15 Ways to Speed Up your PC

It's all fine and dandy when you have a brand new PC nested on your desktop that runs as smooth as a smoldering broadsword through a carton of Amul butter (or through the annoying Amul mascot for that matter), but if your PC's as slow as a government employee, you know its time to do something about it. If you're one of the rich folk who has money flowing out of every orifice in the body, by all means - buy a new PC (and write me a hefty cheque if you're feeling extra generous); but if you're like the majority of us and wish to juice your PC till its hair goes gray, we've got a couple of tips to keep your work-horse running as speedy as it possibly can:

Tip 1: Clean Thy PC

We've covered this tip in our "Keep your PC Cool this Summer" article. If you've read that, you might want to skip to the next tip.

We can understand if some of you might not wish to bathe for a while, but unlike humans, PCs need to be cleaned in order to run efficiently. This doesn't mean that you should give it a bath of course, that's just downright foolish. You should clean your PC's innards every few months, to keep it dust free and unclogged. When dust accumulates on your processor and other fans, they start running sluggishly, cooling your PC less, causing all sorts of slowdowns and even crashes.

Just as a surgeon wouldn't mess around or juggle with the organs of a sliced up patient, you need to take care while handling the insides of your PC. Make sure to touch any metallic part on the inner frame of your PC before you touch your motherboard or any delicate hardware, since the static discharge from your hand can fry your PC's circuitry. Touching a metallic object on the inside helps get rid of any static charge your hand might have.

Once that's done, you're all set to clean your PC. To rid your graphic card and other easily removable components of dust, just plug them out of your mother board and gently blow into the fan. Don't blow t0o hard though, else you'll have dust in your eyes and curses at your tongue (for us) for giving you the advice. You can use a piece of clean cotton cloth to rid your PC's components off the dust that might have settled on the surface.

Just ensure that you're gentle. If you're lucky enough to find caned air at your local hardware store (it's quite rare in India unfortunately), you can use this to blow air out of the hard to reach corners in your PC. Alternately, you can use the special attachments you get with modern-day vacuum cleaners that are meant for cleaning those hard-to-reach places inside your PC.