Send yourtips [email protected] 7 - 20August 2019^65Web User MasterclassTA KE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
More advanced tipsfor whenyou’refeeling braveIf your PCstarts runningslowly after
you’ve been using it for a while, it’s
definitely worth closing a few tabs.
Increase virtual memory
Windowscommits asection of your
hard drive for use as virtualmemory.
If Windowsrunsout of both real
memory andvirtualmemory, the PC
almost grinds to a halt. This isa serious
situation that should be avoided.
Open File Explorer, right-click This PC
andselect Properties on the menuthat
appears. Click ‘Advanced system
settings’ onthe left, select the
Advanced tab, find the Performance
section andclick the Settings button.
Select the Advanced tab in the next
window, find the ‘Virtual memory’
section andclick the Change button.
Eventually, you’ll arrive at the Virtual
Memory settings. At the top is the
setting to ‘Automatically manage
pagingfile size for all drives’, which is
usually the best option for most people.
However, it may be worth experimenting
with customsettings to see if they
improve your PC’s performance.
Clear the ti ck fromthe box at the top
andselect ‘Custom size’. There are boxes
for ‘Initial size’ and‘maximumsize’ –
both can be set to the samevalue and
you can get an idea of the size required
by looking at the ‘Currentlyallocated’
amount atthe bottomof the window.
It doesn’t do any harm to have a large
paging file, but it could negatively
impact performance if it’s too small.
Make it at least equalto the amount of
memory in the computer, and possibly
doubleit if there isn’t much available.
Set at least a 4,000MB page file on a PC
with 4GB of RAM (maybe even double
that) and8,000MB for 8GB of RAM.
use Autoruns, but be aware that it
containsa huge amount of complex
information. Right-click any items you
don’t understand anduse the Search
Online option to find out whether
they’re needed. Focus on obvious
items with recognisable names and
don’t disable anythingyou don’t
understand.Use amemory optimiser
A memory optimiser is a tool that
frees up memory to run programs
faster. Wise Memory Optimizer (bit.ly/
wimo 481 ) creates lots of freememory
for the next programyou run, making
it runfaster and perform better than
before. However, it does this by
pushing all otherrunningprograms to
the hard drive in the virtual-memory
page file, andswitching programs is
extremely slowwhile memory is
reloadedfromthe hard drive’s virtual
memory to the real memory.
Memory optimisers therefore speed
up the PCin one way, but slowit
downin another. They may or may not
help, depending on how you use your
PC. You can try using one, but the
benefits are mixed at best.Hard drive vs SSD
Solid-state drives (SSDs)
are much faster than
mechanical hard-disk
drives (HDDs), so if
Windowshas to resort to
using the drive as virtual
memory, it won’t slow
downas much with an
SSD as with an HDD. This
is one of the reasons why
computers are much faster
when an HDD is replaced
with an SSD.
In terms of speed, RAM
is fastest, SSDs are slightlyslower and
HDDs are slowest. So if you can’t
upgradethe RAM in a PC, upgrade
the HDD to an SSD instead.Limit startupprograms
Your computer could be out of
memory before you make your first
mouse-click. Obvious symptomsare
a long startup after powering on and
programs that take a long timeto get
going when they’re clicked.
Even a fairly clean PCcan require
2.5GB of memory just to boot to the
desktop, while up to 1GB of memory
can be reserved by the system,
depending on the version of Windows.
Ona 4GB PC, that leaves just 500MB.
If you can’t upgradethe RAM, the
only thing to do is to stop startup
programs loading in the background
so they don’t use valuablememory.
In Windows10, right-click an empty
part of the taskbar andselect Task
Manager. Some– but by no means all- startup programs are shown on the
Start-up tab.Select any items you
don’t need and click the Disable
button at the bottom. If you don’t
knowwhat an itemis for, right-click it
andselect ‘Searchonline’. If there’s
anythingyou don’t understand, leave
it alone because it might be
important.
Disablehiddenstartup
items
Task Manager shows ahandful
of selected items on the
Start-up tab, but there are
dozens of startup items that
aren’t shown. Autoruns (bit.ly/
auto481) is a powerful tool that
shows everythingthat starts
with Windows. If you want toAdvanced user s can experiment with dive deep into startup items,
differen t virtual memory settings
Wise Memory Optimizer helps some programs
run faster, but others may be slowedUse Autoruns to see what’s loading with
Windows. Disable any unnecessary items