what are the causes for low PC speed? what could be done to improve PC speed?
458376
Greetings.  As a PC-Tech, I have found that the best solutions are the simplest ones, and are usually even FREE.  Modern PCs usually do not slow down due to CPU speed or programs that YOU have installed.  Sadly, it is the 'corporate monster' that does ALL the damage.  Companies are so eager to sell a product or service that they install software, browser hi-jackers, and 'ad-ware' without the users' knowledge or consent.  Of course this is illegal, but they do it ANYWAY, and very little is being done to stop it.  All these 'add-ons' sent to your PC and installed without your consent, from literally dozens, even hundreds of companies, are what slows down your PC, b/c they ALL configure their software to SECRETLY START upon System Booting. Almost any 'innocent' website you go to has a greater than 90% chance of installing these things.  Some people pay $100s or even $1,000s to have professionals remove this stuff, but there the best way is FREE.  PLEASE go to http://www.lavasoft.com/ and download Ad-Aware RIGHT NOW.  It will remove virtually ALL Ad-Ware without installing MORE of it as virtually ALL other similar software has been known to do. I am not a salesperson, nor am I affiliated with Lava-Soft in any way.  So why do I recommend this product and tell you that it is THE BEST?  I use it. For further info, please send offline mesages to Y! messenger Id: digitalmythology or send e-mails to: digitalmythology@to digitalmythology@yahoo.com. Thank You
1030958
Could be any number of reasons! \n\nPost your PC specs and it will be easier to help you.\n\nAt a guess you might:-\n1. Need more RAM\n2. Need to defrag your harddrive\n3. Your PC may be overheating\n4. You may need to reinstall Windows.\n\nAnd the list goes on and on...
729872
It's hard to say for certain.  I'd guess one or more of four things, beginning with the most likely: the page file is too small, the hard drive badly needs to be defragged (and probably has a lot of junk on it), the hard drive is going bad, the onboard drive controller is going bad.\n\nTry increasing the size of the paging file first.  Then try a drive cleaning utility (the kind that gets rid of junk files for you), then defrag the drive.  If not then then try a new hard drive.  If not that, then that PC needs a new motherboard.\n\nThose are my best guesses.
299459
One way, to make your computer faster, is to add more memory..It is not very expensive, and it will help your computer run better..You can never have to much memory..I hope this will help you..
859510
Get a faster CD drive or processor and maybe more RAM.
268022
there are many many reasons for this problem .. the common cuses are :\n\n1- Ram speed and size , you need to install a new Ram with high peed and capacity such as 1024 MB or 1GB .\n\n2- the proceesor speed , add new processor with high speed such as 3 or GHz . also the cashe memory capacity effects therefore install a cashe memory with 1GB at least.\n\n3-installing many programs from any resource( CD , Internet ..etc) and theses programs may conlict with each other or not compatible with each other .. this will also can slow your windows.\n\n4-harmfull viruses that infect any part of your HD , batch files , Trojan files and any Hackers files all of them can reduce the response of your computer.\n\n5-firewalls and security programs that you install to secure your computer slow your Windows.\n\n6-Errors and Problems in Windows system itself , like missed files or dll files during windows setup . these missed files also can cause problems and lowness in windows speed.\n\n7-problems in your HD and System that you have to maintain them frequently like , scandisk , defragmantation , cleanup of your HD .. any Windows system without maintenance can be very slow in its speed.\n\n8- may be installing many harware that are not compatible with each other on your computer also causes slowness in your Windows.\n\n9-if your computer connected to the internet , you need to free and clear your history of visited web pages , your cookies , your internet temporary folder and your temp folder from time to time to speed your windows system.. may be you had to format your C Drive when windows is installed from time to time and install a new version of Windows to avoid the slowness in Windows and make your computer runnig faster.\n\nWell , thses propabilities are the most common problesm and excuse me if i forget any other ponints .. i wish you a good luck and hope you can solve the slowness of your windows
197004
Run a Spyware scan, which is probably the number one reason for a slow computer these days.  The Yahoo toolbar has a good one, powered by Pest Patrol.  There are other free ones available at http://www.download.com/  The best two free ones IMO are Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D.\n\nAfter you run one or more of these, also do a virus check, a disk defrag and other tweaks, and you should be back to normal.  If ALL ELSE fails, back up what you can, and reinstall Windows.  If that doesn't work, it's a hardware problem.\n\nGood luck!
945596
...by doing a search for "speed up my computer" and "clean my computer"\nthere's lots of little changes you can make to speed things up.
1154218
You need more RAM.\n\nYou might also be under-clocked. Check to see:\n(1) Right click on My Computer\n(2) Look at "Computer:" What's your processor speed say there?\n\nTo reclock or overclock your computer go into BIOS and change you multiplier. Your processor speed is (i think) front side bus times the multiplier. Sometimes mine gets underclocked some how, and I have to go in and fix it. (133mhz X 15 = 2.0ghz).\n\nAlso, you can add some more Virtual RAM. To do this,\n(1) Right click on My Computer\n(2) Click on the Advanced tab\n(3) Under Performance, click on Settings\n(4) Click on the Advanced tab\n(5) Under Virtual Memory, click on Change\n\nThis lets you allocate DRIVE SPACE and turn it into virtual memory.\n\nYou should also turn off junk running in the background.\n\n(1) CTL-ALT-DELETE\n(2) How many processes is your computer running? My Win XP machine runs with as little as 16 processes. \n\nTurn off start-up programs:\n(1) Run this program: msconfig\n(2) Click on the Start Up tab\n(3) Turn off everything you don't NEED\n(4) If you don't know, try turning it off (it really can't hurt your machine)\n(5) Now click on the Services tab\n(6) Click on Hide All Microsoft Services\n(7) Turn off everything you don't NEED\n\nRun Adware/Spyware destroyers. Try Spybot: Search and Destroy. (I linked it for you)\n\nMaintaining a good computer is like maintaining a good car.\nI hope something there helps!
66231
That could be a problem due to many programs running on you computer. Try adding more memory on your computer (RAM). I do recommend having 512MB of RAM. If money would be the reason, then trying doing this:\n\n1. Click on START and go to RUN\n2. type msconfig on the run command and click ok\n3. Go to START UP tab and uncheck the unnecessary programs that you think are not needed by your computer.\n4. Restart PC and observe if your pc would go faster, normally it would. I've done it already and it helped.\n\nI have a pentium III 667MHz machine at home with 320MB of ram and it runs fast coz i've minimized the number of programs running on my start-up list.\n\nGood luck
722727
Do a defrag on your computer...\nClean disk...\nAlso they have RAM chips you can add to your computer which will make it run faster..
1080777
There are several things to check out regarding your problem.\n\n1. Perhaps your computer infected by a virus, worm, spyware or trojan. Check with your antivirus software and make sure the virus definition is updated regularly. Virus or similar things can slow down your PC performance.\n\n2. Perhaps there is corrupt data on your application. Please make sure to run the defragmentation tool regularly (once a month). This can be useful to monitor your hardisk performance.\n\nThanks.\n\nSony AK\nwww.sony-ak.com\nY!: sonyarianto
812590
lmao, u can fix the problem by buyina ram yes, or changin the software but the best thing, the best of the best is to reinstall the whole pc program, if u got xp good, used it and don't give it a service pack or any mother stupid update, but the media player 11 and directx 9.0, that way ur pc will run fast fast, for a better look u can try going to crystalxp.net...u will love what u gonna find in that site, trust me
758849
Try number 3 as it is the easiest and quickest way to improve speed.\n\n1) Increase RAM (memory).\n2) Increase free disk space (remove unneeded programs from hard drive, delete temp files and folders, switch to a larger hard drive, add a second hard drive)\n3) Reduce the number of programs running in your system tray/at startup. You can do this by going to Start > Run > type "msconfig" > go to the StartUp tab and deselect everything except critical programs like your anti-virus.\n4) Scan for/remove spyware/adware/malware. \n\nCheck out Advanced Windows Care, it will help with most of this automatically and it's free: http://www.iobit.com/
459155
Good that you do adware and spyware cleaning regularly.\nDo you so files and registry cleaning regularly ? If not this could be the source of sluggish PC also. If you do not have a registry cleaner I recommend CClean ( freeware ). Go download. After cleaning do a disk C disfragmentation using\nWindow defragmentation files \nStart/Program/Accessories/system tools / defregmentation\n\nIf still sluggish , don't uninstall Norton but deactivate it\nfrom getting into setup files . \nGo download WinPatrol and deactivate it from boot files.\nThen you can manully use it when you need them.\n\nThen download AVG Anti Virus to use it for life monitoring\ninstead of Norton which historically have proven to slow\ndown setup.\n\nOr alternatively upgrade your RAM to 1.250 GigaBit.\n\nSO choose your options above. \n\nGood Lucj
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
957700
the top reasons why computers run slow are--Not enough RAM and too much Spyware!\n\nThe spyware issue can be fixed for free, so we'll start there.  Go to download.com and download AdAwareSE, it's a free personal spyware removal program, that you can schedule to run at night when you're sleeping even, so you don't even have to worry about it, it'll just maintain itself.  You can also try SpyBot Search & Destroy, another great program...it came on my computer, so I'm not sure where to get it, or if it's free, try download.com or search on a search engine...it's also a good program, but like I said, I have no idea if it's free or not.\n\nWhile we're at it, if you do a lot of downloading all the time (especially from P2P programs like LimeWire), go to freeav.com and download some free anti-virus software, and run that too.  Viruses can make your computer very slow sometimes, along with a million other much more malicious things, so having virus software is good too.\n\nNow of course just downloading these isn't enough, you have to actually install them and run them...may sound silly to you, but a number of people think it's enough to just have them sitting on their desktop (yes mom, i'm talking to you! =D ).\n\nNow that we've got that taken care of, let's talk RAM.  To see how much RAM you have currently in your computer, go to your desktop and right click on the "My Computer" icon.  \n\nClick on Properties (it's at the very bottom of the list).\n\nOn the General tab (this should be the one it opened on) All the way at the bottom it should tell you what your computer is currently running.  processor XXXXMHz X.XXGHz, & XXX GB or MB of RAM.\n\nObviously, the only number that is really important here is the last one.  Your processor speed is actually what decides how fast your computer is capable of going, but most newer (last 5 years or so) computers have enough speed to keep most people happy, so we won't go there.  \n\nNow, how much RAM you need is based on what you want your computer to do.  Basic users, running Windows XP (Home or Professional) need about 512MB to 1.0 GB of RAM.\n\nOf course if you're trying to play all kinds of video games (isn't that what computers are for anyway?), or run lots of programs at the same time, you may need a little more than this.\n\nUpgrading your RAM will cost you money, so I highly reccomend running those programs first, as well as going into your control panel & add/remove programs, and uninstalling any useless programs you may have on there...sometimes programs will be running in the background and you won't realize it, and they're eating up all sorts of system resources, so if it's on your computer and you don't want it--DUMP IT!\n\nHope this helps, I'll check back to see if you update anything, and maybe I'll be able to give you some better answers!