by James Russo

Are you puzzled by the fact that your computer is running very slowly? Would you like to know of a few cheap things that you can do to help it run faster? Here is help for you.

Below is a list of several things that you can do even if you do not consider yourself to be a computer expert. In addition to being easy each of these things are either free or cheap. These are also several of the secrets that a repair shop will charge you $100 or more to perform.

Since you have been using your computer for quite some time now there is almost an absolute guarantee that simply running the defragmentation program in your computer will make a tremendous increase in the speed of your computer. The defrag program is found in your accessories group within your control panel. It is software installed there by Microsoft before you even bought your computer therefore it is completely safe to run.

You should also take steps to minimize the effect of bad sectors on your computer. Running this program from your computer control panel again will only take you a few minutes and it is also already residing on your computer. All you have to do is tell it to inspect your hard drive and when it finishes once again you will see an incremental increase in the speed of your computer.

Also consider investing in some software to protect your computer from invasion of spyware. Spyware is software that unethical marketers manage to sneak on to your computer that spies on you and reports back to the merchant. Along with exposing your personal information the very process of reporting back to the merchant slows down your computer. You can take advantage of one of the many free anti-spyware programs available on the Internet or increase your protection a notch or two by investing $30 or $40 in a corporate level program that is surer to protect you against invasion.

Another thing that you will want to seriously consider is going into your control panel and clicking on the list of programs that are installed on your computer. You will find some programs that were installed by the manufacturer that you have never used and have no intention of using. Tell the computer to uninstall them. Then take a second look at your list of programs and see if there are some programs installed on your computer by you that you have not used in the last year or two. Whenever you find one go ahead and tell the computer to uninstall it. Eliminating these files will free up more space on your hard drive thus making it quicker to run programs and also to start up.

While this next tip is not free it is one of the best speed boosters that you can consider for your computer. Check your instruction book and see how much random access memory your computer came with. Then find out how much your computer can handle in terms of maximum memory. If there is room for more memory capacity in your computer simply go to a local store with your instruction manual that contains your computer name and model and show it to them. They will be able to tell you what kind of memory you need and how much you can get. Then go home and take 10 minutes to install the new memory sticks in your computer. If you can plug a blender into an outlet then you are competent to install a stick of memory in your computer's system.

These have been just a few of the things that you can do to make your computer run faster. These are easy things for you to do. You do not have to be a computer savvy person in order to accomplish them. And once your computer starts running faster you will be looking for additional things to do to make it run even faster still. Naturally there are lots of additional tweaks the average person can do for their computer and we can help you with that information below.

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More forgotten ways to make your computer faster are available here. An excellent corporate level anti-spyware program is a smart purchase. Click here to get your own unique version of this article. Download ebooks.