Is your laptop running slow? Unfortunately, that's something that happens to everyone after a certain time. It's inevitable that our computers end up overloaded with the storage drive too full, working with inefficient configurations or even with outdated hardware. In this post we bring you 7 tips you should follow to solve it.
Sometimes, we tend to believe that the laptop is running too slowly because it is old. That is a mistake. In most cases, the causes of this less agile operation They are found in aspects such as the lack of system updates or the need for adequate maintenance by the user.
The truth is that the list of possible reasons why our laptop is slow can be very long. The most practical thing is put into practice the tips we list below. By using them, even when they do not directly affect the problem that is slowing down our computer, we will always get good results:
Get rid of apps you don't need
The first tip to fix a laptop that is running too slow is simple: uninstall all applications that are not necessary and that, therefore, we do not use. Over time it is inevitable that they accumulate, taking up space on the hard drive and, what is worse, running background processes without us noticing.
How to get rid of them? Simply go to the menu Configuring Windows, from there select the option first Applications and after that of Installed applications. In the list below, we just have to right click on the ones we want to delete and use the option "Uninstall".
Caution: It is not advisable to uninstall Microsoft apps that control basic system functions.
Free up hard drive space
Another thing that you should always do when your laptop is running too slow is to free up space on the hard drive. An easy way to do this is through the application Disk Cleanup Windows. To access it, just go to the Start menu search engine and type cleanmgr.
Then a small window is displayed in which we can Select the disk you want to clean. The tool performs A quick calculation of which files you can do without and how much free space you will getIn any case, the final decision will always be ours. It is the user who decides which files to delete, selecting them and then clicking the "Accept" button.
Defragment your hard drive
If your laptop uses a HDD disk, defragmenting it will help you get faster access to files. To perform this operation, we must first go to the Start menu and type the word "defragment». The application will appear in the result "Defragment and optimize drives."
There you have to select hard drive on which we want to act and then click the button "Analyze" to know its status. Finally, you have to use the option "Optimize" to start the defragmentation process.
The possibility of change the HDD to an SSD, which significantly improves boot and program launch time.
Perform a virus and malware cleanup
One of the most common causes of a slow computer is the presence of malware in our files. No one is completely safe from this threat, no matter how careful we are.
Luckily, in most cases this can be solved relatively easily by running a full scan with our antivirus trusted or through the tool provided by Microsoft: Windows Defender.
Expand RAM memory
If your laptop has little RAM, you may experience slowdowns when running multiple applications. Fortunately, this can be fixed. increasing RAM in order to improve multitasking performance.
The easiest way to do this is to go to the menu Configuring Windows, from there access the section System and then select Information. In this new menu we will have the possibility to click on the option "Advanced system settings", which opens a new window.
There we select the Advanced Options tab to go to Unlimited, where we can make configuration adjustments. At this point we should look at the Virtual Memory section, where we uncheck the box “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”.
Finally, all that remains is to go to the window that shows the drives and MB available to assign to the paging file. For example, if we write 2000 MB, we will get 2 extra gigabytes of virtual RAM.
Update the system and drivers
It's always a good idea to keep your computer up to date. If not, all kinds of problems can appear, including your laptop running slower than usual. Luckily, the steps to update Windows are very simple: just go to the Settings menu and select Windows Update, where we can press the Check for updates button. The system will search for and download them automatically.
Instead, for Update the drivers of our hardware There is a bit more work to be done. We need to identify our hardware and download any new versions available from the official website. In any case, it is worth making this small effort if it makes our laptop run more smoothly.
Reinstall the system
The last resort, very radical, but also very effective in the most complicated situations, consists of reinstall windows from scratch. It's not a bad idea to make a Backup before starting the process, because we run the risk of losing information that we want to keep.
How is it done? We have to go back to the menu. Configuring Windows and there click on the section "Recovery". In the new window that opens we will find the reset options. Among them, we will choose the one «Reset this computer». This means going back to square one, to an initial situation in which the laptop should work without problems.