I received an email from an old friend, we've known each other for 46 years.

He uses and has used desktop computers for about 20 years, but is still not computer literate.

At least not from a technician's point of view.

Anyway his question as shown in the title to this thread is one he has asked at least once a year for the past 20 years. I thought I would share the answer I sent back to him today. Keep in mind the information may not apply to everyone and was meant specifically for my friend.

Background information: Computer is 2 years old, is running Vista Ultimate 64bit on an AMD dual core processor with 2GB RAM and 320GB harddrive.

Any computer will become slower as more files are added to the hard drive. The indexing service has more files to look at to update the index. Every time it runs it must look at every file on the drive to verify they are still there and if it is not then that entry in the index must be removed. New files must be added to the index. To put it in simple terms, never expect a machine to be as fast as it was when it was new.

How can you speed up an older machine. Simple remove files from the hard drive. If you have photos, burn them to a DVD then delete them from the hard drive. Old documents you want to keep, burn them to a CD or DVD then delete from the hard drive. Any file you will not use every day or at least every week, put it on a CD/DVD and remove it from the hard drive.

Another thing is to remove any programs you do not actually use. If you have not used a program for more than 30 days uninstall it. If you have programs that load at boot up and you have no idea what it does anymore then remove it. If you find it was something you need then reinstall the program.

To find out what programs are loading at boot up click on the Vista Orb (lower left of the screen on the taskbar, where the start button was on XP). Above the Orb where it says start search type msconfig and hit the Enter Key.

The System Configuration utility will open. Click on the Startup tab. All programs being loaded at bootup will be listed. Any you don't know what they are, simply untick the checkbox then click the Apply button. Reboot your computer and if everything seems to work then try msconfig again and remove as many Startup programs as you can without losing things you need. To get a program back into the startup simply run msconfig again and put a tick into the checkbox and click the Apply button. Reboot to have the program start.

Removing startup programs frees up RAM for use by you and the programs you actually use. This will reduce the need to read and write information to and from the hard drive.

Once you have removed files and programs, you will still perceive the computer is running slower than when it was new. This may or may not actually be true. Our memories often deceive us into thinking things were better, faster, and easier in the past. http://gfx2.hotmail.com/mail/w3/ltr/...le_regular.gif