what can I do to speed up my computer as downloading is very slow and the memory is very low?

Question

do you know anything about the spectrum zx80?

Answer 1

LOL !!! 20 years out of date, time for an upgrade!!!

Answer 2

Well it's possible for some spyware to slow down your computer. So scanning for adware, malware, and spyware is always a good thing to do. Go to http://www.download.com and search for, download, and install the following programs. Then run them.
AdAware Pro Se (Free Version)
SpyBot Search & Destroy (free version).

However, the most common causes are a fragmented hard drive, to little RAM, and to many programs running.

Here's are some tips that will help you improve the speed of your PC.

A major cause of slow PC's is fragmentation of the hard drive.
You need to defragment the HD at least once a week if not more depending on how much you use your computer, and what you do with it.

A great program for defragging automatically is Diskeeper 10. It costs $30 but is well worth it. Go to www.download.com and search for Diskeeper. Read the Publishers Description and the tech and user reviews. It can be scheduled to run automatically as the program deems necessary, and if you are using your PC and the program launches itself, it will take a backseat to whatever you are doing and give you the priority for CPU usage. I think you'll agree it's a good program to have. It precludes your needing to remember to defrag at regular intervals.

Also, another major cause of a slow PC is programs that are running in the background. Here's another great program, and it's free. Go to www.sysinternals.com and download the program named "autoruns". This utility will tell you exactly what is running on your PC and provides a nice and easy way to shut down the ones you don't want to boot at start up. Once you have it installed use the tabs at the top of the window to access the various categories. If you use the "everything" tab it will overwhelm you because the list is massive. All you have to do is uncheck the box next to the program name and the program will not start at your next boot up. Hurry as this site has been bought up by Microsoft and these free programs may not be around much longer.

Another good thing to have is a little program called FreeRAM Pro. It is free and is available from www.download.com This program puts a little RAM meter on the System Tray and shows how much RAM you have remaining that you are not using at any given time. Once it is installed you can right click on the little meter, then click on RESTORE and it will open the RAM display window. You can tweak the settings so it will display your CPU usage also.

What happens when you run low or run out of RAM is that the OS recognizes the low or no RAM situation and starts using a section of your hard drive as memory. This is called virtual memory, or a swap file. The PC is constantly writing and reading from your HD. Comparitively, it is a very slow process. Check your motherboard manual and determine how much RAM each slot can hold. It will also tell you what type of RAM you need. You can also go to www.crucial.com and run their analysis utility to determine what kind and how much RAM is installed in your PC. Depend on your MoBo manual to determine the RAM limits of each slot though. If you are going to keep your PC for a substantial amount of time I recommend you see if you can easily go to 768M. This will give you plenty of RAM for anything you are running and you will usually see (on the RAM meter) that you have between 300 to 400M of RAM not being used.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

First check your PC processor capacity and know if you should get a better board and processor

Think about increasing the memory capacity of the set

You may need to increase the hard disk capacity either by getting a larger one or removing programs and files not important in the system

Control the number of programs running in your system during startup by using the run command in start menu. Specifically run "msconfig" and from the StartUp tab deselect everything except critical programs like your anti-virus.

Scan your system for virus, spyware, adware, and any other malicious activities.

Answer 4

get some more memory from www.savastore.com 30 quid for 512 ram. then check out www.tweakxp.com for further help. A do agree with most of the answers and defo do a full virus scan and ad-ware scan. Good anti-virus to use is avast and a good ad-ware/spy-ware scanner is ad-aware. Both of these are free downloads just google them. I would recommend trying this before buying some more memory. If this doesn't solve the prob and you are running windows xp then do a complete re-install and that should sort it.

Have fun and hope this helped

Rob

Answer 5

1) Increase RAM (memory).
2) Increase free disk space (remove unneeded programs from hard drive, delete temp files and folders, switch to a larger hard drive, add a second hard drive)
3) Reduce the number of programs running in your system tray/at startup. You can do this by going to Start > Run > type "msconfig" > go to the StartUp tab and deselect everything except critical programs like your anti-virus.
4) Scan for/remove spyware/adware/malware.

Check out Advanced Windows Care, it will help with most of this automatically and it's free: http://www.iobit.com/

Answer 6

IIRC, the Sinclair ZX80 (the Spectrum came after the ZX81) downloaded slowly because it used a cassette tape recorder for program/data storage and only had 48 kilobytes of RAM!

Answer 7

As said above scan for spy ware... Though there are no listed programs to get at doenload.com

Use Adaware and spybot. Scan for viruses as well. Also disable everything in your startup. Start>run > type "msconfig" (no quotes)> Startup tab> uncheck all > hit OK> restart> check box that says "don't show this message again" then click ok.

Also if your downloading, stiop surffing. You are using your bandwith.

Answer 8

Run a system maintenance on it that cleans up your harddrive (compresses files) and also defragment your harddrive.

You may also want to run a spyware program to make sure you do not have unwanted and unknown programs taking up space.

Last but not least, go to the "my computer" box and uninstall any programs you are not using but be careful, don't uninstall something if you do not know what it is since the sytem may require it.

Answer 9

Try clearing as much off your computer as you can. Also, get any updates that you can and run a virus scan. Also, see what you can do with all the system maintenance options (Disk De-fragmentation, etc.). It might take a while, but it will speed up the computer.

Answer 10

Scan your computer for spyware and adware with Spybot Search and Destroy. Scan your computer for viruses with Norton's. Clean your hard drive of any unused files, games or programs. Upgrade your processor. Add more RAM.

Answer 11

You need to get clean up your hard drive,
Remove any programs that you dont use very often by clicking start, control panel and add and remove programs. Select any thing you want to delete highlight it then select remove
Also remove tempory files and internet history then empty your waste bin. last of all run your spy checker and virus checker make sure they are up to date