Maintaining your Windows XP computer will help to insure that its performance will not degrade over time. If you don’t maintain your PC and are experiencing issues with speed you can choose to try to resolve the issues yourself or you can take your PC in to a computer professional. While the latter does not require any time on your part it will cost you a considerable amount of money. Many things you can do to resolve speed issues with your computer are free and easy to perform.

More than ninety percent of all problems related to slowness in PCs can be attributed to problems found in the system registry. Microsoft does not provide a tool to scan or fix registry entries but they do provide a registry editing tool. However, unless you really know what you are doing it is not recommended that you manually modify registry entries.

Adding more RAM (random access memory) to your system will almost always help speed up a slow computer and the act of multi-tasking will not bog down the computer as it would with a lower amount of RAM. RAM is hardware that needs to be physically added and tends to be somewhat costly. However if you plan on keeping your system for a while it is an excellent investment.

For faster browsing speed clear your Internet cache (temporary internet files) and delete your cookies. This causes the computer to gain speed on the Internet and the pop-ups from sites that you have been to will also be less frequent.

There are five things that are easy to do that can improve your computers performance. In summary they include: removing malware, adware, and spyware; finding and fixing errors on the computers hard drive, freeing up space on the hard drive and adding additional virtual RAM.

Spyware, adware, viruses and all sorts of malware can cause significant degradations of your computers performance. You can find good programs to scan for and remove these threats on Microsofts website as well as from third parties.

Use registry fix programs. The computer registry can be described as the database that contains all of the settings and options for 32 bit versions of Microsoft Windows (including Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, XP, and 2000.) It also contains all of the settings for the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the P.C. Whenever a user makes changes in the Control Panel settings, file associations, system policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected in the computers registry. Many times a registry error occurs and this causes files and data to be inaccessible. If there are numerous minor errors (which is usually the case) a registry fix program will get the data back in accessible sequence and a slow computer will be speeded up with this fix.

Removing as much clutter and junk from your PCs hard drive and freeing up space will go a long way to improving your computers performance. There are several utilities that will help you do this but the main one people use is the MSCONFIG tool. Once you have created more space on your hard drive the computer has more room to use it as virtual memory.

There are several causes that slow computer systems down. Errors on the hard drive, lack of adequate disk space, malware and more. Even your hardware components and the settings of your system can cause it to be slow as well. There are things that you can do to improve the speed of your PC.

Use the defragmentation tool. A hard drive consists of hundreds of sectors which or broken up into clusters and then further into allocations. As a computer gets used the files that are accessed are sometimes not put back to the sector or allocation unit where they belong. The drive becomes “fragmented”. The defrag tool can be accessed by going to the start bar, to programs, accessories, system tools and defragmentation tool. It may take several hours to properly defrag a hard drive, but the resulting gain in speed will make this time well spent. Files will be more quickly accessed and all of the bad sectors on a disk will not contain any information on them. Hence, a user will not wait in vain for a file that is stuck on a bad part of the hard drive.

Errors on your computers hard drive of the system registry can also slow down your computer. Running the Scan Disk and Check Disk utilities will find and fix hard drive errors. For system registry errors you need to download a utility such as CCleaner to detect and resolve registry errors.

If your computer is about out of space on the hard drive then you can run the MSCONFIG utility to find and quickly remove all items that are redundant and safe to remove. Un-installing software that is not needed will also free up space.

There are many ways to diagnosis what may be causing your computer to run slowly. If you are experiencing problems with speed in computers it is a common complaint. After purchasing a new computer you use is for quite some time without any problems then it seems, all of a sudden, to take longer to save files, open applications or start up. The thing that is an issue is there are many possible things that can be the root cause of your computer to slow down. This makes diagnosing the root cause somewhat difficult at times.

If you notice a sudden decrease in the speed of your computer you should think back about any changes you may have made to it recently. Trying to focus on the time immediately prior to the slowness might help you pin down the exact cause. Newly installed software or hardware may be the culprit or even if you visited a new web site that may have installed spy or adware on your PC.

If, however, you have not added any new hardware or software you should reboot your computer to see if it fixes your issues. If none of these are the cause of the problem then you should check to see if your computer has enough resources available. Do you have enough room on the disk drive? Is there enough RAM and do you have an adequate video card? Try clearing out all unnecessary items and defragging the hard drive to see if this helps improve the performance of your PC.

If after you have performed these tasks your computer is still running slowly you many have to consult a computer professional.

Almost everyone at some point or another ask the question: why does my computer run so slow? The fact is that most, if not all, computers begin to slow down as they get older. You begin to notice slowness in the boot time, the time it takes to open programs and even navigating the internet can seem to take an eternity.

It is possible that all the programs running in the background may be draining the memory resources of your computer. Every program listed in the system tray and all the icons on your computers desktop use up memory. You can find out all the programs that are running by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys all at the same time. Just click on any item listed and click “End Task” to stop the program. Be careful to not end Systray or Explorer or any other item that is critical to your computers operation.

While the above step may resolve many of your problems it is a temporary fix as all these items will just start back up again when you re-start your computer. In order for the fix to be permanent you need to remove unnecessary icons from the desktop, un-install any unneeded programs, and disable the automatically start up of any programs that you do not use on a daily basis.

If these tips do not improve your speed as much as you would like there are many third-party programs that can help you control these issues even more effectively.

The Experience Index is a utility found in the Windows 7 operating system that help you to determine what might causing your computer to run slow. The Experience Index will assign a score or system rating which is the measurement of the speed of the computers software and hardware. The scores range from a low of one to a high of 7.9. You will be provided with a detailed listing that rates the RAM, processor, gaming graphics, graphics, and transfer rate of the primary hard drive.

You will find the Experience Index in the Control Panel when you click on “View basic information about your computer” and look under “System and Security”. Next when you click on it a display of all the information important about your Windows operating system and hardware. You will find the score next to “Rating” under the “System” tab. The index score will be of the slowest component found.

Clicking on the link “Windows Experience Index” that is found next to the score you will see a report that details all of the scores of the five components. These subscores are for the processor, RAM, , gaming graphics, graphics and the transfer rate of the hard disk.

You can replace the component with the lowest score first. If two components have relatively equal low scores then you may need to replace both. You may not be able to replace the processor on the motherboard of your computer so if that component has the lowest score you might have to buy a new computer.

Many things will cause your computer to boot slowly. If you have a lot of unnecessary fonts or icons all these items can cause your system to start up slowly.

To improve your boot time you can begin by cleaning house. But before you begin you need to have a back up of all the important information on your computer. You want to empty the Recycle Bin, remove temporary files and get rid of all other unnecessary items on your computers hard drive.

You have the option to bypass any program that is in the Start up folder when you need to. You can do this by holding the Shift key down when you boot your computer. This will cause none of the programs in the Startup folder to run. But this will not disable them from running the next time you start up your computer.

You can also use the system configuration utility to stop programs from automatically starting up. You get to this utility by typing “msconfig” at the run prompt from the Start menu. Click on the Start Up tab of the system configuration utility to uncheck any programs that you want to disable from starting when you boot up your computer.

If your system is part of a network or you have ever connected it to a network there may be invalid network connections that still attempt to be found when your computer boots up. Disconnecting any mapped drives and network connections that are no longer in use will help to improve your computers boot time.

While the Windows 7 operating system is one of the better releases by Microsoft it does not guarantee that you will not experience common issues including hanging, freezing and slowness. It is important to have the right hardware requirements that are designed to run the Win 7 OS. If you are upgrading an older computer to Win 7 you might end up disappointed with its performance unless you update some components. Even if you have some of the most recent hardware there are other considerations that may reduce the performance of a Win 7 computer.

You can improve the boot speed your Win 7 computer by pressing the R plus the Windows Key. When you open the Run screen type ‘msconfig’ and press ‘enter’. You will then see the System Configuration Window. Go to the Boot tab and look for the “time out” setting. If it is set to ‘30’ you should set it to ‘0’ of you only have one OS installed on the PC or ‘3’ if you have more than one OS installed. Also check the “No GUI Boot” option, Advanced Options, and be sure the “Number of Processor” setting is set to “2”.

Visual Effects is another area of the Win 7 operating system that can bog down your computers speed. You can disable many of the effects without a significant decrease in the appeal of the appearance of your computer but will greatly improve its speed.

The Windows 7 operating system is one of the best that Microsoft has released. But it still will encounter issues with speed depending upon several factors. Running this powerful OS requires you have the hardware components compatible for it. If you upgrade and older computer you may find that it performs slower than before you installed the Win 7 operating system. How can you tell what components need to be updated? Well that is where Win 7 comes in first.

The Experience Index is the tool that will give you this information and it is found in the Control Panel by clicking on “View basic information about your computer” found under “System and Security”. When you click on it a display of all the information important about your Windows operating system and hardware. You will find the score next to “Rating” under the “System” tab. The index score will be of the slowest component found.

Next is you click on the link “Windows Experience Index” that is found next to the score you will see a report that details all of the scores of the five components. These subscores are for the RAM, processor, gaming graphics, graphics and the transfer rate of the hard disk. The controlling factor is determined by the lowest score of all the components.

With the Windows Experience you can know what components you need to replace, if any, to speed up your computer. Having this measurement is really helpful in letting you know where you will get the best value for your money.

You can face the same issues with your Win 7 OS computer as with any other operating system including freezing and hanging up. But there are procedures you can perform to improve your Win 7 computers performance.

It is possible to encounter these errors at any time that as well as the fact that there are many things that might cause these errors to occur. Registry errors, deficient amount of RAM, faulty programs could all be the culprits causing the errors. When repair these errors you will see an improvement the performance of your Windows 7 computer.

Problems affecting the hard drive can create problems with your computers performance. You can correct these problems by using the disk defragmenter utility. It is often that problems with programs will cause system problems. If this is occurring you can try un-installing and re-installing the software. Also be sure to have all your software programs updated on a regular basis.

The Windows 7 operating system, as do all others, create junk files that can slow down the performance. When ever you browse the Internet temporary and cached files are created as well as cookies. Removing these items regularly will also improve the speed of your computer.

Other things you can do to improve the performance of your computer is to eliminate any unnecessary icons on the desktop. Icons use up memory and takes it away from other tasks that might otherwise need it more.