When you first get your PC most are generally reasonably quick and responsive. But overtime or even quite suddenly
they can become an extremely slow PC.
Anything built this century is capable of a reasonable performance. I have a 7 year old laptop that takes around 40 seconds
to get to the XP logon screen and about another minute to completely finish starting up. It is no speed demon but it's certainly faster than the
many of my customer's PC when I first visit. One quite high spec PC I recently visited was taking 25 minutes to start and was hideously slow
even then largely due to the "over-sight" of a well known security software provider!
There are several reasons for a slow computer:
- Not enough memory - many older PC's or new Vista PCs are sold with too little memory (often called RAM).
- Rogue/Unwanted processes - lots of never used icons in the system tray (next to the time) or unrequested pop-ups are often clues of this problem.
- Slow/inappropriate choice of security software - some of these are terribly slow compared to others and worse still are the ones that use false security reports to get you to install them and then buy them.
- Hard Disk - a full disk is generally a slow disk defragmenting can help a little but in most situations is somewhat overrated. Deleting unwanted temporary files is often just as effective.
Most of these problems of a slow computer are frequently inexpensive to fix.
Not enough memory is particularly common due to cost cutting when your PC was built and sold. If you have this problem
it is usually economical to fix and the difference in your PC usability is more than worth the small investment.
You can quickly see your operating system, processor and RAM (memory) by looking at your "System Properties". You can easily access this by right click on "my computer" and from
the menu that pops up select "properties".
You can call or send an e-mail and tell me the operating system, processor and RAM (memory). Add a brief description of what you do with your PC and which security (anti virus)
software you use and I will be able to advise you further if it would be in your best interests to have a memory upgrade.