Try this easy five step guide before spending any money on upgrades or before buying a new computer.

• Remove Spyware - Download Ad-Aware from lavasoft.com for free and check/remove any spyware from your computer.  Spyware can cause major slow downs for many computers.

   

• Run a Virus Scan - I recommend running this often to make sure you don't have any major viruses slowing your computer down. Also, make sure you keep your virus program up to date. There are free virus programs that stay up to date if you don't want to pay for virus software

   

• Clean Your Registry - This won't do a whole lot, but it is worth downloading a free registry cleaner such as CCleaner to do this.  This will get rid of extra records in the registry that are unneccessary.  CCleaner can also help with the next step of freeing up disk space.

   

• Free up hard drive space - A full hard drive is a slower hard drive. Deleting files and then defragging will help your hard drive run much faster.  I suggest starting with unused programs, games, and media files (music/videos/etc)

   

• Defrag Your Hard Drive - The hard disk can be the bottlekneck on many pcs. Running a defrag will speed up your hard drive.

   

If your computer is still too slow, there are a few more advanced steps you can try in order to get your computer in good working order.

Reinstall Windows - Advanced (not always the best option)

First, you can try to reinstall windows. This is not always the best option, but it will clear any virusus and spyware that you may not be able to get rid of. It will also get your hard drive in pretty good order when it comes to removing excess files and removing defragmentation.

Upgrade Your Memory

If you are still have trouble, try going to crucial.com or newegg.com to look into a memory upgrade.  A memory upgrade is usually the cheapest way to add power to your pc.

Upgrade Your Hard drive

A larger, faster hard drive can often speed up a slow computer due to the fact that the hard drive is the slowest component of a pc.  All hard drives are not created equal either.  If you can, look for a hard drive with larger caches and lower seek/write times.