The computer manufacturers would like you to think so.  The truth is that there may be a lot of life left in your old computer.  By doing a few simple tasks to your computer running a Microsoft Windows operating system, you can gain back some of that lost performance.  If you’d like to take it a step further, by spending a minimal amount of money you can potentially increase the speed of your pc significantly.

First are the things you can do without any cost.  If you don’t feel comfortable doing any of these procedures yourself, it’s best to find someone to do them for you.  The possibility exists that your system may become unbootable or programs inoperable if the wrong files are deleted or edited.

Clean temp directories

If you’ve never looked in your Temporary Internet Files folder, you’ll be amazed to see what’s in there...  the contents of every webpage you’ve ever been to.  If you’ve never emptied this before and have been web browsing for a while, you may have 1000’s of files in there.

In association with temporary Internet files are cookies.  Cookies keep track of information about you.  Some of them perform useful tasks, such as remembering username and password information when you visit certain websites so it doesn’t need to be retyped each time.  Others aren’t quite so helpful.  They’re used to track your web browsing habits so you can be targeted by specific advertising that matches the types of sites you visit.  Deleting your cookies will mean that you may need to reenter some information on certain websites you visit, creating a new cookie the first you visit them, but it will also remove all of the bad cookies.

To clear your Temporary Internet Files and cookies, open up the Control Panel and go into Internet Options.  Under the General tab will be two buttons, one to delete cookies and one to delete files.  When you delete files, also check the box to delete all offline content.

You should also clear out your Windows temp folder.  Depending on your version of Windows, your temp folder should be in one of these places:  c:\temp, c:\windows\temp or c:\winnt\temp.

Remove Spyware

Your computer may be running more programs than you think it is.  The Internet is full of offers for free programs and utilities.  You get junk email and popup ads for them every day.  Did you ever stop and think why some of this software is free?  Some are written by people who made a useful program and just want to share it with the world. 

Unfortunately, many free programs are merely hosts to underlying spyware.  The company is providing you with a free program so their spyware can be installed in the background.  If you read the software agreement when the program is installed, it will probably say exactly what is being installed, but who ever reads through the many pages of the agreement during installation?

Different spyware will do a variety of things, usually without your knowledge.  Some programs will collect information on your web browsing habits and target you with popup ads.  Some will change the ads that are displayed on websites to ads that are controlled by the spyware.  The worst kind of spyware goes much further than that though.  It will actually use your processor and drive space to process data for the spyware company’s benefit.  A well known offender that uses this technology is Kazaa (http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4520-6033_16-4207124.html).

The good news is that many programs exist to remove this spyware from your system.  A free program that works quite well is Ad-Aware 6 Standard Edition.  It can be downloaded from http://www.lavasoft.de by clicking the Download link on the left of the screen.  Be warned though, depending on the license agreement for the software you’re using, removing the embedded spyware may void your license agreement or may keep the software from running correctly once the spyware is removed.

Edit Startup Files

Even after the spyware is removed, you may still have programs running in the background that you don’t want.  A simple and easy way to view and change what software automatically loads when Windows starts is to use a program written by Mike Lin.  It can be downloaded at http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml.  Windows XP has a program called msconfig which provides similar functionality.

Defragmenting

A fragmented file is that one is stored in multiple parts on the drive instead of being all together.  It takes longer to access a fragmented file than one that is contiguous.  To put your files back together and fill in empty spaces so new files don’t become fragmented, run the defragment utility that comes with Windows.  It can be found by clicking the Start button, then going to Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.

Defragmenting your drive once a month will help keep things running smoothly.  If you are often adding new files or deleting files from your drive, you’ll want to defragment more often.

All of the methods so far to help increase your computer speed have been software related and free to implement.  One relatively inexpensive hardware change that can give a significant improvement to your computer’s speed is making sure you have the proper amount of RAM.  The amount of RAM in a computer is just as important as processor speed in making a fast computer.  This applies to computers of any age.  Even a new 3 GHz pc with 128 MB RAM will perform much worse than the same speed computer with 512 MB RAM.

If you’re running a computer with Windows 2000 or Windows XP, I would recommend having at least 512 MB RAM.  Using less will cause your pc to access the swap file more often, considerably slowing down performance.  If you’re running Windows 95 or Windows 98, you should have at least 256 MB RAM.

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