Typically if you Google the program name, if it's dodgy then you will get a lot of hits of people saying it's dodgy on sites such as 'Should I remove it?' so you would then remove it.Īny entries which don't have a 'Publisher' entry, be suspicious of and Google it.Īlso, as far as your Anti-Virus goes, I have had good experience with a mix of Windows Defender, which is built into Windows 8-10, or Microsoft Security Essentials on 7, and Malware Bytes, the free version, very important.

Pay attention to the 'Publisher' column and any programs where you don't recognise the name of the program or the publisher, be suspicious of it. As I mentioned, remove any of these 'Speed up' programs and remove any 'Toolbars'. You're gonna wanna check out what programs you have so load up 'Add/Remove Program' or 'Program & Features'. To start with, lets make sure there's no dodgy program on the PC. Also avoid any of these 'speed up' programs that claim to take total care of your system, they can be ok but ultimately cost more system resources than is worth keeping them around for. There's some good answers here already but to start with I would avoid registry cleaners, they benefit in no way for speed but do pose a risk breaking something. I may not expand on everything but if you Google whatever words or terms you're not sure of then you will find plenty of hits on them. Making slow PCs faster is part of my daily grind so I have a lot of tips for you here. There are many other potential suggestions but hopefully this is a good start! My old laptop ran super slow because it was over heating and it ran better after a quick clean.

If these don't work, you may try a full re-install of your OS or maybe even cleaning your laptop's internals. I would recommend uninstalling the program when you are done too, because they tend to take a fair amount of resources themselves.

This operation can take a while so maybe make it an overnight process.ģ: Try to download and install a well known virus scan program (like McAfee) and run it to make sure there aren't any obvious viruses on your computer. (Start menu>all programs> accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmentor>Defragment Disk). Do a restart when you are done here.Ģ: Defragment your hard drive. My general rule is that if I don't recognize the program name, I delete it. My recommendation would be to do the following:ġ: Uninstall undesired or unused programs (control panel>Install/uninstall programs). When was the last time your laptop had a virus scan or disk defragment? How about the deletion of un-needed programs that may be running the background?

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