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such program will remove most of the overhead caused by them.

* Get a good protection suite. An antivirus, antispyware and firewall solution that frequently calls home for updates will help you not get infected with spyware and other malware that will not only slow your computer but may even harm you financially by stealing credit and identity information. A protection suite from one vendor will probably have a smaller footprint in terms of resources (and will cost less) than purchasing three independent products.

* A registry cleaner is a product that, personally, I find the least effective to improve overall computer performance. Some of these products have, on occasion, done more harm than good by cleaning up in-use registry entries. Others adopt a very cautious stance, leaving intact invalid entries. Backup the registry before running one of these tools just in case.
Understand that certain niceties and functionality come at a cost. Semi transparent windows, thumbnails that show live content, that little applet that reports the weather in Timbuktu as well as the little program at indexes your computer's data to make searches quicker all eat into your computer's resources. You have to decide what is more important to you.

* Check the Startup folder for programs that are set to run every time Windows starts. Drag programs you do not want to run whenever Windows starts out of this folder. The Startup tab of the System Configuration utility lists additional programs. Uncheck those programs you do not want to run when Windows starts. The System Configuration utility is only available by typing the command MSCONFIG after choosing the option Run from the Start menu. When you close the program you will be asked to restart the computer.

You should always backup the computer's registry before installing a new program or new hardware. There are cases in which the software malfunctions and causes the computer to slow down tremendously. Uninstalling the offending program will not always restore the machine to the state it was before because the uninstall program did not clean up properly. If this happens Windows' System Restore program will put the registry back to how it stood before the program was installed.

With certain undisciplined users, I find that every so often (anything between 9 to 18 months) the computer is messed up so much with junk that reinstalling the system from scratch is the only truly effective solution. Rather than having to install the entire system

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