My computer is running slow – part 2

Software plays a major role in your computer’s performance.  Even when your hardware is working optimally, software can put a strain on your operating system and hardware, causing slowness.

Software issue may affect the entire operating system.  The computer can continue running normally, but certain functions associated with specific software could slow down greatly. For example, Internet Explorer and other browsers, interact with many programs to display websites, such as Flash and Java.  Your browser can take longer to display a webpage because of issues with your installed versions of Flash and Java, but other programs could continue working without issue.  This can also happen when there is a software update.  If these changes are not accepted by other software, it could cause slowness.  These types of problems are sometimes more difficult to identify.  If you notice issues like these, you should bring your machine to a service center to be assessed.

Another potential side effect of program conflicts could be data corruption.  Data corruption occurs when a software or hardware problem prevents files from working properly, or from being visible or usable by the operating system or other programs.  Symptoms of this could be slowness, random crashes, or blue screens.  Data corruption has the potential to affect a single program without surfacing elsewhere in the operating system.  Take an audio cd with 10 tracks, but you only listen to the first five tracks.  You never notice the dirt on the cd where track number 7 plays.  The dirt could cause the song to skip, or even prevent it from playing at all.  Similarly, software “dirt” can prevent files from working properly on your computer.  This software “dirt” is generally called data corruption.  Unlike dirt on a cd, data corruption has the potential to spread to other programs, depending on the cause.

The final cause of software induced slowness could be adware or viruses, also known as malware.  It is possible to download infections without realizing anything has happened.  Browsing unfamiliar websites, not updating your operating system, opening emails from people you don’t know, downloading attachments to your hard drive, not installing an antivirus, downloading and installing unfamiliar or illegal licensed software, etc.  Regardless of how they get there, malware can find their way to your hard drive and slow everything down.  Usually there are obvious signs of malware, like advertisements popping up randomly, software you didn’t install opening or being display on your desktop, family and friends receiving emails from you that you didn’t send, etc.  However, some malware can run from areas of the hard drive that aren’t visible by most programs or even antivirus.  A common misconception from our customers is they believe they should able to install a program to fix their malware on their own.  Hackers have gotten very clever in the way they infect computers, and it is almost never possible to run some miracle program that will fix all your adware and virus issues.  If you believe your machine is infected, we highly recommend contacting us today to speak about your symptoms.