There are numerous reasons why your computer might be running slowly. First, like the rest of us, it might just be old and tired. No, I'm not joking: older computers often don't have enough power to run today's operating systems and programs. The solution might be as simple as buying a new computer.

But before you beg the kids to do that for you, let's check out a few more possibilities. One very common reason for slowness is lack of memory - that's RAM in techspeak. It's not your "hard disk", it's the machines internal memory. If you are running Windows XP (if you are running Windows 98 you almost certainly need a new computer!) it's very easy to check this. Go to "My Computer", click on "Help", and then select "About Windows". A window will pop open, telling you a bunch of stuff you don't care about, and it will also have a line that says "Physical Memory available to Windows". For example, the picture at left shows one of my computers.

That says this machine has 523,828 KB available. That's an "ok" amount nowadays, but if I were using that box for my daily work, I'd definitely want it to have more than that. How much can it have all together? Well, part of that depends upon your machine, but nowadays you generally can't have more than 4 GB of ram (8 times what I have in that machine). If you want to find out how much RAM your machine can take, go to Crucial.com. You can find out how much memory you can get, and approximately how much it should cost. If you are a little bit mechanically minded, you could even buy it from them and install it yourself: it's easier than changing sparkplugs in a car and requires no special tools.

If your machine has less than 500,000 KB, you almost certainly need more memory!

Another reason you might be slow is that your computer may have a virus or "spyware" installed on it. If you don't have virus software installed, it's very likely that you DO have a virus and you really need to buy anti-virus software. I'll write more about that another time, but it's not optional: everyone needs protection from viruses.

Spyware is almost like viruses, but slightly different because it's something you actually gave permission to be installed (viruses don't need permission). You may not have realized you were inviting in something that makes you slow, or you might have actually wanted to install it. For example, many people install "Weatherbug" or various browser tool bars because they like the features - but those features can be making your computer slow.

There are a lot of free and low cost programs that can help you identify and remove spyware. Microsoft has a pretty good one themselves: check out Microsoft Defender (free download).

Your "registry" may need some housekeeping and spring cleaning. There are "registry cleanup" tools you can buy on-line; sometimes these can fix things up nicely but usually they won't help very much. I wouldn't usually bother with these - probably the best you can hope for is that they won't actually break anything.

If none of that helps, you may need professional attention. There are other things to try, but most won't do much for you: disk defragging, cleaning up temporary internet files and so on. They can help a little, but are unlikely to make much difference. If that's your situation, there are plenty of computer stores around who can help, and I think there are even some Oak Point folks who can do this kind of service. It shouldn't be very expensive. I do offer that sort of thing (and more) inexpensively to Oak Point residents only.

Related articles:

User-Friendly Recycling offers virus removal and operating system reinstallion services.

Windows Startup Programs is a more advanced look at what programs run when your Windows computer starts up.

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