I need help speeding up a slow computer. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Defrag To Speed Up Your Computer
When your computer stores a document, it starts to put the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive and then when it runs out of room there, it stores another part of the file on the next space available and so on, until the entire document is stored. When you access the fragmented document again, it has to go to all the spots on your hard drive, gather the information, put it together and then display it. If you have a lot of fragmented files it takes time for the computer to find the data.

To defrag your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
Start
Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Disk Defragmenter

Clean Temporary Files To Speed Up Your Computer
Windows loves to write files all the time to your hard drive and until you run out of room on your hard drive or ask it to clean it up, it will leave old temporary files there. Windows XP comes with a handy program that cleans them up.

To clean up temporary files on your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
Start
Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Disk Cleanup

Clean Up Your Desktop To Speed Up Your Computer
Having a clean desktop is important enough that Windows XP now asks you to clean up unused desktop icons. If you have always ignored the prompt like I used to, you can either clean them up manually by right clicking your mouse on them and selecting delete or you can access the Windows XP program.

Start
Control Panel
Double-click "Display".
Click the "Desktop" tab.
Click the "Customize Desktop" button at the bottom.
Click the "General" tab.
Click the "Clean Desktop Now" button at the bottom.

Kill the Spyware To Speed Up Your Computer
Keep your virus protection up to date so that no spyware or malware is able to get through. These bugs consume system resources more than anything

Keep windows updated
Regularly check for any updates to windows by going to the microsoft website

Reduce the number of startup programs
If you have the least no. of programs in startup you will have extra memory to work with. To do this close all unnecessary programs that are displayed on the bottom right of the screen next to the time. Especially if you have an antivirus running in real-time on your machine and at start-up, it will consume a lot of memory.

Clear Out Forgotten Programs
Follow these steps to remove unneeded programs:

1.Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Scroll through the list and examine each program. Windows XP lists how often you use a program and what day you last started it.
4.Click each program you no longer need, click the Remove button, and then follow the prompts to uninstall it.
Free Up Wasted Space
Removing unused programs is a great way to free up disk space, which will speed up your computer. Another way to find wasted disk space is to use the Disk Cleanup tool by following these steps:

1.Open My Computer, right-click Local Disk, and then click Properties.
2.On the General tab, click the Disk Cleanup button. Disk Cleanup will spend a few minutes examining your disk.
3.The Disk Cleanup dialog box opens.
4.Select the desired check boxes in the Files to Delete list, and then click OK. Disk Cleanup will spend several minutes clearing space.
5.If you have more than one hard disk, repeat this process for each hard disk listed in My Computer.

Disconnect Unused Network Connections
If you've ever had a network with more than one computer, you probably found it useful to share files between the computers by mapping a network drive. Network drives allow one computer to read and write files to another computer's hard disk as if it were directly connected. The problem with network drives is that Windows XP will attempt to connect to the network drives when Windows starts. If the remote computers don't respond immediately, Windows will wait patiently. Additionally, some programs will attempt to connect to the network drives when you browse for files and folders.
To reduce this problem, disconnect any unused drives by following these steps:

1.Open My Computer.
2.On the Tools menu, click Disconnect Network Drive.
3.Select the network drives that you no longer need, and then click OK.

Remove Autostart Programs
The next step in restoring your computer's performance is to identify any unnecessary programs that start automatically. Often, programs configure themselves to run in the background so that they appear to start quickly when needed. Some of these programs show an icon on your taskbar to let you know that they're running, while others are completely hidden. These autostart programs probably won't noticeably slow down your computer as it starts up, but they will steal away trace amounts of memory and processing time as your computer runs.

Windows XP comes with the System Configurationtool (Msconfig.exe), an excellent way to manage the startup process. To start it:

1.Click Start, click Run, type Msconfig, and then press Enter.
2.On the Startup tab, you'll see a list of all the programs and processes that are set to run when Windows XP loads.
3.Speed up your overall start time by clearing the check box next to any item you think you don't need.
4.Click Apply, and then restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Answer 2

Try disabling startup. Click Start then Run and type in MSCONFIG clikc startup tab across the top then click "disable all" Click apply the close and restart. This should help. You havent uninstalled anything or removed anything so don't worry this just helps speed up the computer as it may be loading lots of different programes on startup therefore has lots of progs running in the background... If this fails you may need to upgrade on the systems memory...

Answer 3

1. Remove Unnecessary Startup process.
2. If the OS is XP, then Delete the content in \Windows\Prefetch folder.
3. Defragment the Disk once.
4. Remove unnecessary softwares
5. Use a registry cleaner software to remove unnecessary invalid registry entries.
6. Have enough space in system drive (normally C: where the OS is installed.)

Answer 4

The following steps should speed up your PC. Do all of the steps with patience:

1. Run Disk clean-up. Then delete unused files. (start>program>accessories>sys... tools> disk clean-up)
2. Check for disk errors. (right click on a disk-drive>properties>tools >error checking, then restart)
3. Run disk defragmenter.
4. Delete cookies. (you can do it from your browser options: tools>internet options)
5. Delete cache or temporary files. (you can do it from your browser options) or, click on 'start", 'run', type 'temp' then click ok. Whatever shows up, just delete.
6. Delete all history files. (you can do it from your browser options, or, CTRL + H, then delete)
7. Empty recycle bin.
8. Delete unused icons & short-cuts from anywhere including desktop.
9. Uninstall any software or game that you use only once or twice in a week.
10. Delete temporary internet files. (you can do it from your browser options: tools>internet options)
11. Delete all recent files. (click on start, click run, then type "recent", delete all the files which show up)
12. Run a full virus scan. If any threat found, eliminate that completely.
13. Run a software which can remove any spyware or adware.
Like: Ad Aware, Windows defender etc.
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
http://www.download.com/Microsoft-Windows-Defender/3000-12771_4-10598014.html?tag=lst-0-1

If you did these all at the same time, restart your computer. All these to be done once in a week if possible, depending on the frequency of use of your PC.

* Updating: (Needed only when updates are available)
14. Update your Windows by installing latest updates.
15. Update your audio & video drivers.
16. Update softwares, browsers, games that you use.

Use CCleaner to get rid of unnecessary junks:
http://www.download.com/CCleaner/3000-2144_4-10592746.html?tag=lst-0-1)

Registry Cleaner:
http://www.download.com/TweakNow-RegCleaner/3000-2094_4-10262639.html

More Info: (from CNET)
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10165_7-5554402-1.html

Answer 5

Delete all temporary files - u can easily do by using tools. .. Search in Goolge for CCleaner - use that tool . U can use the windows defragmentation(its in Startup-prgrams-accesories-system tools) and if u have windows defender, stop/remove all the unused process and applications .Ur system will definitely speed up .

Answer 6

Memory! at least a gig. Delete the history and the temp files. Defrag. Delete cookies. Delete unwanted xtra programs..

Answer 7

have u done a total system defrag an try an find out how much ram u have an how much more ur puter can handle an max out ur ram plus stop alot of stuff from startin up when u 1st start up ur puter.. gl 2u an happy holidays 2u