Is your Windows 7 PC slowing down?  Are you looking for tips on how speed up computer and make it run at optimal performance? You can make your Windows 7 PC soar in just a few minutes.

First, you need to make sure your current computer can handle Windows 7.  Window 7 has been rewritten to overcome all the problems of Vista without sacrificing speed.

Here are the basic requirements  to run Windows7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB of memory

If your computer ran Windows Vista previously, it should run Windows 7 smoothly. If you want to jump from Windows 98/2000 to Windows 7 directly you had better check your computer hardware first.

How to fix a slow Windows 7 computer?

1. First, every time you startup your computer it loads a lot of initializing programs.  Some of these programs are necessary for Windows 7 run.  Others may have been installed by your application software, while others still might be superfluous or even malicious.  In any event, the more startup programs the slower Windows 7 will load.  You can see what is being loaded by just go to the Start button and typing: msconfig into the search box (see above).





2. Disable any startup programs that aren’t necessary for your computers everyday operation. Be careful so you don’t disable something Windows really need. Do some investigation on Google if you are unsure.  When in doubt don't disable.
3. Turn off some of Windows 7 gorgeous visual effects. Of course, the visual effects of Windows 7 are really amazing. However, if you turn on all the visual effects, they will slow Windows 7 down. So if you prefer a faster computer, just turn some of the effects off.
4. Install an anti-virus program to protect your Windows 7 system. There are a lot of malware programs out there, with their only purpose is to slow down your computer. I have installed Free AVG antivirus, and Spybot SD for malware on my computer, and I run Malwarebytes several times a month to keep everything free of pests.
5. Finally, there is the Windows registry. This is a registry/database where Windows stores all the configurations and settings that it needs to keep track of. Over time the registry gets full of useless and sometimes corrupted information. Windows needs to search through all this info and thus slows down. I will typically run CCleaner on my registry once a month, or after I do a lot of installing and removing of software.

I hope the above article has been helpful.  In the next several months I will try to tackle some of the more complex issues concerning Windows 7.