Why is My PC So Slow?
By Leo Notenboom
Slow machines represent one of the largest sources of questions to Ask Leo!
Perhaps when you purchased it, your computer ran like a champ and did everything you needed (and quickly). Now … well, not so much. Perhaps it takes forever to boot. Or starting applications is slower than molasses. Or maybe the machine just acts sluggish when you try to use it for just about anything.
Regardless of the specifics, the underlying theme is simple: it’s slow.
The problem is that there are many, many reasons that a machine could slow down.
I’ll try to list a few of the most common reasons here, along with some advice on what steps to take.
It’s a slow machine
An assumption I’m making here is that it’s your entire machine that is slow, not just one or two applications.
For example, if Internet Explorer has slowed down while the rest of your software runs just fine, then you’ll need to take a different approach than what I’ll outline here. You’ll need to focus on the specific applications that are behaving slowly. Perhaps some of the solutions may be the same, but arriving at those solutions and choosing one will depend a lot more on investigating the issue with that specific application.
Nope. Here, we’re talking about a slow computer, no matter what you do.
Sudden slowdowns: Malware comes to mind
If the slowdown is sudden and severe, the very first thing that comes to mind these days is malware.
Different types of malware will, of course, do different things, but they’ll also often behave differently on different machines. One of the symptoms of malware can often be a suddenly slow or sluggish system
Of course, your anti-malware tools are your first line of defense. Make sure that they’re up-to-date and run scans using both your anti-virus tool and anti-spyware tool (assuming you’re using two separate tools). I’d also consider a run of the free tool from malwarebytes.org.
Naturally, I have recommendations for anti-malware tools .
Read the rest of the story here..
This post is excerpted with permission from Leo Notenboom.
