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It is indeed the bane of all computers that with the passing of time, the performance tends to drop off. The pc you bought for thousands of dollars, only twelve months ago, which was the fastest, shiniest thing you could afford, is now starting to slow down. You constantly notice the hard drive light flashing away, and have gotten used to going for a coffee when you turn it on to give it time to load up...

Well, I'd like to cover some ideas to get your PC back into ship-shape, starting from software tweaks and initiatives, to inexpensive hardware modifications. These tips are good for beginners and experienced users too, with some as simple as accessing underused windows tools, to exploring the Bios menu and overclocking... let's get started :

1 - Software tweaking (The least expensive option, can have some good results)

The tools I will focus on first are both already in windows. First and foremost, get rid of your temporary files, which are clogging up your hard drive by running "Disk Cleanup" (Located in Accessories->System Tools) this will allow you to get rid of these files all in one go. You can check every box in the list EXCEPT for compress old files. This may sound like a good idea, but if you refer back to these files they will need to be decompressed first and this will degrade performance. The second step after a cleanup is to run a complete defragmentaion of your hard drive. This will help to rearrange files so they are contiguous, and will reduce searching across your hard drive. This tool is also found in the system tools folder.

Now that we have cleaned and run a defrag we can move onto some other programs I recommend, they are : Ccleaner (Crap Cleaner) This program will not only run an advanced version of disk cleanup, it also has a registry problem checker which is great. This program is free. Another great program to keep your PC in shape and bug-free is Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, this is another free (for home use) program which will scan your drive for bugs and cookies and clean them off for you. A final piece of advice is to uninstall (Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs) any unused pieces of software on your PC. This will ensure you have maximum hard disk space available, and the least amount of clutter.

2 - Hardware Upgrades and Tweaking

This section is a little more involved, and can mean some expense for hardware, however the performance gains will be a lot more noticeable.

Firstly when dealing with home PC's, one component can make

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