Tips to Tweak your System

This post is being shared to us by Alisa Johnson of collegedegrees.com 
For those of you with academic questions, please visit Alisa's site, it has some very useful information that will answer most of your questions.
Thank you Alisa for your time and for sharing with us the Tips, Tweaks & Tricks!

The thing with computers is that they’re unpredictable; you think they were invented to make life easier for you, but the truth is, they are like spoilt children most of the time. They act up just when you least expect it, they behave in ways that you cannot understand, and they display error messages that make no sense at all. What’s worse, they slow down from time to time, taking ages to respond to a single mouse click or the push of a button on the keyboard. Trying to use a sluggish computer is one of the most frustrating experiences there is, so here are a few tips (that don’t require you to be a computer geek) to speed things up:

• Use a good anti-virus and anti-spyware program. There are many that are available as free downloads if you don’t want to spend good money for them. If you’re a regular user of the Internet, spyware and cookies that track your moves tend to clutter up your memory and slow things down. Besides, if your system is infected with a virus or a worm, it could start acting up and behaving weirdly.
  
• If you use Windows XP operating system, use the system tools like Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup to save space on your hard disk and boost your system’s performance.
  
• If you’re simultaneously running many programs and so have as many windows open on your screen, minimize those that are not being used immediately. Better still, close applications that you’re not using.
  
• Reduce the number of programs that run on Startup (each time your system boots) to boost your boot-up time. You can do this by clicking Start and then Run, and then typing msconfig in the window that opens. Select the programs that you don’t need to run when your system starts up.
  
• If you run many programs at the same time, you may need to consider upgrading your RAM.
  
• If you use Windows Vista, ReadyBoost is a pretty nifty tool that can help boost your system’s performance by allowing you to use a flash drive as cache memory. But if you’re not plugging in a secondary device, this option is better disabled as it could slow down your system otherwise.
  
• Delete temporary Internet files from time to time as they take up a large area of memory space.
  
• Don’t put too many icons on your desktop. It’s best to limit the number to the few that you use on a regular basis.
  
• Delete and uninstall programs that you no longer use and avoid downloading and installing new ones that you hardly ever use unless you really need them.
  

A computer is just like a home – the more free it is of clutter, the better it is to manage.

This post was contributed by Alisa Johnson, who writes about the best correspondence college . She welcomes your feedback at Alisa.Johnson1982 at gmail.com