Windows 7 Slow

Windows 7 slow performance is often caused by clutter on the hard disk. There are several reasons why this is the case. To start with, when a hard disk is new, data is stored on the outside tracks. A hard disk is like a stack of disks, like records or CDs. You can imagine a disc spinning, the tracks on the outside are moving faster than the tracks on the inside. As the read/write head of the hard disk drive is accessing these outside tracks, it is able to read data at a faster rate. As the hard disk is used more, data is stored towards the center of the disk. This means that the later data is slower to read and write.

So in short, the more data is stored on your hard disk the longer it will take to read and write new data.

Another factor, which you may have heard of before, is fragmentation. This is when files are broken up into little pieces to fit into the gaps on your hard disk. When you first start using your hard disk, the files are stored neatly one after the other. But when a file is deleted, it makes a gap. The next time you save the file to the desk, the computer will fill in this gap by breaking the file up into pieces.

Over time, Windows is creating and deleting a lot of files behind the scenes that you never even get to see, so thousands of files can be created and then deleted. Other programs do the same thing. This means that over time your hard disk can become very fragmented.

When you’re computer tries to read data that is fragmented, it takes longer because the read head needs to move backwards and forwards different locations to read the different pieces. Both of these factors, working together, can add up to a slow PC.

There is a way to clear this up, which is to defragment your hard drive. But before you defragment it, you should delete the unwanted files.

The first thing you should do is remove any programs you don’t need through the control panel. You go to control panel, there are options to add or remove programs. Browse through the list of programs are installed in your computer and remove the ones which you don’t need or use. This can free up a huge amount of space.

Also delete the user files that you don’t want any more. By user files I mean files that you’ve created, copied or downloaded, which will normally be saved in the “My Documents” area.

Also, there are temporary files that can be saved on your computer by the operating system and by your web browser. You can get rid of these temporary files with the Disk Cleanup utility. You can access the disc cleanup utility through the start menu, under All Programs >Accessories > System Tools.

This utility scans your hard disk for files that you don’t need any more, and can take several minutes to perform this again. After it’s done that, it will give you a list of the different types of files is found, and ask you to confirm which ones you want to delete. It’s almost always safe to delete everything that it finds, although in the case of the “Recycle Bin,” just bear in mind that the files will be permanently deleted by this utility, so if you’re one of those people that leave something hanging around in the recycle bin which you want to rescue later, the time to rescue it is before running  the Disk Cleanup programme .

Now that you’ve deleted all the unwanted files, you should defragment the disk by running the Disk Defragmenter. To boost Windows 7 slow performance and keep it running well in the future, you can set a schedule in the defragmenter. So you could decide to set it to automatically defragment your disk once a week.

Follow these steps, and you should see a significant increase in your computer’s performance.