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Computer Speed Tip
July 9th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 4 Comments
Is your once sprightly PC now grinding slowly along? Have you been tempted to add more RAM, spend hours running defrag and drive cleanup programs, or even buying a new computer? Perhaps you a malware or spyware infection, simply too much clutter on the hard drive, or corrupt program files.
Here’s the simplest way to get your old PC back to an as-good-as-new state (assuming hardware is okay) and that you have your operating system disk:
- Backup externally your data files (photos, images,documents, music, video files)
- Fully reformat the hard drive
- Reinstall the operating system
- Reinstall only essential programs
- Restore your data files
- Optionally make an external image of your freshened up hard drive
Your mileage may vary, I’ve always found it to stick a rocket up even the slowest seeming PC. One additional tip, rather than installing the likes of Thunderbird and Microsoft Office, Photoshop etc, consider using cloud applications such as Google suite (for docs and email).
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4 responses so far ↓
David Bradley // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:01 am
Computer Speed Tip – http://sciencetext.com/6m
Mark Swanson // Jul 9, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Hi Dave,
Only problem is that if you only have your OS base, you may have to reinstall subsequent Service Packs and all that. Granted that the best thing to do is to create your baseline install and then image it if you have the technology, or know someone who can do it for you, and work from that. Many PCs come with an image sector included on the HDD anyway, but that often means you have to install all the crud that comes with it.
David Bradley // Jul 10, 2009 at 9:14 am
You’re right Mark. I wasn’t going to go into the whole slipstreaming thing, but that’s one way to make sure you have all service packs at the ready when you reinstall an OS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_%28computing%29
Ed Hudson // Jul 11, 2009 at 7:08 am
Computer Speed Tip – http://TwitPWR.com/kwE/
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