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start at the bottom right of the status bar on a regular basis then you should probably just schedule a time to run a complete scan and then free up your resources the rest of the time. Let the firewall take care of your basic security. Here's how it's done. From the run option in the start menu type in "msconfig" and run it. Select the "Startup" tab in the program and simply uncheck all the programs that you do not want loaded into memory at startup. Be discriminating, however. Just select the file(s) that you actually know you can do without. Just remember to run your virus checker from the program menu regularly. Don't be alarmed by the prompt when your computer restarts, it's only assuming that you don't know what you're doing, but we know better.

Regular scanning of a good anti-virus program like AVG Free Edition will take care of trojans and worms and viruses that can slow down your system but you have to keep it up to date on a regular basis. Being diligent about that means you can set the security center as I've instructed and have a faster system.

If you still think that your computer is slow then buy more Random Access Memory (RAM). If you now have limited memory then XP should still run well but constant manipulation of the virtual memory pages that the CPU writes to your hard drive will cause delays in loading programs and web pages, and that's just annoying. If you have a tabbed browser then do not load any new instances of Explorer or Firefox to display other websites you need to look at but just open new tabs to see the sites. That will free up some of your memory, but you can't go wrong with memory expansion. Limiting your multitasking will also free up your memory.

The only other reason I can think of why your computer is running slow is that you are running the latest version of everything on an obsolete version of your PC. Sorry, folks, that's just the way the world works. It means jobs, you know. I have found that the latest XP Service Pack with the Explorer upgrade on this 730MHz Pentium III with 128 Megabytes of RAM pretty much pushes the envelope, but it still runs pretty well on a cable connection set up as I've described. Still, I could use a memory upgrade to be sure.

Learn more about this author, Steve Lussing.
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