4 simple and easy ways to make your computer start faster

Even if you keep your computer virus-free and don’t downloading suspicious programs, it'll eventually stop booting up as quickly as it used to. 

But don’t worry, the IT experts at The Computer Guyz have listed a few easy fixes you can do to make your Mac or PC start up almost as fast as when you first took it out of the box!

Step 1:  Keep your desktop clean

One of the easiest ways to make your boot time faster is to clean up your desktop. The more files, photos, folders and programs you keep on your desktop, the more your computer will have to load right out of the gate. You might think your desktop is just another folder but unlike other folders, everything on it loads as part of your computer's boot sequence. This can strain your RAM and slow down the whole process, especially if your computer is a bit on the older side.

You don’t have to remove everything from your desktop, but at this point there isn’t much need to have anything on there. On Macs, you can keep your most-used programs and applications on your dock, and on Windows computers you can pin your favourite programs to your taskbar by right-clicking the program and selecting that option.

Using your desktop as storage for files and photos is fine for temporary work, but once you can’t see half your background, it’s time to start moving those items to another folder.

Step 2:  Quit unused programs (Mac only)

Just because you hit the red X on the top left of your window doesn’t mean you’ve exited the program. On a Mac, you can close every window but still be running every program, and turning off your computer doesn’t mean they close either.

If you’re done using your Mac, make sure you quit out of every program you don’t need on startup before turning it off, otherwise they will automatically load when you boot and bog down your startup time. You can quit programs by going through the program’s menu in the top left and selecting “Quit Program”.

Step 3:  Stop programs from automatically launching

Even if you exit out of every program before turning off your computer, some applications will launch automatically when you boot it back up again. Having a few programs launching along with your computer can put a lot of strain on your computer’s resources and slow down the entire process.

Some programs, when you install them, set themselves to launch at startup. By navigating menus in the program, you can usually find the option to turn that off. Some programs make it very difficult to find the option, so if you can't seem find it, there’s an easy way to get rid of apps that launch at startup.

Step 4:  Clear out temporary files

If your Internet browser is the first thing you click when you start your computer, you may want to clear out the temporary files and cookies stored in it. After a while, your browser will get bogged down with items stored in its cache, which are things like automatic form fills, login information and history. If you go to your browser's preferences, clearing out your cache and deleting your cookies will remove all that. You'll have to log in again on websites that save your info, but the speed increase is worth the occasional wipe.

Make sure your computer is as fast as the very first day you switched it on – use these simple and easy steps and you’ll never have to wait for your PC again!