why is my computer working so slow. and how do I speed it up?

Answer 1

There are some things you can do to speed up your computer, some of them are better than others.

First, go to "Tools" on your internet explorer page and select "Internet Options...". Under the general tab select "delete cookies" and delete files. This gets rid of the ads for mortgage rates and other stuff your computer accumulates over the days you spend browsing the web. The later could take a long time so be patient with it.

Next you can go to start, then "All Programs", then "Accessories", "System Tools" and finally "Disk Defragmenter". This is the assortment of things on your computer and by putting alike things closer to each other your computer will take less time loading them up.

The last thing you can do is get rid of all old files you have on your computer like music tracks that you know you have the CD lying around somewhere for. Music files are about 3,000 kb a piece and can eventually make your computer very much slower than it was fresh out of the box. And of course if you've ever been prompted to download anything like Active X I would suggest getting that since that will speed up some things on the net as well. And of course get an antivirus program to go with it.

Answer 2

PC Tweaks: Speed Up Your System (for Windows XP)

First right-click My Computer and go to:
Properties>Advanced>Performance>Settings
Select radio button for best performance
This will take away the blue and green look to XP and give it the old grey windows look but it highly reduces the demand on your video card.
Next, from the same window in Properties>Advanced>Performance>Settings, the new window open should say performance options.
Click the advanced tab and then click change under vitrual memory. Windows adjusts the size of the page file as needed but it has a limit on min and max size. choose a custom size and make both of them the max size. You can make it larger than it was if you like. If it was 1500 MB min and 3000 MB max, it is o.k. to make both 4000 MB as long as your system has plenty of hard drive space. This tweak will keep windows from slowing down while it tries to adjust the size of the page file.
Click O.K. on all windows and the changes will take effect after the next restart. If you have more than one hard drive I recommend using no page file on your C; drive and put one on the other drive instead. This will make it even faster for your system to access. However, if you just have one physical hard drive that is partitioned, then don’t bother.

Next run "services.msc" from the run box in the start menu.
Double-click and disable the following at your discretion:
Error reporting- does nothing for you, just helps Micro$oft
indexing service- on the rare occasion that you are using the search function, it will make it a little faster, the rest of the time it is constantly indexing your system and slowing it down
Themes- you know what they are, keep 'em if ya want 'em
Help and support- the "browser" that pops up when you hit F1 key
there are plenty more in there that are unnecessary and slowing down your system, but these are the ones that are completely safe for everyone to disable. The rest depend on the user and their particular system.

Also in the Properties menu for My Computer:
on the system restore tab- you can disable this feature to speed up your system but the windows system restore feature will not be available. When you really need to use it, it hardly ever works. Most of the time you will get half way through the restore and an error pops up telling you that your system can not be restored to that date/time.
It’s up to you, but just make sure you have anti-virus running and regularly back up your system. When its time to do a restore your better off doing it the old fashion way with the CD.

Run MSCONFIG from the run box. Uncheck anything that you are ABSOLUTLY sure does not need to be running every time your system restarts.
for the rest, if I don’t know, I usually Google the file name with the *.exe and get a good idea if it needs to be running.

Answer 3

Is it getting slower than before? If it is not, it may be time to have hardware upgrade, add more RAM, a bigger and faster Hard Disk, CPU, etc.

Try to disabled some programs when starting the system (1st link)
Go to filehippo (2nd link) to download the Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus and Cleaning Tools
Defrag your Hard Disk
Uninstall unnecessary software

Before you do anything, do a backup first!!!

Answer 4

Delete temporary files, including temp internet files.
Delete excessive unneded outlook e-mail message copies.
Consider buying "Registry Mechanic" and running it regularly.
Run a virus scan and delete or quarantine any viruses.
See if u need to add more memory.

Answer 5

Check for spyware and viruses. You might also need more RAM or a bigger/faster hard drive. Check your available RAM by opening Task Manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and go to the Performance tab.

Answer 6

Try deleting music or video files. Also search your computer index to see all the files and arrange them by size. See which ones are applications and delete ones that won't affect programs on your comp.

Also, try deleting cookies, cache and temporary files...

Answer 7

Check for Virus or Maybe You installed a software running in backward try task manager and close it.

Answer 8

CCleaner.com
read and download.it speeds up my computer.

Answer 9

Details required.
What kind of CPU, how much memory do you have?

Have you run virus scanner and a defragementation on your hard drive?

Answer 10

if you dont have anything important on it you should format it and then reinstall windows just make sure you have all of your driver disk and your product key.if you do that it will go as fast as it can go.