computer help: I’ve got a powerful computer, but it seems to be slowing down slightly. - Help.com

clean up your temp files and defrangment your machine that might help

I agree with Denny, also, do you have a section that can take you back to an earlier time?

Both of the above are good ideas, also how many startup programs are you running, down by the clock is there a lot of icons? Those programs eat up your system resources if there is too many.

I agree with Denny. However, I’d recommend using AusLogics Disk Defrag to defragment your computer, since the Windows defragmenter isn’t that great. Here’s a link: http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

Also, do you install and uninstall a lot of programs? You might need to clean your registry. Try using TweakNow! Registry Cleaner. CCleaner also has a registry scanner.

if its an old computer , its normal, if its eith bran new or 1-5 months then you may have to deleat some stuff, clean your internet coockies, check for a virus , clean your regestry , defrangment, increace your virtural memory, update your computer… ect

If I remember correctly, I think increasing virtual memory might make things worse. You could buy new memory sticks and get someone to install them in the PC.
CCleaner: www.ccleaner.com/
Tweaknow registry cleaner: www.tweaknow.com/RegCleaner.html (they also have a RAM thingy I think you might be talking about.)

All the stuff I’ve mentioned are free.

Ccleaner is also called ‘Crap Cleaner’, and cleans up cookies, temp. internet files, prefetch, etc… Just be careful when editing the registry and back up every time you use the scanner.

Ad-Aware, AVG Anti-Spyware, SUPER antispyware, Spybot search and destroy, and Windows Defender are the programs that I use/have used.

Ad-Aware and AVG are the best, IMO.
All are free, no trials, but AVG has some things in the pro version that shut down after 30 days. But it’s still fully functional.

Avira Antivir is a good antivirus, and so is AVAST! Anti-Virus.

If you do a google search on all of those, the first link should be the pages where you can download them.

Also, I’d recommend using Firefox if you aren’t already using it, along with McAfee Site Advisor as a must-have extension.

Additionally, Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs — start cleaning. I usually go through that list once every few months and clean out all the random/unused programs that simply accumulate over time.

Also, if you don’t mind ditching some “prettieness” you can get a big performance boost (possibly just perception, but that works too!) by turning off the winxp theme’s service (it makes all the windows blue with red x’s, etc). Let me know if you want more info about that — but it’s worth your googling time to do some researching into what XP Services can be safely disabled, ie: finding out which ones you don’t need.

Np, but do look into the services thing — I usually turn off 20 or so after a fresh install of XP.

Oh yeah. There’s nothing better than reinstalling windows to clean out the cobwebs. Nothing does the job quite the same (no anti virus or cleaner or manual cleaning — ever)

Absolutely. A complete backup is the safest way to go if you have some kind of hard disk mirroring software. Otherwise make sure to save emails, document, my documents, folder, etc. Preferences from applications, and on and on.

If you are ultra not-sure about a reinstall, you could buy a cheap 80gb hard drive for something like 60$ and just make the current drive a slave :D Install to the new one. You should learn what to backup and how though, just because it’s less hassle.

There are a lot of weird files, files in use, and files under security lock down that simply doing a “drag and drop” of the C: drive icon won’t work.

At the bottom of the page, in bold red is “report a post” just click that and we’ll take care of things.

lol^^^

IMPORTANT: usually running out of virtual memory means that you are running to many programs at the same time for your system, or one of them is attempting to use too much memory. You might also want to check out what’s running when this happens, and how much memory each program is using.

newbie notes: virtural memory is simply the operating system using some amount of disk space as if it were real memory . As I said, disks are slower than memory … so if the operating system is doing a lot of swapping between the two, it’s going to slow your computer down. If that’s happening frequently, or if your computer seems to be “thrashing” or constantly swapping in and out from disk, it might be time to add some memory to your machine. It can be one of the most cost effective ways to increase your system’s speed.

BTW the notes were tooken from this site
http://ask-leo.com/what_is_virtual_me…

(c) all rights reserved (c)

Btf i have a computer not a cunfuser.

For Virtual Memory the usual formula I use is to find out how much actual memory (RAM) I have, and then times that by 1.5 that is usually how much virtual memory you should have, you can find the amount of memory by right-clicking on “My Computer” and selecting “Properties”, then under the “General” tab (should already be displayed) it should tell you “xxx.x MB of RAM” or something to that effect.

To change virtual memory settings you can click “Advanced” and under the “Performance” box click on “Settings”, Select “Advanced” again, (you’d think they would’ve thought of something more original at this point) and under “Virtual memory” should show total paging for all drives and have a button that says “Change”

NOTE: Removing services that are not needed is a good idea as they do waste system resources, but be careful! If you remove services that are needed at some point even if they are not running when you change them, you may find some of your programs, utilities, or even Windows itself might not run properly. You may want to notate somewhere which services you modified and what their original state was before they were changed.