Feel like throwing your machine out the window?
If you want our professional opinion we wouldn’t recommend that. It’s normal for desktops and laptops to slow down overtime. With a little bit of cleaning and tweaking we can get your machine running at a speed which you will enjoy.
So why does it slow down to begin with?
Windows start up
You might not always be aware of this but as you use your machine you are constantly installing and adding new programmes to your machine (java, flash, google desktop, random toolbars etc…). These programs like adding themselves to windows start up so that they could check for updates and so on. Most of these run in the background so you might not always see stuff opening however you might have noticed your computer taking a very long time to start up. This is why.
Hard Drives
Let’s say you have a hard drive that’s 5GB big like you can see below and you have the fallowing files in it. And each colour is a different file.
| File1 | File2 | File2 | File3 | File4 |
Now let’s say you delete the green and a blue.
| File2 | File2 | File4 |
Your hard drive now has 2GB free. So we add a new red file that’s 2GB big and this is what the hard drive will look like
| File5 | File2 | File2 | File5 | File4 |
As you can see the new file had to be divided up to two bits to get it to fit properly. So when it comes to opening this file the hard drive will read half the file. Search’s to find the rest of the file then reads that bit.
This is just a simple example in reality files might be broken up to 100 little pieces all over the place. We did a test on a brand new hard drive and found that a non-broken up file would open 28 times faster than one that’s broken down in the smaller chunks.
The more you use your computer the more broken up your files will become and the slower your machine will be.
Updates
New software updates are always being released by Windows and other software providers. Sometimes the updated softwares require more memory and processing power. For example if before Windows only used 10% of your memory after the update it might require 15%. These updates are usually security updates / new features that you will need to get the most out of your machine.
Overheating
Both desktop and laptops have built in fans designed to keep them cool. However overtime these fans collect a lot of dust which stops the cooling process. When this happens your machine is forced to work at a lower power to prevent it from overheating. This is one of the major reasons machines run slow.