Several Easy Steps to Boost Your Computer's Speed

Step 2 Reboot your Computer

For generic purpose, computer memory is referred to RAM (or Random Access Memory). It is used to support computers current operations. No matter how much you do to speed up your computer, your RAM will eventually fill up over time by just using it.

This memory is utilized to store information while computer is powered on. Once power is switched off, information from the memory gets erased automatically, because it requires a constant electrical charge to maintain its contents. RAM then is ready to be available once computer is powered on again. Hence it is named volatile memory. It is written and accessed randomly, which is why it’s called RAM.

With that over with, the basic idea to this step is to not have your computer on for a long period of time.
If you want to reset all the bits in your RAM, turn off your computer, and leave it off for about 5 minutes. Then reboot the computer, and your RAM should be wiped clean!

* If you are going to be using the computer in an hour or two, just put it into hibernate or sleep mode.

* If you are leaving it for over 10 hours, you probably want to shut it down.

* If you have your computer on and you’re using it for over 10 hours, do something else! At least shut it down and turn it back on if you notice it becoming sloth-like.

Comments

[vascanj]

Could someone on instructables make a Mac or Linux edition? That would be AWESOME for all of us Macintosh users! Thanks! (Not trying to sound annoying here!)

[mike!!!]

cant you reinstall windows without your freeware programs as well?

[mwarner2]

actualy it does not matter if the bits from the ram are cleared or not the only thing thats important is if the operating system thinks that part of the rams is filled. it sees every thing else as meaningless noise until it puts something there. how ever turning off the computer is helpful because off a bug called memory leak. this happens when a program does not tell the operating system that it is done with its data. causing the operating system to keep that space reserved for the program. over time this can take up massive amounts of space. oh course proper memory management will mitigate this problem. but that require part of the operating system to be rewritten which is out side the scope of the user. so basically if the developers did there jobs right your would not need to restart your computer to free ram. for example my computer (running ubuntu) only needs restarting to install certain updates. i never have to restart my computer to free up space in my ram. however i do have to restart my dads windows machine once a week due to memory fragmentation, but not because of memory leakage.

[7031]

What are you talking about? RAM gets emptied whenever the program consuming RAM Is closed. If a program is being a resource hog, use the tag manager to close it.

[pokemon2539]

nope actually, IF YOUR COMPUTER IS ON, THEN R.A.M. CANT BE EMPTIED.

RAM needs to be unpowered (computer being off) for 5 minutes (give or take) for the data to be removed

[tinkerC]

But the values in them don't get cleared. Also, a program can't destroy all of the variables it used at the end. malloc() calls in C, for example.

[lukethebook333]

I can agree with that, but if your computer is on for a VERY long time, I thought that this might help to some degree. I think that over time you may have many processes running, and it will bog down your computer, also just having everything running may affect it, but I am not extremely familiar with the subject.

[Tommy8754]

for some odd reason if I ever reboot my comuter it is for some very odd reason gets slower and I need a hour of it sitting to let it go faster, and I am running off of a very small startup list so it can't be that

[Kalessin]

While it can be true that merely having programs open CAN slowly make your computer slow down, it is
1) not because the RAM fills up (though I can't remember what the real reason is) and
2)mainly something that happens on Windows PCs. Those of us using GNU/Linux or Macs can get quite literally years of uptime with no slowdown, though most people have to reboot every now and again for kernel updates and such.

About the second comment: I do realise that this instructable appears to be aimed at Windows users. Not a problem with me - I use it sometimes as well, you know. Just using the others here as examples to demonstrate that the reboot thing isn't universal.

*ahem* yabber over, you can stop ignoring me now.