Why is my PC running slowly?

General SLOW RUNNING of your PC.

This is a very common problem, and can be caused by several factors:

(A lot depends on the age of the computer & CPU speed of the PC itself)

Insufficient RAM (Random Access Memory) - Once upon a time, many moons ago, 512 megabytes of RAM was sufficient. for Microsoft Windows XP with "Service Pack 1". If you are using Microsoft Windows XP with "Service Pack 3" or "Microsoft Windows Vista, the PC will be very slow indeed if fitted with less than 1 gigabyte of RAM, as Windows will be constantly writing to its "Virtual Memory" - this is your disk drive, which is much slower than the RAM. "Windows Vista" seems to need at least 2 Gigabytes of RAM to function well.

One of the first things to do is to run "Disk Defragmenter" on your disk drive, this will help a little & in any case should be carried out periodically to organise the file stucture on your hard disk drive

Check which programs are running in the background by pressing "control/alt /delete" and look in the "Processes" area. These resident programs can cause a slowdown in performance owing to the programs using memory resources. Particularly a program called "MDM.EXE" This is "Machine Debug Manager" which is part of Windows, and once invoked seems to cause a severe slowdown when running. End the process "MDM" in the" Task Manager" dialogue box (press "control/alt /delete") , then search for MDM using "Windows Search" and when you find it - just delete it. Then it cannot run again, therefore there is no longer a slowdown caused by it running in the background. Use "MSCONFIG" to remove unnecessary startup programs and you should notice a speed difference in your PC's performance. If you are not sure which programs you need to keep running, just "Google" the name of the program that you are not sure about & read the first couple of items.

The other alternative is of course that the PC is running just fine & it is you who is running too fast - so just relax !