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This article assumes that the reader has a limited budget to work with and if solutions to the problem of a slow PC can be had for free than that would of course be the preferable option. As far as I'm concerned, it is anyway and I've had some considerable success enhancing the performance of my own computers over the years and all it cost me was my time.

There are some nifty tricks which you can use to improve the performance of even the fastest computer with a fast internet connection. One of these is to tweak the registry by inputting the optimum values for certain settings. Most PC's have a registry with no values set for all of the performance-related settings. For example, it is possible to change the values for the Maximum Transmission Unit size. That defines the maximum size of a packet that can be transferred in one frame over a network. Chances are that it's currently set to zero, as are all the other important settings. There are optimum MTU values depending on the type of internet connection that you have.

You can change the MTU value and other important ones yourself by clicking on run, from the start menu, and entering "regedit" in the input field then run it, but if you're not sure of what you're doing then don't play with the registry. Let a free program called "SG TCP Optimizer" do it all for you. You can download it from any reputable download site. It's small and very easy to run and won't corrupt your Windows Registry.

There are many other reasons why a computer is running slow, and some of them are Microsoft's fault. We'll discuss Windows XP since most of us have it. The Windows Security Center allows you to set options for turning on or off your firewall, automatic updates, and virus checking. None of these are mandatory, however I recommend that the firewall always be turned on. I schedule a regular time of the week when I run the update utility and I install any available updates at that time. The rest of the time I have automatic updates turned off. If you follow that procedure you will actually notice your computer's performance improve.

Similarly, if you have a virus checker you can apply the same strategy, but somewhat differently. Sometimes you have to use a special little-known configuration utility to prevent the virus checker from delaying your startup and loading itself into memory altogether so that it only continues to annoy you with its spontaneous scanning processes. If you find yourself canceling the virus scan from the quick

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