Slow computer - need advice

On my old machines (I'm talking DOS days here, what with Win 3.11 (for Workgroups!) and all ), I would simply go "fdisk" and then "format c:"

Amazingly, it still works on XP!

I reformat my disks about once in 6 months to once a year. Everything else is too time consuming...

You reformat your hard disks every 6 months????? Wow! Would defraging the hard disks be adequate? I can see why you do this, though. Nothing like a fresh disk to run software off of.

I would be tempted to do this too, but a few important programs that I own kind of prevents me from doing this. These programs will only allow me so many times to seek activation codes (as part of the on-line registration process) to make them work. Why the company set this copyright protection method this way is beyond me. But owning these rather expensive programs with the wierd copyright protection will definately curtail any plans of reformatting my C hard drive.

Ways to prevent the computer from slowing down.

Remormatting is most certainly one (extreme) way of doing this. Just make sure you have all of your original programs and serial numbers (activation codes) with you when you do this. Also make sure that you remember which programs need updating from the original disk (I keep as many of my programs updated if at all possible).

Make sure your computer is free from those pesty trojan or viruses or spyware. These nasty things can dramatically slow down the computer.

Turn off services that you don't use or need on your operating system. There's lots of cute functions that the windows operating system provide that are just not necessarily to run an efficient and effective computer. They look nice. But they hog up memory and CPU usage.

Defrag your hard disks. Computer performance usually increases dramatically after I do this. Having back-up copies of your programs and save files is a good precaution to take when defragmenting the hard disks. But I must add that I never lost any information after defragging a disk. (But there's always a first time.)

Good luck.

I just had to go out & get a free Avatar because everyone on the forum has one, and I felt "naked" without one. Now everytime I check the posts my computer is going very slowly. I ran virus scan, and downloaded spybot search and destroy and fixed all problems found, but it is still slow. Does anyone know how to fix this? I would rather not contact our departmental computer liason for (LOL) obvious reasons. Any advice would be appreciated.

Defrag the whole thing...EVERYTHING and then invest in a Spy Sweeper program (webroot). Do not use Kazaa or Imesh. (music download sites ) and it should get better. We did :) it and it worked for us. Ends up it was the worms that slowed it down.

Remember...nothing is free in this world..anything you download for *free* is liable to have a million pop ups that sponser it. Pop ups that won't necesarily show their 'faces' right away but get more frequent as time goes on. Plus the little reminders of "Have you swept your computer today?" get super annoying too..So be careful. Its way better to buy it at Futureshop or something like that.

If your machine is XP and you are confident you know what needs to be running on the machine, you can go into registry to delete the rubbish that runs on the background. These are stuff that gets loaded onto your machine without your knowledge and slows it right down.

NB: Don't mess around with your registry if you don't know what you are looking for.

start --- Run

type Regedit

--- From the opened window, on the left hand side click

HKEY-Local-Machine

Software

Microsoft

Windows

Current Version

Run

Now check the right hand pane. All the programs running on the background will be displayed, delete the ones that are not relevant. Only the rubbish ones.

Thanks so much to all who responded. I downloaded Spybot and AdAware and that fixed the problem. All the help and advice was very appreciated.

I had the same problem yesterday. Mine was slower than molasses.

I deleted old programs, old emails, cookies, temporary files, anything I could find to delete that I didn't want. Then I defragged. My problem started tho, about a month ago when I installed a program and it took up a HUGE amount of space. And it wasn't even really what I wanted, but I didn't know that until after I'd bought it, brought it home and installed it. So I got rid of that, too, last night, and other programs I don't use. Running much better today. Like new again.

If your computer can handle installing more memory, that might help.

More memory doesn't cost much. Take it into a shop and have some installed. That might help.