Webuser Forums: Slow PC

First things first, do a general tidy up, and general maintenance.

clearing your temporary internet folders.

I would imagine that you possibly have the maximum cache as set by micro$oft of 250Mb. It's excessive and unnecessary, you can reduce it to 50Mb by opening internet explorer,
click Tools | Internet Options
On the General tab, in the Browsing History section, click settings
Change the Disk Space to use to 50
Click Apply then OK

Reduce the size of System Restore volume

Change the amount of space used by system restore, by default it is set to 12% of the disk size, again well excessive and really only needs to be 1Gb (either 1 or 2% of space, depending on your disk size)

To do this

Right-click on My Computer.
Click Properties.
Select System Restore tab.
Move the Disk Space to use slider so than System Restore only uses between 500MB to 1Gb of hard drive space.
Click OK

Disable unnecessary Visual effects

By disabling many visual effects (the Settings button in the Performance area, tab Visual Effects), you are able to improve system performance. Select Adjust for best performance (all options are disabled) followed by enabling three options: Use common tasks in folders, Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop and Use visual styles on windows and buttons, as shown below. All unnecessary visual effects are disabled now, which improves the system performances enormously

disable the Error Reporting.

Error Reporting doesn't solve anything, you will rarely receive positive and useful feedback, or at least anything that really only the most techies amongst us will understand!

Go to Control Panel | System | Advanced and click the button Error Reporting to disable this option and you'll no longer get annoying error reporting messages.

Update your drivers

Make sure your drivers are all up to date, particularly your video drivers, they manufacturers can't help but play and some versions are better than others!

Stop unnecessary services

I'll let Black Viper do the talking on this, he is the real expert. Windows starts a lot of programs that just aren't necessary for the average home PC, follow th instructions on his pages for your flavour of Windows to get the best from your machine

Uninstall any unnecessary programs

If you haven't used it in over a year, do you really need it? Probably not, uninstall and free up space

Make sure that your security is up to date

As it says in the title, make sure that you run your security programs, you may find unwelcome nasties. If you are struggling, then it may be worth posting a Hijack this log in the security forum. Please make sure that you read all the instructions that are there. This is important as it helps our wonderful but highly overworked HJT helpers help you quicker

Defrag your Hard Drive

This should be done on a regular basis

click on the Start | all programs | Accessories,
Click System Tools | Disk Defragmenter.

You can analyse or just go straight in
personally I don't bother with a analysis

Splash the cash

After you have done all this you might want to flash the cash and if you have some spare cash about, buy an external drive, such as this one and move most of your data so you don't have to worry so much in the future

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"Only the stupid don't ask questions."
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