Computer Still Running Slow?

Other than defragmenting your hard drive, there are several other simple things that can be done to keep your computer clean and running at a reasonable speed.

One such way to is to clean out your email inbox. If your computer has to load several thousand emails every time you open your email program, it will definitely run slow. Loading that many emails uses an enormous amount of your computer's memory. If you're too fond of those emails to delete them, save them to your computer's hard drive instead. Click on an email message in your Outlook Inbox, then go to the File menu ans click "Save As". You can then save the email message in one of several different formats; I recommend text because any word processing program can open a text file. After you've saved the message to your hard drive, you can delete it from your Outlook Inbox.

Another way to speed your computer up is to clean your desktop. Many times people will allow their desktop to become cluttered with countless unused programs and files. Most of the time Windows will ask you to clean up your unused desktop icons, but if you have chosen in the past to ignore this prompt then there are two other ways to clean up your desktop. You can either manually delete programs and files you no longer use by right-clicking them and selecting delete, or you can get Windows to do it by following these steps:

1. Start 2. Control Panel 3. Double-click "Display." 4. Click the "Desktop" tab. 5. Click the "Customize Desktop" button at the bottom. 6. Click the "General" tab. 7. Click the "Clean Desktop Now" button at the bottom.

The final possible way to help your computer to run a little more smoothly is to get rid of all the spyware that may be clogging your computer. Even if you keep your anti-virus software updated, there may still be some spyware and adware that may manage to slip by. A simple and free program such as "Ad Aware" can fix this problem.

Unless you are experiencing much more severe problems, completing the preceding tasks will undoubtedly help to speed up your computer's performance.