If your PC or laptop starts to slow down after a while instead of taking it to service center you shuould try these three simple ways to boost it up. This can help you get to know your laptop/PC and save some money.

1. CCleaner

Sometimes, though, even the fastest hardware can get bogged down – there's no point shelling out for pricey SSD or RAM upgrades if your Windows installation is cluttered with tens or hundreds of programs and apps which you never use.

So, before you reach for the credit card, the first thing anyone with an ailing computer should do is to make sure it's not clogged up with unnecessary data. Over time, various scraps of code build up like digital cobwebs, slowing your machine down.

Fortunately, there are many utilities designed to hunt down and remove unwanted files and extensions. One program we particularly like is CCleaner. This free piece of software scours your hard drive for all the pesky files hogging your disk space, including temporary files, internet cookies and unused registry files.

An added benefit is the 'Registry' tab, allowing you to scan and fix redundancies or other problems in your PC's registry archive, helping improve speed. In the 'Tools' tab you can also uninstall programs, disable startup programs, find out what kind of file takes up the most space on your drive, and even locate duplicate files.

Step 1

Once CCleaner has downloaded and installed, start the program. By default, CCleaner opens to the 'Cleaner' tab.

Step 2

From here, you can fine-tune the elements you want to clean out. You can choose specific programs or OS components to scan, and even which files you’d like to remove within.

Step 3

If you're happy with the scan, hit the “Analyse” button to see how much space you could free up. After the scan is complete, make any further adjustments, and then click 'Run Cleaner' to remove the files

2. Disabling Start-up Programs

Another good tip is to disable startup programs. These are programs that boot every time you turn on your computer, and run in the background until you need them.

Often, they can be disabled and simply opened when you want to use them, meaning they won’t slow down your PC with constant operation.

Step 1

To stop these programs from starting automatically on earlier versions of Windows, open the Start menu and type ‘msconfig’. This will open the system configuration menu. Windows 8 users can find the list of startup programs in the task manager.

Step 2

Switch to the ‘startup’ tab and scroll down the list; you’re looking for anything that you don’t immediately need.

Any antivirus services, programs from Microsoft or your PC manufacturer, or background programs you use regularly should be left on.

Things like Adobe Reader or any automatic update checkers can safely be unchecked, however.

Step 3

Once you’re happy that you’ve unchecked everything you don’t want, simply click Apply and OK, then reboot your computer to finalize the changes.

3. Turning off animations

While all the animations and fancy visual effects certainly make Windows look pretty, they can also eat up a whole lot of your processing power – especially on old, power-starved machines.

Sure, turning these off will make your PC look like it’s from 1994, but it’s the same principal as drag racing; strip out everything but the bare essentials and it will be considerably quicker.

Step 1

The quickest way to do this is opening the Start menu and typing ‘Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows’.

Step 2

Click the result under Control Panel, and it’ll open a dialogue menu.

Step 3

You can disable specific visual effects and flourishes from the scroll menu, or you can simply select ‘adjust for best performance’ to turn them all off.

Step 4

Click OK and, after a brief visual recalibration, you should be good to go.

By Dusan Radonjic