How do I speed up my computer....

[PhilBy]

I'm sure this will of been asked before, but......

My computer was running really slow taking ages to open a page and so today I have upgraded my broadband to 10MB. This has speeded things up a tadge but nothing like the 'lightning fast' I was promised.

I have Microsoft anti spyware beta 1 & Norton Anti virus installed, but is it still possible I have unwanted programmes dragging down my speed and if so how would I get rid of the little blighters?

Cheers.

[samz90]

Is it the speed of the computer opening programs? or is it the speed of pages on the internet?

[theren_911]

Sometimes the most obvious things are overlooked, Have you deleted the Internet Cache (or Temp internet files/history)?? That would slow you down, Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and check your task list to see if there are any suspicious looking programmes running and how much of your system resources are being used.(bottom right corner)

I wish I could get 10MB t'internet! I'm on 1Mb atm :-(

[PhilBy]

samz90: Both

theren_911. I use disc clean up & defrag on a daily basis. No other programmes running. In defrag it says I have 69% free space.

[samz90]

How much RAM do you have in your computer?

[PhilBy]

Possibly 256MB?

I should also add that it gets slower as the day goes on. I work from the computer so it gets switched on around 9am untill around 2am 24/7 (I don't need much sleep)!

[duckie14]

Buy a computer clean up disk from a computer shop you will be srprised how many unwanted files are on there. I had to do this to my computer the other day!

[samz90]

It depends on what operating system your using. Your best bet is too increase the RAM, I would say that xp needs 256mb minimum to run. I upgraded my computer last week and its so much faster now. To find out your RAM right click on 'my computer' and click 'properties'.

[fo3nix]

what sort of programs are you running?

Ideally you need 512MB, maybe 1GB. Especially if you have it on all day, running windows! (GNU/Linux would cope better)

I find that norton slows things down anyway. AVG Free does a good job for anti virus, and takes up less resources. Kerio personal firewall works better and faster than any other firewall ive used. and well,i've always been a fan of ad-aware for spyware removal.

you should not need to run those disk tools every day. once a week, maximum.

what programs do you use from day to day?