How to Combat Slow Computer Speeds

All the kids are home from school, your in-laws are coming to visit, and you’re trying to be productive, but the internet doesn’t seem to want to budge. You’re experiencing slow computer speeds. There are just too many devices running at once, and they’re eating up all your bandwidth. Even though you might have your provider’s best speed package, that many devices can slow you down.

The average American household has around 9 connected devices. This number is expected to increase to around 13 in the coming years. Massive amounts of data are consumed when all of these devices are online at the same time. You might be thinking well we never use that many devices at the same time.

Think about it like this: you have multiple computers, maybe two or three, some TiVo or DVR boxes, a game console, an iPad or two, and a number of smartphones in your home. Maybe you even have smart appliances. This alone is enough to eat up your bandwidth on smaller speed packages and cause a slow computer.

Now imagine your in-laws are coming to town. They bring another laptop, your father-in-law uses it for work, two more smartphones, and maybe another tablet or two. They’re all online along with your devices. Think of it like cars on a highway. You might be on a 4-lane highway, but the more cars you add to it, the more it’s going to slow down. It’s the same with devices on the internet. So, what can you do?

Turn Off the Wi-Fi

For starters, turn the Wi-Fi off! I don’t mean on your router, I mean on some of the devices. Are you really using your tablet, phone, and game console at the same time? Turning off the connection can stop it from running in the background and eating up some of your bandwidth. It might even save you some battery on your phone, computer, or tablet.

Some routers will let you monitor your devices, allowing you to see which devices are using the most bandwidth. If you’re able to do this, see which devices use up the most bandwidth and, if it’s not being used, turn it off or turn the wifi off. Contact your internet provider or your router manufacturer to see if your router is capable of this.

Power Cycle Your Router

Another thing you can try when dealing with a slow computer is to power-cycle your router. This simply means unplug it from the power for about 15 seconds, then plug it back it and let it boot up. Restarting devices (not just routers) helps them reset, it’s sort of like giving your electronics a nap.

If you have a modem hooked up to a router, or wifi extenders connected, you should power cycle all of them at the same time. Some devices have a battery backup, simply pop the battery out while the device is unplugged then reconnect everything when it’s time.

Your Slow Computer Probably Needs a Tune-Up

When dealing with a slow computer, a tune-up is usually effective at increasing speed. If you notice that only one or two of your devices are running slowly, it might not be your speeds. If everyone else in the house is able to connect with no issues but your computer, phone, or tablet isn’t connecting or it is but it’s running slow, it’s probably a device issue.

Computers get bogged down with all sorts of files, cookies, cached pages, etc. Sometimes you need to clean up your devices much like you clean out your closet. Get rid of the stuff that you’re not using. If you have a lot of large files or numerous files stored on your computer that you don’t want to get rid of, consider cloud solutions.

Gmail accounts come with a free Google Drive, you can store lots of documents there. Microsoft has its own cloud solution. If you’re not comfortable with storing in the cloud, there are physical storage solutions like backup hard drives you can consider as well.

Call OneSupport for Help with a Slow Computer

When you experience slow computer speeds, please give us a call at 844-818-3415, or chat today, and let one of our friendly, well trained, 100% U.S.-based technology advisor get you up to speed. OneSupport: We’ll tech it from here.