Computer Crashes and Common Causes

Thursday, 06 March 2008

Computer crashes are common on computers that are cluttered with a lot of unwanted information. Recovering from a computer crash, at times, may be so difficult that you may be forced to seek help of an expensive computer technician. Some of the common causes of computer crashes are:

Damaged registry.
Malware infections.
Large number of startup programs.
Filled up, cluttered, and damaged hard disk.

The registry is one of the most accessed components of your Windows operating system because it comprises all essential configuration information required by the hardware and software installed on your PC to perform various operations. Overtime, your registry gets filled up with loads of unwanted, obsolete, and incorrect information. This causes your registry to grow to a very large size, making it unstable, and slowing it down. A slow registry indirectly slows down your PC because it takes longer to fulfill information requests sent to it by hardware and software components. To free your registry from all of these unwanted files, and to repair all errors, you can use a reliable registry cleaner tool. In addition to repairing registry errors, you can use a registry cleaner tool to defrag the registry and make it contiguous, as well as make registry backups that you can restore in case your registry fails.

Where registry problems develop over a time, a single virus can bring your whole computer down within a few minutes. This is the reason why it is important for all computer users to have antivirus and antispyware tools on their systems. You must always keep these tools updated with the latest virus definitions to ensure that your system is ready to combat new malware programs released almost every minute. It is also important for you to opt for tools that provide real-time protection and prevent any malware programs from infiltrating your system. Lastly, you must schedule the tools to regularly perform a full system scan of your PC to ensure that it is free from any malicious information.

Do you know that even if you are not working on your PC there are many activities going on in the background to keep your PC operational? Although most of the processes running in the background are essential for your operating system, there are some that belong to applications installed on your PC and are usually not required until you start using this application. These programs usually load at system startup, eat up a lot of system resources, and lead your PC towards a crash. You can use the System Configuration Utility (msconfig) to disable these non-essential programs from loading at system startup. You may also delete the shortcuts to the programs in the Startup list present in the Start menu.

After you have completed all of the above steps, you need to clean up the hard disk. In order to clean up the hard disk, you can use the Disk Cleanup tool that is shipped with your Windows XP and Window Vista system. These tools enable you to free up a lot of disk space by compressing old files, deleting unwanted program setup files, cleanup up temporary Internet Files, uninstall programs and Windows components you do not require, empty the Recycle Bin, and delete old System Restore snapshots.

After cleaning up disk space, you must use the Disk Defragmenter tool to defrag the hard disk to consolidate its files, optimize the disk and as a result, speed up your PC.

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