Help!  My laptop used to be fast, but now it's slow.  How do I make it fast again?
99284
Try defraging the hard drive. Click on start-click programs-scroll to accessories,system tools then click on disk defragmenter. While in the program click on analyze it will probably tell you it doesn't need defraging but defrag it anyway.
743025
If you have internet explorer - TOOLS\ninternet options - delete temp files - ok\n\nhow long has it been since you defragged your computer\n..I do it weekly)\nand check disk for errors - monthly\n\nshould help your performance - AND\n\nhow many programs are you running at one time\n<CTRL> <ALT>  delete \nchoose Task manager - and close anything that you are not using\nuses up your RAM (how much do you have)\nmy game computer has 2 gig of RAM\n\nbest of luck
391396
1.  Restart it if you haven't lately.\n\n2.  Defragment your hard drive (Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter\n\n3.  Clear out your temporary Internet Files\n\n4.  Run your antivirus program to make sure you don't have a virus (I like avg....it's free.  http://www.grisoft.com)\n\n5.  Download and run Spybot Search and Destroy and/or Ad-Aware (both are free) to get pesky adware/spyware off your system.  Windows Defender (free, by microsoft) will also help do the trick.\n\n6.  Add more memory to your computer.
1043972
First of all, you will start to notice that your computer is running slower and messing up.\n\nI would advise you to run a virus protection system.  They can help clean out your computer and rid you of viruses.\n\n\nHope this helps!
866271
Hi there\n\nIf you are looking to increase the speed of your computer there are a number of things you can do.\n\nOne simply way is to check that your hard drive is well defragmented. This process tidies up files on your hard drive and and makes it run faster. This is because your computer can access these files quicker. To defragment your hard drive, click your start menu go to Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Select the dirve you wish to defragment and click on the Defragment button. The time is takes to complete this procedure varies depending on your computer's specifications.\n\nIf this doesn;t improve performance, you could try have a look and see how many programs you have starting up when your computer starts. The more programs you have running, the slower your computer may become, depending on how many RAM (memory) you have in your computer. Check the contents of your startup folder in your start menu by going to programs > Startup and looking at its contents. To delete items from here, click on them with your right mouse button and selecy delete from the menu that appears. Click on the Recycle Bin no your desktop to delete it from there too. Not all programs will place a shortcut in the startup folder so you may need to access the options menu for these programs and look for any settings relating to the program's startup.\n\nIf this doesn;t solve the problem, check your computer for viruses if you have virus scanning software installed. Also, check for spyware and adware software by using a spyware and adware remover. If you don;t have these programs, you will need to download them. Search Google for virus and anti spyware and adware programs.\n\nFinally, you may need update components inside your computer such as your memory, you may not have enough memory to run your programs efficiently. I would recommend at least 512 MB of memory if you are running windows xp. To check how much RAM you have, go to your start menu and click on control panel. If your control panel is in classic view, click on the system icon and it will show your system information, including the amount of RAM you have, for example 512 MB. If your control panel is in catagory view, click on Performance & Maintenance and then click System. This will show you the same information as explained above.\n\nHope this helps.\n\nScott
748441
A) run defrag  (if you cant find it search your computer for it through start -> search\nB) Try deleting stuff that you don't use.\nC) Buy more RAM\nD) Buy a better graphics card (it has its own memory s well)
325158
buy more ram, and install it\n\nDelete your temp internet files\n\nDelete your history\n\nAnd delete your cookies\n\nYOu can also take off programs that you are no longer using or wont use\n\nYou can also defragment your computer after all this is done, and I guarntee it will run faster!!
475897
There are many possible causes that may be causing your computer to run slow.  You definitely haven't run out of hard disk space if you have 59.8 Gb free.  If you have been surfing the web, it is more than likely that your computer may be infected with malicious software that is "chewing up" your computer resources and making it run slow. Without further specific details about your computers slow behaviour it is difficult to give you specific fixes.\n\nHere is a list of questions that would help to identify exactly what is happening with your computer:\n\nQ1. Do you get errors appearing? Is yes what do the errors say?\n\nQ2. Is your computer slow to start-up? How long does it take?\n\nQ3. Do your programs crash or hang? How often?\n\nQ4. How much RAM do you have on your PC?\n\nQ5. Does you computer slow down only after running a specific program such as a game?\n\nQ6. Do you have a firewall, antivirus program, spyware remover or other similar removers running in the backgournd?\n\nQ7. What type of programs do you use regularly?\n\nQ8. Does you computer slow down gradually, or almost immediately?\n\nGenerally this is what you need to check if your computer is running slow:\n\n1. Scan and remove all forms of adware, viruses, spyware and other malicious software that may be running on your computer without your knowledge.\n\n2. Make sure you have the lastest Windows updates installed\n\n3. Find out what programs are starting up on your computer automatically and disable the ones you don't want to start-up when you power-up your PC\n\n4. Use the Task Manager to find out how many processes are running on your computer and identify the ones that don't need to be running and stop them.\n\n5. Do a hard disk health check and defragment it regularly.\n\n6. Perform other regular computer maintenance checks and housekeeping such as deleting temporary files.\n\nThere are 3 approaches to this type of computer problem:\n(a) Read through all the tips and hints at the resource web sites below and learn to apply the advice on your computer manually; or\n(b) Spend a small amount of money on some of the commercial tools that will fix most of your computer problems with a few simple clicks of a mouse; or\n(c) Get a geek friend to help you out.\n\nIt is probably a good idea to learn a bit about what makes computers slow down so check out the resource web sites below as you can also use some of the FREE TOOLS as a first step to fix the problems.
931505
Trim down your start-up processes. Many applications will add entries to the system start-up so that they load up faster when first fun (such as many media players, acrobat, etc)\n\nOpen the "run" console from the start menu and type in "msconfig"\n\nUn-check anything in the "startup" section which does not need to run at boot (if you're not sure, try googling the process to find out what  it does first). You can also speed things up further by triming down the Windows services, but unless you know what you are doing I wouldn't reccomend that.\n\nA couple of other tips:\n*Clear out your prefetch folder from time to time, as this can become cluttered with no-longer required processes.\n*Refresh your paging files regularly - a number of applications available for this.\n*Defragment your drive at least once a week - you are better of using a 3rd party application for that though, as the in-built Windows defrag tool is not the most reliable or powerful
452592
If your computer is running slowly, I suggest you click the link provided below to download, read, and follow instructions in this guide.  Unless there is a problem with your hardware (dying HDD, for example) then I GUARANTEE reading this guide will help.  Your system will be faster than it was when you first pulled it out of the box and set it up.\n\nhttp://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
647727
you need to clean out your hard drive. first delete all the files you don't need. then defrag etc... in system tools. you'll see it will work much faster. Also go through add or remove programs and delete all the unwanted programs you downloaded to your computer that are taking up a ton of space. g'luck!
985074
Seems in these less than two years you have downloaded many applications which have their automatic processes working at the machines startup (even if you are not starting them explicitly)... and that's eating away the RAM space u have... so the laptop is wasting too much time in swapping.... try any of the following...\n1) Increase the virtual memory of your system\n2) Remove all unwanted applications\n3) Increase the physical RAM...\n\nsince no information regarding your system, processor, RAM, etc...is present I can not exactly tell you what will be best... give it a shot though.
148005
Whoa! Before you go the expense of more ram memory, keep in mind the following. ALL computers will begin to run slower and slower as time progresses because of a number of reasons! Viruses, spy-ware, fragmented files, accumulated programs that start up everytime you boot (you might not even know they are there), maxed out storage space, etc. The key to keeping a computer running like it did when it was new is “housekeeping”!\n\nFirst, do everything you can to clean-up your machine:\n\n1.Remove everything that is just “junk” on your machine.\n2.Make sure you are not running unnecessary programs or processes. You can double check this by running a start-up manager program. A free one is available at:\n\nhttp://www.windowsstartup.com/\n\n3.Run your anti-virus program.\n4.Run your spy-bot program.\n5.Run your ad-aware program.\n6.Defragment your hard drive. This is a really critical thing.\n\nWhen your machine is “lean and mean” like it was when it was new you may be back up to speed.\n\nIt’s kind of like a pick-up truck! You can only put just so much in the bed before it is full (or overloaded) and it will just barely move!
99806
ALL computers will begin to run slower and slower as time progresses because of a number of reasons! Viruses, spy-ware, fragmented files, accumulated programs that start up everytime you boot (you might not even know they are there), maxed out storage space, etc. The key to keeping a computer running like it did when it was new is “housekeeping”!\n\nFirst, do everything you can to clean-up your machine:\n\n1.Remove everything that is just “junk” on your machine.\n2.Make sure you are not running unnecessary programs or processes. You can double check this by running a start-up manager program. A free one is available at:\n\nhttp://www.windowsstartup.com/\n\n3.Run your anti-virus program.\n4.Run your spy-bot program.\n5.Run your ad-aware program.\n6.Defragment your hard drive. This is a really critical thing.\n\nWhen your machine is “lean and mean” like it was when it was new you may be back up to speed.\n\nIt’s kind of like a pick-up truck! You can only put just so much in the bed before it is full (or overloaded) and it will just barely move!
715849
Generic Advice on How to Make your Computer Run Faster and More Efficiently\n\n\n1.Get (Download & Update) AVG Anti-Virus from Grisoft.com. (FREE).\n2.Get (Download & Update) Windows Defender from Microsoft.com (FREE).\n3.Get (Download & Update) Ad-Aware from Lavasoft.com (FREE).\n4.Get (Download & Update) Spy-bot Search and Destroy from Downloads.com (FREE). Get tutorial by Keith from pc-plususa.com (FREE).\n5.Get Belarc Advisor (FREE).\n6.Remove un-needed programs in Control Panel, Add and Remove Programs.\n7.Do a Defrag. Click on “My Computer”, right click on “C” drive, select “Properties”, click on the “Tools” tab, click on the “Defragment” button.
456136
Do you do regular maintenance on both computers?  Defrag-clean cache, clear out history?  I know when mine starts slowing down if I do those 3 things, it makes a whole lot of difference.  Just a thought, and good luck.  Nothing more frustrating than a sluggish puter.
1135501
The thing that determines your computer's speed is the amount of available resources as in CPU time, RAM and hard disk space.\nTheoretically a 2 year old computer with no programs running will perform better than a brand new one that is bogged down by lots of running applications.\n\nTo increase available CPU time, try not to run too many CPU intensive programs at the same time eg games, dvd players - things that require a lot of graphic rendering.\n\nTo increase available RAM, you need to find out what is running. RAM is used in two ways - one is by running applications e.g. to read this, Internet Explorer is probably using around 21MB of RAM, possibly more if you have more than one window open. Essentially close any programs you aren't using anymore to increase available RAM. \n\nSecondly, you may have an army of background applications. A quick glance at your system tray (next to where the clock is) to count the number of icons is a good indicator of this. For a PC four is usually a good number, for a laptop maybe six. Essentially the fewer the better. Here, Task Manager is your friend. Right click on an empty space in the task bar and select Task Manager from the menu or just press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring it up. Click on processes and look at the list. From task manager, you can end each running task individually. Microsoft software is very good at leaving residual resource eaters after being closed. End anything that you finished using - e.g. you closed Excel 10 minutes ago but it still is on the list - end it now. Also look for other strange items on the list e.g. qttask.exe is a curse from quicktime that does nothing except waste about 2MB of memory. End it and others like it. This is a classic place for malware to lurk as well. \nIf you have Spybot installed, in the advanced properties, you can check everything on your system startup and disable the ones that you don't need/shouldn't be there. Very useful tool.\n\nLastly hard disk space - if Windows runs a little short on memory, it copies things to a space on your hard disk called virtual memory. From control panel, system you can change how much virtual memory you have and where it is kept. Although not a patch on real memory, generally the larger the virtual memory, the faster the system runs. About twice the Windows recommended amount is best in my opinion. If you have more than one hard disk, having your applications on one disk and your virtual memory on another disk does improve performance.\nAlso, regular disk maintenance - from My computer, right click on any of your hard drives, select properites and then play with the tabs and you should find both scan disk and defrag. These should be run regularly to keep your hard disk nice and tidy - that way, file retrieval speeds are increased giving a faster machine.\n\nCombining these three areas, you should be able to squeeze a small performance boost out of nearly any windows pc.