by Jimmie Russo

Does your computer seem a lot slower now compared to when you first bought it? Does it now take five minutes to start your computer? Do your programs seem to run slower, too? Here are some easy and free things you can do to speed up your computer.

We have here are five things that when you do them you will find make a big difference in the speed of your computer. The best news is that the cost for most of them is free or minimal. What makes them even better is that if you were to take your computer to your local neighborhood geek and ask him to speed up your computer these are the things that he would do but charge you $100 or more simply for his time and labor. You can do them for free.

One of the most important things that you can do to speed up your computer is to run the defragmentation program that is already in your computer. Microsoft put it there to help you keep your computer running quickly. Whenever you store a new program or file on your computer the hard drive allocates space for that program or file one and itself. As the hard drive begins to fill up however your computer starts to break up the file or program into pieces and it stores them in scattered places around your hard drive. This slows down your computer for fairly obvious reasons. Running the defrag program that comes with your computer will consolidate many of these nooks and crannies so that your computer runs a whole lot faster.

Having run the defragmentation program or your hard drive then the next thing you should do is run your disk cleanup utility. This program also comes along in your computer when you bought it new all you have to do is tell the computer to run and do its job. It will then examine your hard drive for what are called bad sectors. The only thing that you have to know here about bad sectors is that they can slow your computer down and sometimes even make it impossible for you to retrieve important parts of files that you have stored in bad sectors. This program will identify and in some cases repair those bad sectors for you. Again another quick and easy and free fix for you.

And then there is the horror story of spyware programs. These are programs that on ethical marketers sneak onto your computer. You might download a nice pretty screen saver picture for your computer and discover that along with installing the new desktop picture that you have also installed one of these evil spyware programs. Please spyware programs will do anything from steal your passwords and pass them back to the owner of the spyware program or just began copying so much information that your computer slows to a crawl. You can download a copy of Microsoft's Internet defender for free or step up your protection a couple of levels by purchasing one of the commercial spyware programs available on the Internet. The $30 or $40 that you spend for a commercial application will likely pay for it self many times over.

It will be also worth your while to clean off the thousands of files that are stored on your computer that you never ever use. These files include temporary Internet files that your browser stores to speed up your access to websites many of which you will never ever visit again, also Windows temporary files, optional Windows components that you simply don't need, and even software programs that you installed intentionally but you have not used for the last year or two. Removing all of these things will also speed up your computer dramatically.

Another thing that you can do to make a massive difference in the speed of your computer is not free but it is relatively inexpensive. Check the instruction book that came with your computer and see if it is possible to add additional memory to your computer. I'll most all modern computers do have additional capacity. Just do a little homework on the Internet and you will probably be surprised to find out how quick and easy it is for anyone that can use a screwdriver to add their own memory to their computer. Additional memory will probably cost you in the range of $50-$100 but it will make a tremendous speed difference in your computer.

These have been just a few obvious things that you can do; mostly free, to have your computer running faster in no time at all. Mostly these are, or should be, regular maintenance things that you do once a week or perhaps once a month if you do not use your computer too frequently. They don't take a whole lot of time but they won't make a big difference in the way your computer performs.

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