Interesting

Why the computer slows down, and how you can speed up its work

Good day!

Folk wisdom: "It was not a woman, some were sitting in the cockpit "... 👀

I think that almost every user has experienced slow work, errors, freezes while working at a computer (laptop). Moreover, the brakes can be both on old cars (which is not surprising), and on new ones ...

There are dozens of reasons due to which the computer slows down! But most of them can be solved on their own, without resorting to specialists.

In this article, I want to consider several of the most common reasons for slow computer performance, freezes and lags. For each reason, a solution and recommendations for its elimination will be given.

👉 Note:

  • tips from the article are relevant for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10;
  • Having followed the "recipes" from the article, I am almost sure that if they do not completely eliminate the brakes, they will certainly speed up your computer!
  • I will build the article in a not quite usual way. First, a brief description (when and in which application the brakes are observed), then the causes and solutions to this problem.

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Causes of brakes and their elimination

Diagnostics: finding the application that is loading the PC

And so, everything worked fine for you, and suddenly ... the computer began to work slowly for no reason. First of all, I recommend paying attention to the following:

  1. what programs were running before the computer started to slow down;
  2. in what cases does the PC slow down? For example, when loading the OS, when copying files, when working in a browser, etc. All these cases are discussed in my article below;
  3. Check be sure Task Manager: see if it contains applications that load the processor by 30% or more, whether the hard disk, RAM, network is overloaded. Note: to bring up the task manager, press the key combination Ctrl + Alt + Del ;

    Task Manager - CPU and Disk Usage

    If you find any application that heavily loads the CPU, disk, memory, try closing it.

  4. If everything is fine in the task manager and there seem to be no applications that load the PC, but it still slows down, try using third-party applications, for example, Advanced SystemCare . 👇

Advanced SystemCare ->

This utility will not only help you remove garbage and optimize Windows, but also suggest which of the programs load the system most heavily (this will tell you a special resource monitor that can be opened after installing SystemCare).

System Care - one START button - and your computer will be faster!

The resource monitor is presented in the screenshot below: by clicking on the CPU icon - you can expand the menu, which will present all programs that load the CPU by 32% ...

Boot bar (monitor built into Advanced SystemCare)

In addition to Advanced SystemCare, to check and find applications that load your PC, I recommend trying Process Explorer (to download the program and see the description of working with it - follow the link below 👇).

👉 To help!

1) What to do if the computer slows down and the CPU load is high all the time (disassembly with Process Explorer) - see instructions

2) If you have occupied almost all of the RAM according to the task manager - try to free it and configure the paging file - more on this here

3) If the reasons for the brakes are related to the hard disk (for example, its loading is 100%), and closed applications did not help, I recommend this note

Important!

If your PC for no reason (at first glance) slows down (or it is heavily loaded by system processes), it may well be that you have picked up a virus (by the way, if your computer is infected with viruses or adware, brakes and slow work can be in any application) ...

Therefore, I recommend checking your computer for viruses and deleting these (if any): //ocomp.info/esli-antivirus-ne-vidit-virusov.html (by the way, I will not return to viruses in this article).

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Slow Windows OS, poor responsiveness

Perhaps this is the most common complaint: it seems that after reinstalling Windows, the computer "flies", but over time it starts to react slower and slower, and now applications are opened somehow reluctantly, for a long time, etc. 👀

This is mainly due to the fact that Windows accumulates a large amount of "garbage" that needs to be cleaned from time to time.

Add to this the erroneous lines in the system registry, non-working shortcuts, an overgrown browser cache, "tails" left over from old, long-deleted programs.

👉 To help!

1) The best utilities for comprehensive cleaning of a laptop, computer

2) Cleaning the computer from junk files in manual and auto-mode

Important!

After the hard drive is cleared of all unnecessary, I recommend doingdefragmentation (if you have not an HDD, but an SSD, you do not need to defragment the drive!).

This operation will increase the speed of access to files on the disk.

👉 To help!

How to defragment a disk (increase the speed of the HDD)

Addition!

For maximum acceleration of Windows OS - it is recommended to run it optimization... This topic is quite extensive, below is a link to one of my articles (relevant for Windows 10, 8, 7).

👉 To help!

Optimization of Windows 10 - see instructions ->

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👉 When the brakes appear: tips and tricks

When Windows boots

Every fifth program you install (and maybe more) prescribes itself inautoload (i.e. it starts and loads into the PC memory along with your Windows boot).

For example, ICQ, Skype, uTorrent, picture editors, etc. As a rule, most users do not even pay attention to this (for the time being).

Take the same uTorrent - if you have a couple of hundred torrents in it, then it may take not a minute to check them all and download the program (besides, there will be a high load on the hard disk, which will affect the responsiveness of your PC).

Note! You can view what you have at startup in Windows 10 in the task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del, see the screen below).

Startup tab - task manager

Solution in this case:

  1. Configure startup ☝, control it (from time to time, remove applications that you do not need from it);
  2. Brakes, by the way, can be associated with drivers (for example, if there is a conflict of drivers for different equipment). I recommend checking and updating the drivers ☝ using the special. utilities, or from the official website of the manufacturer of your equipment.
  3. Buy and start using an SSD 👌. True, there are some drawbacks here: they are expensive, less volume than HDD (Windows will need to be transferred from HDD to SSD in order not to lose your data).
  4. Lastly, take a look at your antivirus. Often, when Windows boots up, they start checking all auto-loaded programs, and this "hangs up" the PC.

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After reinstalling Windows

It is not uncommon that the computer starts to slow down after Windows has been reinstalled. If the old OS did not slow down so much and behaved differently, I recommend paying attention to a few of the following things ...

UpdatesAccommodation

After installing Windows, it starts to search for and download updates by default. This search and load - often has a strong impact on the CPU usage (which, of course, affects performance). The Windows Update service is responsible for this, and if you disable it, then Windows will stop updating.

👉 To help!

How to disable updates in Windows - see instructions

Note: however, I do not recommend not updating the system at all. I am only a supporter of disabling the auto-update of the system so that it does not interfere with the work. But once a month, in my opinion, it's worth turning on the service and manually checking for an update (when it won't interfere with your work).

Drivers

As a rule, after reinstalling the OS, old working drivers (time-tested 👌) are lost. In addition, Windows often installs its own drivers during the installation process. And it is not uncommon that they work very badly ...

Therefore, I recommend that you go to the website of your laptop (computer) manufacturer, download the drivers from there and install them manually. Or use special utilities for auto-update and search for drivers. The links are given below.

👉 To help!

Best driver update utilities

How to find out the characteristics of a PC and its manufacturers

Wrong Windows bit depth (Does not see all memory)

If you have 4 GB of RAM (or more), and you have installed a 32 bit version of Windows, then it will only see 3 GB, which in turn will affect performance! Besides, some programs (video editors, graphical editors, etc.) work better and faster in Windows 64 bit systems.

👉 To help!

Learn more about Windows (32/64 bits)

Windows OS problem (assemblies are evil)

If you installed all sorts of Windows OS builds, the brakes could appear due to the quality of the build itself. The fact is that in it it is quite possible that some important services are disabled, something necessary has been removed, etc.

And if on one computer such an assembly can work quite normally, then on another, errors, freezes, etc.can begin to pour in.

After all, no collector tests their product as much as an official developer does ...

👉 To help!

Easy free installation of licensed Windows OS

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After some time of work (after 15-30 min.)

High temperature, overheating

Personally, with this, I would first of all recommend paying attention to temperature... The fact is that if the cooling system fails, the temperature begins to rise when it reaches certain values ​​- the computer starts to slow down.

How to find out the temperature PC components? Very simple - use one of the utilities: 👉 Speccy, AIDA, etc.

Note: in AIDA (on the screenshot below), to see the temperature of the main components, you must open the "Computer / Sensors" section.

AIDA64 - temperature of CPU, hard disk, etc.

Next, see if there are any indicators that exceed the allowable values ​​for your hardware. The figures here can only be approximate, pay attention to the temperature if:

  • CPU: if it has exceeded the reading of 60 degrees. Ts .;
  • for hard disk: more than 40 gr. Ts .;
  • for a video card: more than 60-65 gr. Ts.

By the way, I recommend that you read the article, the link to which is below (in it I examined the issues on temperature in detail).

How to find out the temperature of the processor, video card and hard drive, what is considered the norm? Ways to reduce the temperature of computer / laptop components - //ocomp.info/kak-uznat-temperaturu-cpu-gpu-hdd.html

By the way, the temperature usually starts to rise due to:

  • clogged cooling system (dust (how to clean your PC from it - see below) , poorly placed furniture, covering the ventilation holes);
  • a stopped cooler (for example, it could just stop spinning due to a loose contact);
  • in the hot summer season, when the temperature in the room and outside the window becomes much higher than the rest of the time.

Dust

As a rule, when the device is very dusty, the temperature in it starts to rise (whether it is a regular system unit or a laptop). Therefore, it is advisable to clean the system unit from dust a couple of times a year. How to do this is described in a separate article, the link to it is below.

👉 To help!

Cleaning the computer from dust: monitor, system unit, keyboard - see note ->

How to clean a laptop from dust - see instructions ->

"Crooked" software (for example, a game). For gamers: take a look at Steam

Very often certain moments in games are slowed down due to developers' flaws (for example, the game was not optimized for the old line of video cards).

As a result, in some games, when you see fire (as an option), the game screen seems to freeze (in other games, this can happen with water). The recommendation here is simple: try looking at the official requirements of the game, thematic forums. Surely, if there is such a problem, the fans of this game have already taken it apart to pieces ...

Also, at one time such a popular service as Steam let down its users. The "steam.exe" process was causing the system to hang badly for a few minutes after starting the game. Therefore, if you use this service, minimize the game and look in task manager (call buttons Ctrl + Shift + Esc ), all the foxes are fine with him ...

Video card stress test (if in games)

By the way, it will help to assess whether everything is in order with the video card, whether there are any problems with it. stress test (by the way, it is recommended to conduct it if your PC games slow down). You can find out how to carry it out from one of my old articles, the link below.

👉 To help!

Video card stress test - test a video card for performance and stability

Updates on Windows

Also, slow operation and freezes in games can be caused by a Windows update (for example, when it is launched during your game).

I recommend turning off automatic updates (and sometimes turning them on manually when they won't bother you). How to do it - 👉 see this note.

uTorrent

Pay attention to such p2p programs as uTorrent, StrongDC, etc. The fact is that if files are hashed in them, or if other users actively download your files, your performance may decrease. Therefore, it is recommended to close such applications before starting the game (in cases of their slowdown).

👉 To help!

HDD disk overloaded 100% when downloading files (torrents) in uTorrent

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In the game, when installing games

Brakes in games are probably one of the most common and pressing problems for many users. In general, for a start, I recommend that you read one of my articles - why games slow down.

Installation problem (the game is packed by the archiver)

Many users complain that the computer slows down wildly when installing a game (although the computer seems to be new ...).

In general, as a rule, many games are packed into archives. During installation, the installer extracts this data and places it in your folder that you specified before installation. By itself, this process very often loads the hard disk and the CPU of the computer ...

Thus, if the PC slows down during installation, this is not surprising (if only it does not freeze). Even more, I recommend that you close other resource-intensive applications (video editors, graphic editors, and the same uTorrent, etc.) before installing.

👉 To help!

If the installation freezes or takes a very long time (exceeding reasonable limits) - I recommend checking the status of your hard drive

High system requirements of the game

Many gamers are oblivious to the system requirements. After all, all games always indicate the minimum and recommended system requirements for a comfortable game.

If your computer doesn't meet the recommended requirements, it's no surprise that it slows down. However, do not be discouraged after reading the articles below - you can speed up the work of your machine a little ...

👉 To help!

Speed ​​up games: the best programs and utilities - see my selection

How to increase the number of FPS in games - see instructions

Non-native drivers

When installing a modern version of Windows (for example, Windows 10), it also automatically installs drivers for all hardware that it recognizes. In most cases, everything works fine, but sometimes the wrong drivers are installed, or they start to confront.

In general, I recommend downloading drivers for your video card from official site manufacturer (or use special utilities for auto-updating drivers). Links below.

👉 To help!

5 best programs to auto-update drivers

How to find and install a driver for an unknown device

Drivers are not tuned for performance

In the settings of the drivers for different video cards (nVidia, AMD Radeon, IntelHD), you can set the operating mode: either improve the picture quality, or set the maximum performance.

Only due to such fine tuning of the drivers, you can significantly speed up any of the games. How this is done is described in my previous articles, the links to which are below.

Acceleration AMD (Radeon) - see instructions

Acceleration nVidia (GeForce) - see instructions

IntelHD acceleration - see instructions

Discrete graphics card not working

Many modern computers and laptops today are equipped with two video cards: integrated and discrete. When starting games, in most cases, the discrete card should activate and start working. But this does not always happen ...

👉 To help!

How to run the game on a discrete video card - see instructions

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When watching a video

When watching a video, the computer can also often freeze: the picture will twitch, the sound will stutter, and all emotions from viewing will tend to zero ...

This happens for various reasons, but in most cases it is the codecs, player, or weak PC that is to blame. More on this below ...

👉 Important!

Please note that this is a video that you watch on your computer. If your online video slows down (from YouTube, VK, Odnoklassniki services), then see this instruction

Outdated (low quality) codecs

Very often the video slows down due to low-quality codecs. In case of such a problem, I recommend that first of all try to remove your old codecs and install a new modern set (for example,K-Lite Codec Pack... How to install it correctly - you can read in the article at the link below).

👉 To help!

Best codecs (to make all videos playable)

Too high quality video for your PC

Now on the Internet there is a lot of videos: both in AVI, MP4, WMV, etc., and in the codecs that compressed them. Also, each video has a certain quality: 720p or 1080p or 4K (for example), which are so popular lately.

Note that 4K video playback requires twice the power of a PC than, say, 1080p. Not every old PC can handle such a video and will be able to play it with high quality (without jerks).

In this case, I can recommend the following:

  • try reinstalling 👉 codecs;
  • install a couple 👉 other players and check how the video plays in them;
  • close all other applications that load the PC before playing the video;
  • download the same video in a lower quality (so that today, with the development of the Internet, a lot can be found very quickly ... ☝).

Not optimized program / player

Just a little higher, I said a couple of words about the fact that different players when playing the same video can behave differently: one will load the processor up to 100% and slow down, the other will play a normal video (it all depends on the algorithms and code, on what the program is written on - what the resources it needs depend on. Programmers "write" differently ...).

👉 To help!

The best players for Windows - my selection

Why video slows down on a computer / laptop - step-by-step instructions

Note!

Players recommended to try on old computers: BS.Player, Media Player Classic, VLC media player, Splash HD Player Lite.

Discrete video card not involved

I described this problem in more detail in one of my previous posts (I recommend you to get acquainted!).

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When connected to the internet

Updates are downloading

If the computer starts to slow down while connecting to the Internet, the first thing I recommend to pay attention to is the Windows Update service (it is she who is responsible for updating the system). If you open the task manager - the CPU and memory load comes from the process svchost.exe .

In this case, you need to disable auto-updates and enable them manually, as needed.

👉 To help!

How to disable updates on Windows

Trojans, adware, viruses

The second thing I would recommend is to check your computer for viruses and adware. Often, when you access the Internet, adware starts downloading and showing you ads. Because of this action - the computer often does not work stably, performance drops.

👉 To help!

The best antivirus programs of this year - see my selection

Note. When checking, I recommend using two anti-virus programs: for example, the classic Kaspersky anti-virus, and the AdwCleaner utility.

The network is loaded with programs that consume traffic

The next important point is to look in task manager (call buttons Ctrl + Shift + Esc), are there any programs that actively download information on the network.

For example, various torrents, browsers, uTorrent, FTP programs, etc.

Chrome is downloading a file / as an example

Slow internet

If, for example, your online video or online game slows down, it is quite possible that you need to look for the reason not in the computer itself, but on the network.

If the speed of your channel is not enough, for example, for a certain game (or any other application), then there is nothing surprising in freezing ... 👀

I recommend running a couple of simple tests to check and find out your internet speed. This will be discussed in the article below at the link.

👉 To help!

How to find out the speed of the Internet on a computer - see the instructions

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When working in a browser

Browsers are used by 99.999% of PC / laptop users (even those who are not connected to the Internet). Perhaps that is why there are many complaints about browsers, they are constant and inexhaustible ☝.

If you are a user of the Chrome browser or its derivatives (and now it is one of the most popular), I recommend that you read the article below (a few tips are described and given that will make your browser faster).

👉 To help!

How to speed up the Chrome browser - see instructions

Large number of tabs

The more tabs are open in the browser, the more memory they will require (and the CPU load increases). Thus, when you open the n-th number of tabs (depending on the characteristics of the PC and the type of Internet pages), your PC will start to slow down noticeably.

There are two recommendations here: try not to open everything you can in tabs; and try using less resource-intensive browsers.

👉 To help!

The best browsers for weak computers - see my selection

The abundance of advertisements on the page.Browser infected with adware (virus)

On Internet pages where there are a lot of advertisements, it is not only not pleasant to be, but it also affects the responsiveness and performance of your PC.

Moreover, I want to note that advertising on pages can be displayed even in cases where you install special plugins to block it and (this happens in cases of infection of the browser with adware. Recently - a real attack!).

👉 To help!

How to remove ads in the browser and cure it from adware.

Old computer and new browser ...

If you have a rather old computer, it is possible that it is simply not enough for comfortable work in a modern browser, which has dozens of plugins and extras included. "buns".

On weak machines, I recommend trying browsers with minimal CPU and memory usage. You can read about such browsers in one of my articles, link below.

👉 To help!

The best browsers (including for weak PCs) - presented in my last post ->

Slow internet speed

If your Internet pages take a long time to load, find out first your real Internet speed (link below). I also recommend trying to use the Opera and Yandex browser browsers in turbo mode (there is such an option that allows you to speed up page loading on a slow Internet).

In addition, try disabling graphics on websites (flash animation, pictures, advertising) - this will also speed up page loading and reduce the load on the system as a whole.

👉 To help!

1) How to find out the speed of the Internet on a computer

2) How to speed up the Internet on a computer, laptop

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When trying to open or copy a file

Hard disk problem (bad)

If you want to copy a file from your hard disk and, as a result, it freezes, this is a rather alarming symptom (especially if your disk is unnaturally noisy: knocks, clicks, etc.).

I also recommend that you pay attention to the state of the disk if: your files began to disappear, they stopped opening, the speed of copying files is very slow, the Windows OS crashes, etc.All this may indicate both mechanical problems and, for example, that bad blocks appeared on the disk.

This topic is quite extensive - so I will give a link to the article below, which will help you understand and find out the state of your hard drive.

👉 To help!

How to check the hard disk for errors and bad sectors - see instructions ->

Small files and too many of them

If you copy a lot of small files (for example, collections of pictures) from one disk to another, then, as a rule, the copying speed drops and becomes very low. Many users are outraged (especially if you need to transfer tens of gigabytes of pictures).

Decision: in fact, everything is fine with your PC, when copying a lot of small files - the computer always behaves this way ...

In this case, I will give one advice - try to pack all your small files into an archive (for example, in uncompressed ZIP - it is done very quickly!), And then copy the archive itself. The speed will increase significantly!

👉 To help!

Free archivers for Windows

Free 7-Zip archiver - create uncompressed ZIP archive

The file is damaged (not fully loaded). There is no program to open the file

If your file has not been downloaded to the end (that is, it was downloaded, say, only 80%, instead of 100), then when you open it, you will see some kind of error, or your computer will simply "think" and for half a minute or a minute at all nothing will happen.

By the way, a similar picture happens if you do not have an application that can open a certain file type... By no means always a sign pops up immediately, asking you to choose a program to open a particular file.

To set and configure file associations go to:

👉  Control Panel \ Programs \ Default Programs \ Select Default Programs .

Next, select a specific program and set which file extensions it can open (screen below).

Default programs (file associations)

Antivirus is blocking access to the file

And finally, check if your antivirus is blocking access to the file. Especially when it comes to some games, game assistants, crackers and other add-ons to various applications (which are not distributed by official publishers).

Almost any modern antivirus can be disabled for a certain time (Avast is shown below as an example 👇).

Disable Avast antivirus for 1 hour

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I understand that the article turned out to be quite long, and checking all the reasons can take a long time (especially for a novice user). Nevertheless, I hope that the article will help someone save money, time and nerves. So the time was not wasted on it! 👌

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For additions on the topic - a big merci in advance ...

On this I will round off, good luck to everyone!

👋

First publication: 16.05.2017

Correction: 01/03/2020

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