digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

15 Downloads That Can Improve PC Speed

washingtonpost.com — Why is your computer sluggish? The reasons are countless. You may have a clogged Registry, too many programs running in the background, or a full hard drive, for example. The following downloads can boost your PC speed by fixing these problems and more.

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 24, 2007

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

97 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • tutivlahos, on 11/24/2007, -1/+114I installed them all:
    http://kmpcservices.co.uk/images/Toolbars.jpg
    Much better now.
  • toxicgonzo, on 11/24/2007, -0/+5116. Download more RAM
  • Catchpen, on 11/24/2007, -1/+5015 ways to write a good article that helps to speed your browsing:
    #1 Include hyperlinks on what the hell you're writing about...
  • meshman, on 11/24/2007, -1/+32Article was written by a lazy person. Thanks for the links.
  • pxa270, on 11/24/2007, -0/+27Lots of "optimization tools" are pure crap, especially "Registry cleaners" which are 99% snake oil. The German C't magazine did some nice tests last year that dispel a lot Windows myths, amongst which "a bloated registry slows down your system". They stuffed a normal XP registry with 256MB (yes, megabytes) of random junk entries, and didn't detect any speed difference in either using the machine or in benchmarking.
  • More4, on 11/24/2007, -0/+26here's a link to the original PC World story, with links - http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,139791 ...
  • jfavreau, on 11/24/2007, -2/+19If you're looking for a faster PDF experience try foxit - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/down_rea ...
    It's free, it loads in under a second, it's lightweight, and it does everything adobe does in a 22.3MB installer with a 2.3 MB installer. No bloat, just works (also doesn't call home every time you open it)

    Enjoy
  • Beowulf2112, on 11/24/2007, -0/+17Some guy actually asked me if I knew the best place to download more RAM one time...
  • felch, on 11/24/2007, -0/+17That article is garbage. Registry cleaners are useless voodoo and always have been. I'm surprised they don't have some lame memory unloader like back in the Win98 days. Bury this as lame, for the love of god.
  • tusseyd, on 11/24/2007, -0/+15So why are the names and links to these programs absent? Buried for poor information.
  • mal1964, on 11/24/2007, -0/+11I go to digg for PC info, not the Washington Post.
  • Samsong, on 11/24/2007, -2/+13Doesn't anyone else shudder when they see that? Literally, I've been cleaning crap like that off computers for years...
  • Shakermaker, on 11/24/2007, -0/+11I didn't view the page in IE, but in Firefox he keeps referring to "this" program, and there's no link to it...
  • sockpuppets, on 11/24/2007, -4/+14It must be a Dell.
  • Ngai, on 11/24/2007, -2/+11All you'll ever need...

    +Fresh Install..
  • Keloran, on 11/24/2007, -0/+8i think im going a bit thick, i didnt see any links to downlaod anything in that entire aritcle

    specially love the "If you use Windows Vista and you're looking for an all-in-one utility to improve system performance, this program is worth a try" what program, whats it called, i want it
  • adml_shake, on 11/24/2007, -0/+8I'll have to do that after I get back from picking up some "Blinker Fluid" for my car and some "Muffler Bearings"
  • AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8Fasterfox doesn't really do much for making Firefox that much faster.
  • justice7, on 11/24/2007, -0/+7this is totally innaccurate... a bloated registry will cause your systems to slow to a crawl. This is when the system is bloated over time, and the registry becomes fragmented. If you add 256MB of junk all at once, it will be in order and will barely affect speed at all.
  • bobmcnutt, on 11/24/2007, -0/+5Because you install stupid crap.
  • tempusrob, on 11/24/2007, -0/+5Because you're completely incompetent?
  • teknotant, on 11/24/2007, -1/+6I would say 90% of the reason that computers slow down, is a result of programs starting on start-up. I use microsoft's own free tool, autoruns to correct this problem in a matter of seconds.
  • piesforyou, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4autoruns.
  • evereddie, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4The guy who wrote this article obviously needs more ram. In his head. Never seen such incompetence.
  • Malakin, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4As many have already pointed out, this is a terrible article. Here are my quick suggests on speeding up a slow Windows system:
    - Use add/remove programs to remove anything you don't use.
    - Run msconfig from Run in the start menu, go to the startup tab, and use it to stop anything from automatically starting at boot that isn't needed. You can also use autoruns (just google it), but be careful what you untick. Stopping programs from loading at boot is the most important step.
    - Run Ccleaner to clean junk such as temp folders. This will free up some disk space.
    - Run scandisk. Minor filesystem errors can cause performance problems and this will fix them.
    - Run defrag. This will ensure that all the files on your hard drive are in contiguous pieces so that your hard drive can read them in quicker than if they were in many pieces.
    Done!
    A clean install or hardware upgrades would be the next step, if you still weren't happy with the performance.
  • MadEnvoy, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4The only way to stop them is to shoot them in the head.
  • nathew, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4you really think a major media outlet like the washington post is going to be taken down by the digg effect? wow.
  • BinaryFragger, on 11/24/2007, -0/+4Wny do I have some XP installs that are 3+ years old that still perform well?

    What the hell are you doing to your computer that makes it require a reinstall every 6 months?
  • iamaelephant, on 11/24/2007, -0/+3Why are people digging an article with no links and half of the program names missing? Buried.
  • ropers, on 11/24/2007, -2/+515 Downloads That Can Improve PC Speed:

    1. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
    2. http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html
    3. http://gobolinux.org/index.php?page=downloads
    4. http://damnsmalllinux.org/download.html
    5. http://www.puppylinux.com/
    6. http://www.netbsd.org/
    7. http://www.freebsd.org/
    8. http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/
    9. http://www.bebits.com/app/2680
    10. http://www.reactos.org/en/download.html
    11. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/download.html
    12. http://www.dragonflybsd.org/community/download.sht ...
    13. http://aros.sourceforge.net/
    14. http://www.thinkgos.com/downloads.html
    15. http://www.minix3.org/download/
  • inactive, on 11/24/2007, -1/+4yeor you can msconifg
  • Tranced0nline, on 11/24/2007, -2/+5How would that help?
  • dev3, on 11/24/2007, -0/+3He means this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Util ...
    and I agree..It's much better than msconfig
  • AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -2/+4Thanks. I think we can read it on the site though.
  • 0KonTroL0, on 11/25/2007, -0/+2Is your PC sluggish? Install Linux. no registry, no fragmentation, etc, etc, etc.
  • Ngai, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2i have in the last 5 years only had 1 virus.. and needless to say it was because of a careless mistake of going to a site i knew would have one..
    but other than that... if your running a dual core i suggest you do so as you have a lot memory to run extra programs without a notice in speed decrease and an increase in security.

  • voyvf, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2good thing they're running that monstrosity in vmware. :D
  • inactive, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2Good lord...I can't believe how much is autostarting. I've used msconfig and this util is WAY more comprehensive. Thanks!
  • itstomreally, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2"A full hard drive may be slowing down your computer", but don't worry filling it with these programs will help!
  • donnydarko, on 11/24/2007, -3/+5This is what you do at party's....?
  • inactive, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2Best way to speed up xp is to stop programs auto running when you start up and also disable windows services you don't need
  • shaolinpunks, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2mmmmm free lobster dinner!!
  • tempusrob, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2That is slick as hell. SysInternals to the rescue yet again!
  • justice7, on 11/24/2007, -0/+2you guys think this is funny.. but back when RAM was super expensive, there were "RAM Doubler" applications which would compress your memory... and in many cases, this helped .. and in many others, it did nothing.
  • zwaldowski, on 11/24/2007, -0/+1That was the worst... no, best... blatant advertisement I've ever seen.
  • nathew, on 11/24/2007, -1/+2I had to do it! My mouth was a broken .jpeg!
  • CatalystGhost, on 11/24/2007, -1/+2Have you tried power cycling your speakers?
  • roebeet, on 11/24/2007, -0/+1Good practice for the tech-savvy - run a VM instance of your preferred Windows version. If you are considering accessing a questionable site or installing some piece of software that's questionable, run it there, first. If your taskbar and task manager start increasing in size, restore from a previous snapshot and you're done.
    If the extra license is a problem, you can also use Virutal PC and get the free (but time-limited) images that MS offers. Not sure how long that will last, however.
  • gamer_013, on 11/24/2007, -0/+1If those don't help be sure to check the water in your wheel-base and make sure you have enough headlight fluid.
  • zwaldowski, on 11/24/2007, -0/+1How many gigs of RAM do you have now? Five?
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 98 of 98 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.