There are many reasons to test the speed of your PC. Perhaps you paid for a high-end machine with a fast processor and it does not seem that faster than your old laptop. Maybe you'd like to play an online game and are not sure if your hardware can keep up. Then again, you might just be curious about your speed for bragging purposes.
The easiest way to do this without using any external software or method is to restart the computer and time how long it takes to get from the boot screen to your desktop . Write that number down and do not be surprised if it's rather high. By the way, this is not 1999 either: computer boot time should not exceed more than thirty seconds in a recently purchased machine unless you're dual-booting or something rather advanced like that.
Now that you have an initial time written down, take a look through the programs folder on your computer. Is there a piece of software that that you only used once or twice and no longer need? As long as you have the original disk it came on, delete it. You can always reinstall it later if you really need it. If you keep programs anywhere else, check them out as well.
Next, clear out any temporary files, cookies, or anything else that accumulates when you browse the internet. The temporary files especially can add up quickly if you do a lot of media downloading. In Windows, this process can be completed very easily using the Disk Cleanup located under Accessories in the System Tools folder.
It may also help to defragment the various drives on your computer . Fragmentation occurs when you save a file, then add to it later. The computer puts the addition in another location on the computer and makes references to it when you open that single file. Defragmenting your files will rejoin these pieces. Windows has a built-in disk defrag tool but many computer experts will tell you that this tool is very basic and not very good for speeding up a computer.