Can Computer Indexing Affect Computer Speed?

Posted by Cappadonna on Monday, November 1, 2010

By Carrie Walsh

I understand that some computer users or technicians are stopping the indexing function as a way of helping a computer that is working too slowly. But will this actually improve a pc's performance? I agree that indexing does use a small amount of capacity but I do not know if you will ever see any improvement when it is stopped.

What is indexing? It is similar to an index in a book that helps you find what you are looking for when you search. But this function has nothing to do with finding information about operation of the PC or searching the internet. It's strictly to help you find things on the computer itself such as documents, pictures, etc.

As your computer runs the indexing it will no doubt take some of the processor's capacity but for very brief periods of time. It operates in the background and the computer operator will not know it's running. It shouldn't have an effect on a good healthy computer.

To discontinue the indexing function on your computer is simple. On any operating system I believe it can done like this: Go to Start, Computer, right click on General, and un-click the Indexing box or follow the instruction to stop it.

You could try this very simple test of cutting off the indexing on your computer and see if it helps. If you cannot tell any difference in the performance, though, I would suggest turning the indexing back on.

Increasing memory is much more important to the operation of our PC's than is indexing. Virtual memory operates in conjunction with RAM or random access memory as short term data storage. Virtual memory may be increased manually but my understanding is that Vista and Win7 increase this automatically. I am not sure about XP.

But RAM is a fixed data storage unit outside of the pc's hard drive. It's whatever size that was installed, and cannot be simply adjusted. However, extra RAM may be added easily. Check other articles or posts for information on this method of increasing your pc's speed.

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