How can I make my PC faster? Help

**Hamster** · 9-4-09, 15:08

My aging PC has slowed to a crawl lately and i'm wondering if theres anything i can do or add to it to make it a bit quicker

Its a Tower case with an AMD Duron 1.79ghz processor, 512mb Ram, 40 gb HD + a 60gb usb drive. The dvd doesnt work, theres a fan on the processor and what looks like an uprated fan in the case.

Running XP home, service pack 3. Only use it for net, msn and photo's/video. Very little else.

Would adding some ram make it better? Does anyone have any bits laying around that would help me.

Fed up of it crawling along when on the net. Its ok if I have 1 task open, but if I start to browse multiple windows its painful. The speedtests on the internet connection come up ok so its not that, just the computing power I think.

If i'm on MSN and the net at the same time, it usually crashes.

Anyone got any suggestions (enter mr Szynal) or bits laying around that I could purchase/swap for parts?

Cheers

**Davidos12** · 9-4-09, 17:34

Hi mate ram always helps to speed up performance and would be ultra cheap for the age of your machine off ebay. I may have some stuff laying around. you need to find what ram you need try here. do a scan and it will tell you what you need and can put in your system.

SDRAM, DDR2 and DDR RAM memory upgrades from Crucial.com

The best way is to purge your harddrive of anything you can get rid of, do a disk defrag (may take a couple of attempts) and also remove any spyware that may be slowing your system

Ad-Aware Free - Download security software for spyware removal - Lavasoft

also clean up the registry with this.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner: Safely scan and repair registry problems - Spyware FREE.

Failing all of this backup your stuff to external drive/pen drive and fresh reinstall windows.

I could take a look for you if you want?

Dave

**Davidos12** · 9-4-09, 17:43

Also how often do you clear out your internet cookies?

**Hamster** · 9-4-09, 18:18

thanks Dave, i'll give those things a go. Cant re-install windows as I dont have the disks.

I try not to clean out the cookies as I have a lot of pages that save login info etc that I dont have written down.

I do a defrag every now and then but it has little effect.

See how I get on and i'll report back.

**Hamster** · 9-4-09, 18:22

heres the info from the memory scanner

Maximum Memory Capacity: 3072MB
Currently Installed Memory: 512MB
Available Memory Slots: 2
Total Memory Slots: 3
Dual Channel Support: No
CPU Manufacturer: AuthenticAMD
CPU Family: AMD Duron(tm) processor Model 8, Stepping 1
CPU Speed: 1794 MHz

**Paula** · 9-4-09, 18:39

Hi Guys,

Yep Ad Aware is good, I have it on my PC.

Nite

Paula