If your computer is running slowly you may have been told to defragment your hard drive. This because as large files are saved to the hard-drive they are often broken up into file fragments and stored in the gaps between other file fragments. This increases the time that Windows takes to access your files.

To check whether your drive needs to be defragmented go to My Computer, right-click on the drive’s icon, and select ‘Properties’ from the menu. Go to the ‘Tools’ tab on the dialog box that opens. Click the ‘Defragment now’ button to open the defrag program. Click the ‘Analyse’ button to get a report. Do not defrag yet, even if the software says that the drive needs defragmenting.

In order to get the most out of the defragmentation process it is best to do a little preparation beforehand. Firstly, close all the applications you are running and reboot your PC. When you are logged back in, go to your web browser and clear out the cache of files. Instructions are available on this site for doing this in Internet Explorer and Firefox. There is an excellent freeware application called CCleaner that will…

Networking Tab

The ‘Networking’ tab provides a visual representation of the amount of data that your network connections are transmitting and receiving over time. Note that the percentages quoted are of the maximum possible capacity under ideal circumstances, and do not take other factors into consideration, such as the amount of Internet bandwidth that is available on your connection.

Users Tab

The final tab may not be available on your version of Windows. It lists all users that that have recently logged on to Windows. You can use this page to force other users disconnect or log-off if you have sufficient access rights. The disconnect option is available if the user is accessing your machine across a network, the log-off option is available if they are locally logged on to your computer.

The ‘Users’ tab also has an option to send a message to other users. If they are connected to your PC over a network you can message them to warn them if you have to reboot;…

Over the years the Windows interface has become increasingly visually appealing, however, these graphic effects can have an impact on performance.

The effects of effects
Windows 2000 and XP users can switch off some of these effects in order to get better performance from their PC. To do this, right-click on the desktop - away from any icons and select ‘Properties’. This will open the ‘Display Properties’ dialog box. On this box select the ‘Appearance tab’.
Click on the ‘Effects…’ button, and the following dialog box will open.
To increase performance make sure that ‘Show shadows under menus’ and ‘Show windows contents while dragging’ are not ticked. Click ‘OK’ on all the boxes when you have made your changes.

Pick a better wallpaper
Another factor that may impact performance is the size of the image you use as your desktop background - also known as a wallpaper. You can use any size of image as your wallpaper and Windows will resize it to fit the screen. By picking a smaller image, you will free up some…