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[ComfortEagle]

My computer is running rather sluggish lately, and I am not computer savvy at all, is there any basic stuff I could do to speed things up?

[öde]

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Also do a virus scan.

[ComfortEagle]

Thanks I will do it

[dennis]

consider backing up your data and doing a complete wipe, format, and reinstall.

I do this about once a year or with every new motherboard, whichever comes first.

also, it would help if you told us make and model, what mobo and processor your have, and how much RAM you have.

[Rizzo]

And if you don't know how to find that;

Open "run" from the start menu and type in "dxdiag".
This should bring up a box asking some stuff, just hit yes.
Then it'll list your bits and bobs in various windowpanels.

[ComfortEagle]

[dennis]

now press ctrl-alt-delete and go to the task manager and cut and paste the list of tasks you're running. this'll tell us if you've got a bunch of random spyware/adware running and sapping your clock cycles.

increasing your ram to 512 or even 1024MB would give you a cheap speed boost.

[ComfortEagle]

[Catfish_Man]

eMachines.
Celeron.
low ram.
AOL.


Slow is surprising?

[ComfortEagle]

eMachines.
Celeron.
low ram.
AOL.


Slow is surprising?

My computer is running rather sluggish lately, and I am not computer savvy at all, is there any basic stuff I could do to speed things up?

Like I said, im not sure whats going on, and im not running AOL except for AIM...

[dennis]

it doesn't look like you've got any obvious malware, from your task list.

if you don't want to reinstall, go into the add new software control panel and uninstall anything you don't use. retail computers come loaded with all sorts of crappy software, like AOL. some things you have to keep, like IE, regardless of whether you use it or not.

also, do a windows update.

download and run some anti ad/mal/spy ware software. i use AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com), and spy bot search and destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/). but once you clean out your system, don't leave those programs running. set their options to not autoload. do this with all of that software that autoloads helpers and shit, like realplayer (if you don't use realplayer, get rid of it. it's evil). there's no easy way to disable ituneshelper and ipodsvc, though.

also, defrag your hard drive(s) and make sure all your drivers are up to date.

[Splunkle]

Get yourself some more RAM.  254 (why the hell isn't that 256?) isn't enough - I reccomend 512 as a bare minumim these days, and 1024 is greatly prefered.

[dennis]

RAM is cheap. get a gig. If you've got a DDR board, remember to get a matched pair.

[Catfish_Man]

RAM is cheap. get a gig. If you've got a DDR board, remember to get a matched pair.

You're thinking dual channel, not double data rate. I really don't recall if most P4 motherboards are dual channel or not though, so I can't shed much light on whether matched pairs would be needed. :/