Lets Restore Some Of That New PC Speed! (Part 1)
No doubt you have probably noticed that your PC is not as fast as it was when it was new. Why is that? What works to restore speed and what doesn’t?
Possibility #1: Malware or Virus Infection
If your system is infected with Malware, or a Virus, this can certainly slow down your system. Some infections can bring your system to a crawl. However, in general, these programs are designed so that you won’t notice them. Those that release these nasty
little bugs would prefer that you don’ realize that they are silently at work. Taking steps to identify and remove these infections is clearly worth your time, they are probably not the reason for your system slow down!
If you do suspect foul play, you can do this with no financial investment, using a few great tools available via your browser. Read about how to check and remove them here! The free version of Microsoft Security Essentials is all you need for Virus protection. We recommend using Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials for antivirus protection. These two work together well. Remember to only use one anti-virus program at a time.
Possibility #2: Removing Data and Freeing up Space on Your Hard Drive
While a periodic clean of unnecessary files, and uninstall of programs you no longer are using is a great idea, unless you are almost out of space on your primary hard drive, freeing up space on your hard drive will not speed up your PC. The problem is when you do not have enough hard drive 
space for storage of new data or for the windows Cache (Virtually Memory) to work properly. If your drive is dangerously low on space, then your computer will drastically slow down because most programs need room to dynamically grow and shrink through the creation of temporary files. If there’s no room on the drive to store these, your system will slow to a crawl. As a rule of thumb, you need to maintain a minimum of 20 GB of free space on your hard drive.
If hard drive space is a problem for you, your options are to free up space on your primary hard drive, or upgrade your system to a new larger hard drive. To free up space you can purchase an inexpensive USB external drive and store some of your data there. If your system has a USB 3.0 Port you should buy a USB 3,0 capable drive. Find our why here!
Possibliity 3: Upgrading Your System Components
There are clearly a couple of opportunities for speed here, but you need to know the details of your system before you head down this road. Here are the two obvious areas for performance improvement:
Hard drive: A drive with rotational speed of 7200 is clearly faster than one with 5900. This will provide some, although 
generally very minimal performance improvement. Perhaps a better investment of your time is to make sure your drive is being routinely optimized using a Disk Defragmentation program. Remember do not use these programs on an SSD drive.
Upgrade to an SSD Drive! Unless your system already has an SSD drive, you will clearly notice speed improvement with an SSD drive. Prices on these drives continue to fall and are worth the modest investment, if speed is important to you. Read all about this upgrade here!
System RAM: Depending on the software you are using, more RAM can really help. If you are using your PC primarily to 
browse the web, you will likely not notice any improvement with more RAM. As you might expect, the more RAM you have, the more temporary data can be stored on it.
Remember that 32-bit versions of Windows are only capable of using up to 4GB of RAM. If your PC has a 64bit version of Windows, and you are a bit of a power user, more memory will likely speed things up for you. If you consider yourself a power user, and your PC has a 64Bit version of windows, we recommend a minimum of 8GB of RAM.
Possibility #4: Optimize Your Registry
Unfortunately programs are all over the web advertising the fact they can provide significant performance improvements to your computer by cleaning out your registry. While this is good housekeeping, and a good ideal from time to time, it will not provide any noticeable performance improvement. Read more about this here!
Possibility #5: Perform a Format and Fresh Install of Windows
If your system is performing normally but just a little slow, this is generally not a good idea. In the end, after your programs are re-installed you will find your system is performing as it did before the re-install. If your system is not working as it should and you have scanned and eliminated all malware and viruses, and you suspect software is the problem, sometimes this is your only
sure option. Before you take this step make sure you have a couple of backups of your programs and data. Perhaps an image backup should also be done should you determine that you need to restore your system.
We do recommend you create regular images of your system before any significant program installations or other significant changes to your system. In this way should something cause your PC to no longer function as it was, you can restore your system to a working image. Doing this every couple of months is a great habit.