by Don Hildenbrand

Created on: February 10, 2009

With today's multi-core, multi-gigahertz computers, we should be able to expect our speed demons to act like, well, speed demons. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Our computers, either brand new out of the box, or after a period of use, can begin to seem like tortoises instead of hares.

Windows Vista, Microsoft's newest operating system (apart from Windows 7, which is still in beta) had a rough and rocky start. One of the most numerous complaints was about the speed of the OS. For example, simple file copying operations could take a very long time to complete. Start ups and shut downs were also very slow. Although the release of Service pack 1 fixed many of these issues, much can still be done to speed up Vista, or any version of Windows.

There are ways to restore the speed we once enjoyed, or to get the speed we should be getting. The following tips for speeding up a slow computer will help you to do just that and, except for the first one, will not involve adding or replacing any hardware in your PC. (Although we will focus on Vista, these tips can be applied to any previous version of Windows.

ADD MORE MEMORY!

The absolute quickest and most effective way of speeding up a slow PC is to add more memory, unless, of course, your PC already has the maximum amount installed.

If a PC runs out of RAM, by having too many open programs, or by a program editing a truly huge file, the PC will begin to "swap" that file or program to the "swap file" (More on that in a bit.) This virtual memory is much slower than RAM, and will cause a considerable slowdown in the speed of the PC. If you are using Windows XP, 1 gigabyte of memory (RAM) seems to be the sweet spot, but 2 gigabytes will do even more. With XP, anything beyond that reaches a point of diminishing returns.

If you're using Vista, regardless of what Microsoft says, 2 gigabytes should be the absolute minimum, and 3 even better. Unless you're using the 64 bit version of Vista, anything over 3 gigabytes will not be used by the OS. BUT that could change, so go ahead and max out your RAM. Literally, doing so can make your PC seem twice as fast!

REMOVE UNWANTED START-UP APPLICATIONS

Unfortunately, many new computers come bundled with tons of "crapware", trial versions of programs that you may or may not want. Like it or not, many of these programs are set to start up with Windows, and as they do so, take up some of the precious processor speed and memory. Even with a computer that's been used for awhile, it may have

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