PC911 · Repair, upgrades and speed
Make your computer faster — before you buy a new one.
A modern guide to getting more out of the machine you already own. Work down the speed ladder: the free fixes first, then the two parts that pay for themselves. And when something actually breaks, the repair guides are still here.
One-click diagnostic
Internet speed test
Before you upgrade anything, check what is actually arriving at your machine. One click tests your download speed, upload speed and latency in about twenty seconds — no install, no account.
The speed ladder
Five rungs, ordered by how much speed you get per pound. Free fixes first, hardware last — and a clear point where upgrading stops making sense.
Stop the waste
Trim the startup list, restart properly, run a malware scan, clear enough disk space to work.
Startup guideFree
10–40 s off every boot
Make room
A drive above 85% full throttles itself. Reclaim the space with the tools Windows already has.
Disk space guideFree
Ends random stalls and blocked updates
£35–£60
No more freezing with many apps open
Fit an SSD
Still on a spinning drive? This is the upgrade that makes an old machine feel new.
SSD guide£45–£110
4–6× faster boot and app loads
Know when to stop
A new processor means a new board and new memory. Past a third of a new machine, replace it.
The full ladder£400+
Diminishing for daily work
Start with the section
Each section follows the same idea: identify the fault, then fix only what is broken.
Speed & Upgrades
Make a slow PC fast, without buying a new one
Start here. The upgrades that actually pay for themselves, in the order worth doing them: startup, memory, storage, and the settings that keep a machine quick.
Hardware
Keyboards, mice, USB, memory, power, cooling
Physical faults with a clear cause and a clear fix. Dead keyboards, frozen mice, failing batteries, upgrade jobs and the parts that quietly sit behind them.
Troubleshooting
Boot failures, slowdowns, sound, network
The systematic way to find a fault you cannot see. Start with the method, then work down to the specific symptom: no power, no boot, no sound, no internet.
Screens
Cracked, black, flickering displays
Everything between "the panel is physically broken" and "the display just looks wrong". Includes how to decide between repairing, replacing and working around it.
Phones & Tablets
Slow iPhones, full storage, updates that lag
An iPhone does not have a startup list or a hard drive to replace, so the causes are narrower: storage, battery health, background refresh, and how heavy a recent iOS version is on older hardware.
The method beats the guess
Most repairs fail because two things are changed at once. The PC911 troubleshooting method is a short, ordered routine — confirm the fault, change one variable, verify the result — that stops the wild guessing and gets you to the failing part faster.
Read the methodKept from the archive