One of the most common calls a technician receives are when computers slow down or stop behaving as expected? Sometimes, it is an immediate, dramatic drop in speed, and in those cases the problem is urgent. Other times, it’s a more gradual speed loss that the user notices over time.
There are many possible causes for a performance slowdown. Perhaps new software that was recently installed bogs down the processor. Maybe the hard drive is too full and cluttered. There may be issues with your local network and storage that show up as slow performance. There also can be system issues, application update issues, virus issues, security issues, and more.
The first thing we do is look at the processor and memory activity on your computer. That tells us how much of your processing power and random-access memory are being consumed by the things that are already open on your computer. And, often I notice that a PC cleaning app or an overzealous security app hogging your computer resources.
If you’ve ever googled “fix my computer problem” then you know that apps such as CCleaner are likely to be among the ads at the very top of the search results. Most of these programs perform a useful function. But too many of them are capable of making dangerous changes to your computer that you may not want, and they sometimes do things that I like to teach computer users to do for themselves. And, some of the purported system tools out there are outright frauds that run some fake checks on your computer, and then urge you to subscribe to a monthly service. As a user it’s very hard to know, looking at the search results, which of these are useful and which are dangerous, and Google doesn’t much care because they make money on both legit and spurious software ads.
The majority of times that I fix a speed/virus/performance issue there is a lot more involved than just installing a system cleaner, pushing “Go,” and watching it fix the machine. A good technician needs to figure out exactly what is wrong. Often, it’s more than one thing. And, it also could be that you’re running up against the limits of your hardware. Each update of Windows, or, on the Mac, OSX, tends to use more of your machine’s computing resources. The same goes for every application you use and update periodically. Over time, your machine becomes bogged down, like a truck that is carrying an increasingly heavy load, but with the same horsepower in its engine. At that point, you can speed up by adding memory, installing a solid-state drive, and a larger drive, or moving to a new machine that suits your needs better. That’s when it’s time to call Klearlogic.
Check out our companion article on 11 Ways To Check Your Computer Performance.
