Programs Slow to Open, Start, Launch, Shutdown or Close

How to speed up programs loading

As you use your computer, there are many things that can slow down the way programs load and leave you sitting and staring at that annoying little hourglass. Luckily, there are easy things you can do to speed up your load times.

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Defragment

As you use your system, pieces of files end up in different parts of the computer. As the computer tries to load and run these programs it has to go to several different places in order to put the pieces together again. Defragmenting your computer will put the files back together in one central location which should considerably speed up your load times.

1. Go to Start and choose My Computer.

2. Find the drive you want to Defrag and right click on it.

3. Choose Properties, Tools and Defragment Now.

4. Let the system run – it may take up to an hour. You do need to make sure that the process won’t be interrupted in any way – a partially completed defrag can wreak havoc with your computer.

 Registry Cleaner

As you add and remove programs from your computer, small pieces of them can remain in the registry and slow load and run times. While there are ways to get into the registry and alter it, making a mistake in the registry can have lethal consequences so it is not recommended. There are many registry cleaners on the market that will do it automatically, leaving your system cleaner and faster without the risk you take by doing it yourself. If you are wondering which program to use, there are many sites that rate the various programs – a quick search will give you many options.

Disk Clean Up

A disk cleanup can also speed up program load times.

              1. Go to Start and then Run. In the text box, type in: cleanmgr.exe and Enter.

              2. Let it run. It may take awhile, so only do this when you have time to spare.

Prefetch

Windows XP loads commonly used programs at boot time. You can speed up Windows loading by clearing out the prefetch cache.

1. The best way to do this is to partially disable it. Go to your windows folder (C:\Windows) and find the prefetch folder.

2. Get into that folder and find the files list.

3. Delete the files that you find there.

4. The next boot up will be slow, as it relearns the prefetch for system files, but subsequent boots should be much faster.

5. This will only speed up Windows loading until the cache gets full again. There is a way to change it in the registry, but you should only do this if you are confident in your skills and have backed up your data.

6. Go to Start and then Run. Type in: regedit.

7. Navigate to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

8. In this key, you should see Enable Prefetcher. Switch the value to 2 and then reboot.

If you find that individual program load times have increased, get into the registry again and switch the value back to 3.