Computer help forum: Computer running slow

You have to find out what is making it slow. Pressing CTRL + ALT + delete will show you the processes that are running.
Only you know if you need them (that is, the program you use). Re-install Windows first. Uncheck what you haven't ever used. You can do this before hand, by going to Settings, Control Panel, Add-Remove Programs. It will tell you if you use it regularly, rarely & things like that. As an example, do you need the sticky keys program that comes with Windows? If not, than uncheck it on the re-install.
Even just using the "Recovery Disc" that came with your retail computer, can make things run faster. It's good to do that just to clean things up.
Some additional things are all of the fluff that comes with Windows. Animated icons, shadows, animated desktops, more than 10 icons or folders on your desktop. Things of that nature. They all use your resources.
Than, additionally, upgrade your RAM (as in add more of what you have), hard drive & the like. If you're running an older PC, that uses an IDE drive, SATA won't help really. Well, a little, but not the "advertised" speed. You'll want to look at transfer speed, not just the RPM's. Also not that there are fewer IDE drives of size available, as the new stuff becomes common.
So do the small things first. Keep 50 percent or better free space on your drive. Have less than 1000 files in one directory. Defragment often (you can use the Windows defrag or buy a program to do this). I use VoptXP, & have for years. Reduce the fonts that load (anything over 50 will begin to slow things down), unless of course, you use them. Than go to the bigger steps, like reinstalling, upgrading & the like.
Additionally. Turn off auto 'everything'. Automatic updates will slow your computer to a crawl. Reboot your computer (restart), that will clear out programs from your RAM, that don't want to clear out on their own.
Good luck.

Kees gave you some great suggestions! If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and you have low memory, you can also try ReadyBoost to speed up Windows.

Vista - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Using-memory-in-your-storage-device-to-speed-up-your-computer

Windows 7 - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/readyboost

Hope this helps!
Cassandra

Well, as you know, there's more to a computer slowing down than just having extra junk on it. Software gets larger and more functional all the time, relying on the advances in the underlying computer technology to take up the slack with more speed, more memory, faster disks, faster networking, faster internet, everything more and faster.

To speed up my daughter's older laptop which had gotten very slow (and the hard disk finally broke when I started to go through my normal ways of speeding computers up), I did a couple of things. First off, I got a new, bigger, faster hard disk, and max'd out the memory capacity *smile*. Then I re-installed the OS (which I had to do anyways). And switched to just using MS Security Essentials and the Windows firewall from the bloated firewall/antivirus/antimalware suite that she was using. And advised her to not install anything on it unless she was sure that she absolutely had to have it. Well, that really speeded it up a whole lot, and made it much more useful to her for basic stuff like surfing the internet, email, IM, Facebook, etc., all the lightweight simple stuff.

Re-installing is really something to consider to speed up a computer, it is the ultimate cleanup of everything, the registry, the disk, nothing like a clean start to speed up a computer. And then just install what you absolutely need. This would also be a good time to get a newer, faster, larger hard disk and more memory to give your old computer a chance to be faster. Personally, I'm giving a hard look at the new hybrid disks with mixed SSD and rotating disk technology, the price and speed of those is getting very attractive lately.

And of course, there's all the standard speedup stuff that's been mentioned before, like making sure that you're not starting any more software at boot time than you absolutely need (msconfig), and removing software and files and cleaning things up generally, defragmenting your disk, and so on.

-Roger

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11319_7-6240575-1.html?tag=forums06;posts Dust is one of the biggest things to slow a computer (aside from software issues)

This issue can be caused by any of the below things:

1. Hard disk drive is short on available disk space.
2. Software programs have been installed/uninstalled leaving behind bad files and/or confusing the software.
3. Your PC is full of browsing history, temporary files, old files and other unnecessary data.

I'm using Mil Shield for these three issues, a neat and reliable program that speeds your PC:
www.mil-shield.com