Dealing with poor computer performance can get on one’s nerves rather quickly. You want to finish your work on time but cannot do that because the device takes too long to load, or there are random restarts, freezes, or crashes.

A similar thing can be said about playing video games or trying to entertain yourself in other ways. If a computer is underperforming, you will struggle to make the most out of it and be left with disappointment.

In many cases, taking your computer to a professional service store is usually the go-to option, particularly when a problem is related to hardware. After all, you do not want to tinker with things you have no experience with, right?

At the same time, smaller performance issues should be manageable on your own. Let’s take a look at what you can do without involving a computer technician.

Manage Startup Items

The first item on the list is startup items. You may install too many applications without realizing that they are in the startup. And each time you boot the computer, it takes a while to load because startup items also need to load.

In addition, you might forget about startup applications and have them run in the background, consuming system resources.

It should not take too long to trim up the startup item list. Leave only those applications that you need to use after the computer loads. And if possible, do not have any startup items at all. 

Restart the Device Regularly

If you have been using a computer for a while, you should be familiar with the fact that restarting the device helps with its performance.

Restarts help because they stop memory leaks, a process that leads to poor memory distribution from background applications.

As a rule of thumb, you should try to restart the computer once every few hours or even more frequently so long as it does not get in the way of your work.

Also, if you are reluctant to restart the computer because it takes too long to load, find out what is taking it to load. Perhaps it is startup items (something we already touched upon in the article), or maybe there is too much clutter on the computer’s desktop? 

Disable Visual Effects

Visual effects are not that common, but some people like to enable them, particularly when it comes to laptops. You might have seen backlit keyboards that hardly offer anything of value and are there to consume a computer’s resources.

A similar thing can be said about various animations that some applications have. There is really no need to have these effects around. If anything, you are better off taking a more pragmatic approach and disabling visual effects. 

Clean Dust Inside

Cleaning the dust inside a computer can be a tough challenge, particularly for laptop owners. Desktop computers have cases that are easier to take apart, whereas laptop hardware is tighter and integrated, and you may not be able to put the device back together.

Before you commit to cleaning the computer, make sure to know what you are doing. Otherwise, it will lead to further problems, such as damaged hardware.

Once you clean the dust inside, you should notice overall improvements to the computer’s performance and not as much overheating and loud noises coming from the internal fans.

Free Up Drive Storage

Those who have a computer with a spacious hard drive or solid-state drive should not worry about the storage issue too much, especially if they do not clutter the drive with random files.

On the other hand, not everyone is experienced enough to manage the data on their computer. For starters, you might consider getting one of the apps that work as a cleanup utility tool. You can use such tools to remove temporary system storage and other junk.

Next, if you find it difficult to decide what files to remove permanently, and you find that it makes more sense to keep them instead, then why not transfer some data to external storage? Cloud services and USB flash sticks or hard drives are a great solution. 

Optimize Internet Browser

In case you are experiencing performance issues with an internet browser while surfing the web rather than the computer itself, take some time to optimize the internet browser. You can also switch to a new browser, but before you do, try:

• Clearing the browser’s cache
• Removing redundant extensions
• Limiting the number of active browser tabs
• Checking if the browser is up to date

Install Updates

The last bit of advice is pretty straightforward. Whenever you see a new update available for the operating system, one of the drivers, or software that you use on a computer, do not hesitate and click the download button. 

Installing updates as soon as they become available will maintain the computer in a better place because updates improve performance, introduce better security, and sometimes bring new features.