What Does or Doesn’t Make a Computer Slow?

Posted on: February 14th, 2011

Computer slowness is one of the most frequent complaints from users. Also, I’ve been hearing some false data on this from people. So I decided to educate here a bit about this subject and dispel some of the main false data.

Let’s start with some of these false data:

“There are so many icons on my desktop, that’s why my computer is so slow” & variations of this.
The truth is that the number of icons have little or no effect on the speed of the machine. It might take a little longer at the start-up to generate the desktop image because of the icons but it adds no more than a few seconds.
However, lots of icons on the desktop frequently indicates a lot of software loaded on the computer (as each one tends to put one or more icons on the desktop) and they might be loading at the start-up. But this is only a symptom and not the cause. Removing the icons will not achieve a faster computer.

“We loaded a lot of music/video/pictures on the computer and that’s why it’s slow” & variations of this.
The number of files and the space taken up by those files does not make a computer go slow, unless the free hard drive space is getting really low (ie. below 20%). If the hard drive is getting really full and new files are getting added that’s when the performance of the computer starts to drop.

“My computer is just old”, etc.
A computer doesn’t start to work slower if it gets older. It might appear so if, let’s say, your work computer is a new, fast machine and then you go back to your old home computer. Also there are software changes that happen on the computer which make it run slower but those are all fixable.

Now, let’s see some real reasons why a computer might be slow:

Insufficient amount of RAM (memory)

The currently running programs and their data is all stored in the RAM, because that provides a 10-100 times faster access than the hard drive. When the amount of available RAM starts to go down the system begins to use the hard drive as an extension of the RAM in order to meet the demand. Because hard drives are much slower than RAM this will produce a marked decrease in the speed of the computer. The hard drive space used as the extension of the RAM is called Virtual Memory. If the demand is very high then you might got a message that “Virtual Memory is Low”. But even if you don’t get that message your computer might suffer from lack of RAM if it appears to be sluggish. Many older machine suffer from this because when they came out antivirus software was relatively humble in use of RAM and tabbed browsing was not invented (multiple tabs or windows of web-pages do use up large chunks of RAM).

Here’s a quick guidelines to the minimal amount of memory that computers should have to run well:

For Windows XP: 512Mb minimum. 1GB if antivirus software is loaded.
For Windows Vista: 1Gb minimum. 1.5-2GB if antivirus software is loaded.
For Windows 7: 512MB minimum. 1GB or more if antivirus software is loaded

How to check what you have?

Click on the Start Menu (it might be just a Windows logo on the bottom left of your screen). Right-click on “My Computer” or “Computer” (depending on the version of Windows you have). Select Properties from the pop-up menu. It will give you a short summary of the computer, including the version of Windows you have and the amount of memory on the machine. I included an example of a Windows XP machine’s information screen.

How to add RAM?

RAM modules are components that need to be inserted inside the computer. The process is simple and many people have done it successfully own their own. The most important part is to get the right kind of memory that fits into the computer. That information should be in your computer’s manual, or can be found out by doing an online search.
The cost of 1Gb of RAM is usually around $25-$35. So it’s an inexpensive way to boost your computer’s performance.

There are also myths about adding a lot of RAM to a machine. The truth is that if you have the minimum amount of RAM mentioned above and you are just a regular computer user (not a heavy multitasker, a gamer, graphics designer or video editor) then adding more RAM would not make the computer noticeably faster. Simply because if you have enough RAM for your purposes then you have the performance bottleneck caused by the low amount of RAM eliminated. It’s similar to a road with heavy traffic that needs about 3 lanes to handle the flow. If it has only two then there will be jams. If it has 3-4 lanes then there will be smooth traffic. If it has more than that then it won’t make anything faster since there’s no bottleneck anyways.

So there’s no point in having 3-4 or more gigabytes of RAM if no software is utilizing it. New computers come with such amount of RAM and that’s fine, it just means that they’ll not need RAM added in the future.

Security software that uses too much system resources

If you have a PC you need to have some kind of antivirus protection. That’s just how it is at the moment. In order to provide a good protection the antivirus software will need to be running and checking the activities on a continuous basis. This, unavoidably, uses up resources like RAM, processor time, hard drive access bandwidth.

You need to find the balance between having sufficient protection while not turning your computer into a turtle. Fortunately, in recent years antivirus software makers made efforts to make their products run more efficiently and use less system resources.

Here’s a short list of Antivirus products that we found causing computers to go slow:
- Spyware Doctor (makes computers unresponsive at times)
- McAfee
- Norton 360
- Norton Internet Security

It’s worth mentioning here also, that those comprehensive “all-in-one” security software solutions generally cause more problems, slow computers down more and doesn’t provide significantly more security than a good, simple antivirus. Oh, and they cost more too.

Numerous unnecessary software running in the background

This one is a very common occurrence. Sadly, even new computers are preloaded with unnecessary things so they are running slower “out-of-the-box” than they should be. One way to check if that’s the case on your machine is to see the number of running processes. If you press CTRL+Shift+Esc on your keyboard then it will bring up the task manager. In the Processes tab you’ll see what’s running. The number of processes should not be more than about 40-50 after the computer is turned on.

Another way, of noticing the unnecessary programs is by their pop-up messages. If you have windows popping up when you start up your computer then you likely to have unnecessary start-up items. Also, if during the operation of the computer you get too many pop-up messages then it’s sure that you get too many things running.

If you suspect that your computer has a bit too much running unnecessarily then the best thing to do is having it cleaned up. You can try to do it yourself but you will probably not be able to get every unnecessary things off and also might delete something that shouldn’t be deleted. It’s better to get it done professionally. Fortunately, it’s not a long process either and therefore not expensive.

Viruses, Advertisements software and other unwanted software on the computer

This category embraces all the things that one never really wanted to have on the computer. Viruses picked up online, toolbars that get installed alongside another program, fake antiviruses that keep bombarding you with scary scan “results”, etc.

One of the most common of these is called “MyWebSearch” it’s an advertisement software that messes with Internet Browsing and searches and it’s possibly creates a gateway to other infections. So if you see MyWebSearch showing up somewhere on your computer then make sure that it gets cleaned up before it gets worse.

Some of the symptoms that indicate infections are: website redirections (ie. you click on something but end up on another website), exaggerated and alarming messages about your computer’s security, pop-ups to offer security solutions, system crashes (“blue screens of death”).

If your computer got infected then running a scan with your current antivirus will not do any good. It evidently failed to detect it. The best thing to do is get it cleaned up and have your computer security checked and any weaknesses corrected. The sooner you do it the better.

Failing hard drives

Hard drives are currently the most likely components in a computer that will fail. It is due to their technology which uses a large number of tiny parts that has to move quickly and with extreme precision. Until the Solid State Drives become cheap enough to replace the current technology we need to be specially alert for the possibility that hard drives can go bad.

Hard drives can fail suddenly, or gradually. When gradual degradation happens then one of the first thing one notices is long delays, sometimes file corruptions, problems with starting the computer up, or just extreme slowness.

Fortunately, hard drives have built-in diagnostics that can alert you before things get really bad. Here’s another article that describes this: A Tool to Predict Hard Drive Failures

If you run through a test and it turns out that your hard drive started its degradation then get your hard drive replaced sooner than later. If it caught soon enough then all the content on the old hard drive can be moved to a new one with little or no loss and everything can go on as usual. However, if data corruption gets too extensive then it might become a real though challenge to save even your most important files.

Hard drives usually last 3-4 years with the current technology but some of them fail in just a few months. So it’s always wise to keep an eye on it

Summary

I hope you found this article useful and be able to diagnose your computer and take actions to make it run better.

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