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Murphysboro, IL 62966
618-687-4459
Running Smoothly
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Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly
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When you bought your computer, brought it home, set it up and started it the first time it was fast. Everything you clicked on ran smoothly and quickly. Unfortunately, as time went on it started slowing down. Sometimes a program would crash. Sometimes the whole computer locked up and you had to shut it off using the power button. Let’s see what we can do to speed it back up. Maybe not to quite its original speed but at least better than now. First things first. If you are going to be deleting files and working with the file system it is always a good idea to check it out first. Run a scan disk on your hard drive. If you don’t know how to do that then go to Help and look up ‘scandisk.’ No need to do a ‘thorough’ this time. We just want to make sure that the directory structure and such are ok. Scandisk will do this. Set it to automatically repair. Note – if your hard drive is failing or if the file system has become too corrupt to fix then this step may crash it. It could even trash it. But, worse comes to worst, you will have to reload your system and then it will be fast again. Just make sure to back up your data files. Now – double click on ‘My Computer,’ open your C: drive, click File, New, Folder. Name the new folder ‘For Deletion.’ Next - double click on ‘My Computer,’ open your C: drive, navigate to the Windows, Temp folder. Click Edit, Select All. Click Edit, Cut. Click on your new ‘For Deletion’ folder and click Edit, Paste. The reason we are doing this: Windows uses a lot of temporary files in the background to keep track of open windows and programs, their settings, etc. When your computer or a program freezes and locks up and you have to shut it down manually then windows doesn’t have a chance to clean up after itself so all those temporary files are just sitting there and could cause problems in the future. If Windows is actively using one of these temporary files it won’t let you move or delete it. Just do the rest of them. Once this is done, restart your computer. Make sure things are still running ok. If, after a couple of days, or long enough that you have tried out your programs and they are running properly, then you can return to your ‘For Deletion’ folder and delete all those files.
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