drive (HDD), external solid state drive (SSD), or cloud storage (eg OneDrive).
Here is a comparison of data security:
- An external HDD is mechanical - and hence fragile . So serious shock-damage prevents access to all data on it. (Treat with care.)
- An external SSD memory module has no moving parts and is more robust. Problems accessing data is not likely until the memory has been completely filled and rewrites occur in given areas. Data corruption to a given file might then occur at some point in the future. (Buy a large amount of storage to see you safe way into the future. I am not talking about a simple flash drive here. At the time of writing 500Gb costs round £100 - and that is a huge amount of storage.)
- Cloud storage is safe, but you are putting your data out there with the potential of hacking. It should be safe enough in other respects. There are a lot of free options (but you pay if you want a lot of storage). Many of these allow you to use the cloud for synchronised backup of the files you are using on your computer. (Which is fine until synching goes wrong and it all gets frustrating. I prefer to manually backup to any external drive, but that requires organisation. Do you have that?)
Here is an analogy to help you understand the problems associated with a nearly full disk - and why you should not burden your computer with it. (If you do it slows down.) Imagine an almost full airport carpark into which a company's fleet of 20 cars has been parked. One in which many of the cars are blocked-in. If they are asked to extract them all at once, a lot of shuffling around takes place and it is difficult to achieve this quickly. Now imagine if they were all readily accessible and parked side-by-side. That is a bit like the data a given application needs to access on a computer's hard disk. When stuff is deleted from the disk it frees up areas in random places. A bit like random cars being removed from that car park. The trouble is, new data in a nearly full disk then gets poked into those random places. Creating the problem of finding them and joining up all that data the right way in order for a given program to work correctly. It gets slower and slower as the disk fills up. [A facility called 'defragmentation' can improve the organisation of your data, but it cannot do much about a totally bloated disk!]
So check your disk has a decent free capacity to work with as described above. And if it has, and you are still having problems, then my book is for you! The Microsoft-approved method described will allow your programs to work more efficiently and quickly. It can give new life to a flagging computer. And that could save you hundreds if the alternative is to buy a new computer!