Why is my computer SOOO slow?

Question

I have Windows XP on my Dell and its seriously slower than sh!t. All I use it for is pictures from my digital, music for my ipod (I only have about 60 songs tho) and to go online to check email and myspace, thats about it. I don't download stuff other than music and I don't have any games or anything.

Any pointers on what I can do to speed things up? I don't know much about computers but I can follow directions.
Oh, and my boyfriend did a 'de-frag' or something last night and we restarted it and its a teeny bit faster but not much.

Help befofe I throw this thing out the window.

Answer 1

Go here for a free online test: http://www.pcpitstop.com/
Just click on the yellow key and "test anonymously." I use it all the time. The test will tell you what is making your computer slow. Too much in the startup menu is a common cause. It will tell you how to fix that. There is no charge.

Answer 2

You may have programs that are in your startup folder, old temp files, lots of desktop icons. The bottom right corner at your clock is your system tray. If you have to many programs running than they are using up your memory. If you hear your hard drive working every time you move on to another task its because windows is taking information out of your RAM and placing it in the pagefile on you hard drive. Click start, run, and type msconfig, then click startup. Now you can see all the programs that are loaded during a boot. You can disable the ones you don't want to load but it will not delete them.

If your comp is still running slow you can upgrade your RAM. Just match the size, speed, manufacture that you have and you will see a big difference in speed. To find out what you have for Ram click start, Right click on My Computer and click properties. This will show you some basic info about you comp.
You can also run this command too: msinfo23.exe, and a screen will display your system information. On the first page scroll down to your memory info to see what you have installed and what you are using. Look for Total Physical memory and Available Physical memory - this is your RAM

Answer 3

There are many things that might make your computer slow.

1. Not enough RAM. This will make programs slow because data must be constantly be swapped out of RAM and into the HD and back. If your HD keeps buzzing and the HD light keeps flashing then this might be the case.
2. Background process running. Sometimes your virus protection program or spyware protection program might be scanning your computer so to make it seem slow for you. Again the HD light will keep flashing.
3. Your HD might be too defragmented. But I see you've already tried that.
4. Eye candy in the user interface might slow down your computer. Try to minimize eye candy to remove things like animations and cool effects.
5. And of course spyware, trojans, virii, worms, etc might do something that'll slow it down too.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Make sure you don't have any viruses or malware. That can really slow down a computer.

If you're having problems with not having enough memory, increasing the size of your paging file could help.

There's a bunch of little things you can disable (menu animations, minimize/maximize animations, etc.) that can speed it up a little.

If there's stuff that starts running when you start up your computer that you don't use, you could disable it. Having less stuff running should make it run faster.

Answer 5

well to start with vista is a resource hog.all that eye candy does come at a price.personally i disabled some of that and it did make a difference in performance.you said you scanned for virus.i assume you also scanned for adware;spyware' etc?.you have 60% free on hard drive.that's good but when you first got your pc you probably had a lot more.and last but not least your internet connection might have to be upgraded. assuming you are not crippled by malware i would tweak vista and possibly get a faster internet connection.

Answer 6

You should check for any anti-virus & firewall softwares because if the settings are not correct they will slow down that computer. Try doing an msconfig and disable all start up items.

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

TRY downloadind a program that is called system mechanic. It is free for 30 days and I have used it on my computer and it has helped overall performance. Do a google search and it should send you to a web site to download this program. Hope this helps.

Dave M

Answer 8

are you using limewire od some kinda p2p file sharing network software ? if so that is why your pc has virus trojans spyware on delte that then clean out your pc

add-aware personal
spybot search and destory
avg anti-spyware
antispyware blocker
spyware doctor
a-squared
xoftspy

you download them . then you run 1 at a time to scan ur pc . use deep scan with them all .when found spyware or addware .malware .trojan in da scan . just hit on delete.also have registry machanic . that will clean up ur pc registry you want to use a good anitivurs .. Kaspersky .antivirus is verry good .when you have scan ur pc .and remove da malware . then start pc in safemode and scan da pc again as in safe mode it will do a even more deep scan for spyware or malware or trojans you will not need to format da pc at all you can remove any spyware or trojan malware in da way i told you how to it is easy

Answer 9

there are many things that get the computer up to speed
ram upgrade
memory upgrade
processor upgrade
antivirus
registry cleaner

and there are some things that you can do that might bring it up to speed

disk defragmenter
disk cleanup
clean cookies
delete all temporary internet files

Answer 10

girl easy quick answer delete all your temp n cookies, n history to do this u go to tools at the top go to internet options click there its says temp files click there and pop up will show u can delete all offline too then same goes for the cookies n history hope this helps