Fix my old slow computer?

8 thoughts on “Fix my old slow computer?”

1. Perfectest says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   There are a several reasons why your computer is freezing/slow. First question is when the last time you cleaned your registry. Having a corrupted registry can cause a whole host of errors and problems. Freezing up is one of them. If you have a lot of unnecessary registry keys that are hogging up your computer resources. Your computer is bound to choke. Scan your registry with a good registry cleaner. If you pull up more than 20 errors or duplication, clean your registry.
   Go to:http://toptenantispyware.com/Clean_Up_Center.htm get one to free scan your pc

   2. Depending on your RAM specs and your computer usage. This could also be the issue. Having an insufficient amount of free space does not allow your RAM to function properly. If you are using a lot of RAM by net surfing or other activities without enough empty space your will get freezes. You don’t need to buy new RAM but you should increase your free space by removing unnecessary data and perhaps increasing your virtual memory. The below link will show you how.

   3. Spyware could be the culprit, so do a scan and see if your computer is infected.
   Get the best one from: http://toptenantispyware.com/Tune_Up_Center.htm to scan your computer.

   4. That last area is a hardware driver. This could be the problem if new hardware has been added to the system. So, the drivers should still be up to date. So try the first two suggestions and see if you can get your computer to stop freezing/speed up.
   Check your drivers. Hope this helps.
   Go to:http://toptenantispyware.com/RegComputerSlow_why.htm
   learn how to fix it.

2. rip says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   Check http://www.pcoptimizerprodownload.com
   With pc optimizer pro you can safely clean, repair and optimize your computer.
   It will help improve your system performance.

3. Helper says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   Using a registry cleaner can clean up your computer and then make your computer faster,Why?the reason is that there may be some registry errors and remnant,corrupt files and temp files in your computer to cause "computer slow".
   Every time you install and uninstall software on your computer and surfing online you create junk in the computer registry.over time, the registry can grow to enormous proportions, especially if the various programs you’ve installed do not do a good job of deleting and/or updating it’s Registry entries.You need to scan and clean your computer with registry cleaner to make it fast.Good Registry Cleaner will improve your computer and Internet performance dramatically!
   There are some comparison and review of TOP 5 registry cleaners.
   http://www.speed-up-your-pc.com/
   You can download and scan your computer for free.

4. hemppy says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   hi LZ center, what you are discribing is formating your hard drive you can get another computer but i would consider an upgrade which is a 2 gb with a 512 system. but let’s see if we can get some speed out of the ol girl reboot when you see your windows logo start tapping f8 which will bring you to a safe mode screen scrol down to last time my system was configured correctly then when you get to your desktop go to system restore where you defragment in system tools there you will see a calender hit the first lit number to your left your system will restore and reboot. when you get back to your desktop again go to control panel and hit internet options and delete your history and your cookies. golly that was fast then defragment this is important to complete good luck hope i was helpful to you

5. JayDax says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   Sounds like you are doing pretty well everything you can to keep this old computer going smoothly.

   You could try different spyware checks to the ones you are using and archive Outlook messages.

   Lots of hard drive activity can be caused by low RAM, spyware, a drive needing defragging and a virus. If it passes a scandisk/Chkdsk it’s probably OK. Drives often get noisy before they fail.

   Maybe you should consider building a new PC yourself.

6. grandchampofallknowledge says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   Get all of your important files off of your hard drive…. now.

   Once you do that, wipe it clean and install a fresh version of windows. Make sure you have access to the drivers for your motherboard, video, lan, ETC. If you don’t you can download them beforehand or just use a different pc.

   If you want to run the latest antivirus software, you will need more ram…. how you get that is up to you. Odds are, with it being christmas time, you can buy a cheap pc that will work wonders. The cons will be it will most likely have Vista on it.

   But, you can take your old pc and sell it for probably 75 bux to someone who truly needs it.

7. lhi71t says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   I would start with a defrag of your hard drive. This will speed up the machine. It’s free, and can make a big difference in older machines.

   Here is a free defrag guide.
   http://www.zettalogix.com/DIY_Guide_Disk_Defrag.html

8. Samuel Adams says:

   January 15, 2011 at 8:58 am

   There are several things you can do to increase the "speed" of your computer.

   1) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.

   2) Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type "msconfig" at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need "Adobe Reader Speed Launch"? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.

   3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend AVG Free anti-virus, Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware remover. These programs are all free.

   4) Clean up the registry. CCleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.

   Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.

   1) Upgrade RAM. This is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster. With an older PC, you will rarely have enough RAM to run today’s memory-hogging operating systems and applications, and adding a high-capacity stick or two of quality RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes.You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs.

   2) Reinstall Windows. If the above tricks haven’t helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You’d be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you’ve wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly, and all sorts of other electronic junk. Reinstalling is easy if you have the "recovery disk" that came with your PC, and only a bit more involved if you’re using a retail copy of Windows XP. Just be sure you back up everything you want to take with you before you pull the trigger!

   3) Upgrade your hard drive. This is a more complicated solution, but if you’re reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive, too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive, even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage, if you put it in an enclosure.

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