Laptops are a vital part of our everyday lives – especially if you happen to be a business person, a novelist, or a blogger. There are many, many different brands and speeds of laptops to choose from depending on your unique needs. But what happens when your laptop – the one that used to work so perfectly for you – begins to slow down?
If this lack of speed is interfering with your work (causing glitches and restarts, for example), you may want to invest in a new laptop. If you don’t want to replace your laptop, that’s fine as well! You can easily repair your laptop with several methods and techniques. In this blog post, we’ll look at the seven best tips on how to speed up laptop so that it works for you again:
1. Don’t run so many programs on startup
One big thing that can really eat away at your laptop’s response time – especially as it boots up after being turned off for a while – is the number of applications and programs that automatically run when you log onto your laptop. Have you ever noticed a bunch of different windows popping up whenever you turn on your laptop? If so, they could be a major problem when it comes to getting speed out of your computer.
To fix this, go to your laptop’s task manager. Under a section marked ‘startup’ (or something similar) you will see a list of applications that come up once you turn on your laptop. Go through the list and turn off any programs that aren’t strictly necessary. Your laptop should have a much faster startup time now!
2. Keep your list of applications streamlined
Many laptops these days come with many pre-installed programs and applications that actually don’t add a lot to your user experience. In fact, these programs may detract from your laptop’s usability if they’re the cause of its slowness. However, this is a quick and simple fix – so don’t worry. Simply go to the ‘uninstall programs’ section of your laptop’s control panel and uninstall whatever programs you find that aren’t necessary to you. You’ll free up space on your laptop’s hard drive, which will give the system more operating power – and more speed.
3. Get your laptop updated
The best way on how to speed up a laptop is often done through updates. When your laptop’s hard drive is allowed to gather dust (so to speak) and isn’t freshened by a complete system update, your laptop can become much slower. It’s important to install all updates whenever they appear as options. Keeping your laptop’s hardware and software up to date can only improve the health of your laptop.
So the next time one of those pesky reminders pops up, telling you that you need to restart your laptop to install updates…don’t ignore it! Most of those reminders allow you to schedule a restart time so pick a convenient hour of the day (or night) and get your laptop updated.
4. Go through your laptop’s files
We all know how easy it is to let documents, photos, videos, and more pile up in our laptops’ files. What you might not know is that all these files can contribute to your laptop’s slowness. If you’ve noticed that your laptop doesn’t operate as smoothly, try taking a look at the state of your digital. Chances are that you don’t need or want half of them anymore – and probably more than that. Especially try to cull photos, videos, and music. All of those file types are quite large (especially music and videos) and could be really bringing your operating speed down.
5. Defragment your laptop’s hard drive
Defragmenting a hard drive might sound like quite an undertaking, especially if you don’t consider yourself a technology whiz. But it’s really quite simple. When you defragment a hard drive, you essentially pull all the elements of your laptop together into one unified drive. This will limit the amount of operating power your laptop has to employ in order to access your files and other features. If you want to defragment your drive, go to your control panel and then to ‘system and security’. You’ll be able to easily run a defragmentation procedure from that point.
6. Give your laptop more RAM
RAM is essential to making your laptop run smoothly and efficiently. The more RAM you have, the more applications your laptop will be able to run at one time. This makes a large amount of RAM a basic necessity for those doing plenty of work on their laptops. If the laptop you purchased didn’t come with much RAM, we suggest looking into options for installing more (some laptops allow it, some don’t).
7. Switch up your laptop’s power settings
One extremely quick potential fix for your laptop’s sluggishness is changing the power settings from ‘recommended’ or ‘power saving’ to ‘high performance’. The high performance mode does just what you would imagine it to. It can give a boost of performing power and speed to your laptop in no time.
