Why Is My Computer Running So Slow! Part 2

In Part 1 of this article we discussed what may be causing your computer to run slowly. In this article we will discuss how you may speed it up. Part 3 will offer more tips and then we will wrap up these articles.

Before I jump in and discuss how to disable startup programs, I have to rant for a moment about seemingly helpful, but overall resource damaging programs.

Since the dawn of internet security scares, and real problems, every anti-virus company seems to want to shove a system security packages down your throat. In fact most of the time you cannot even buy a computer with out Norton Internet Security Suite, Mcafee's Internet Security Suite, Trend Micros, or many others. Most of these programs are a serious resource hog, and then you add on top of them the double, I use this term loosely "protection" added by the Microsoft Firewall and security programs and your computer is going slow out of the gate.

Do not misunderstand me, every user should have a firewall, anti-virus, and spyware cleaner. I just will never endorse Big Business companies using inflated programs that are somewhat costly, to do a job; when you can use a free or affordable program using minimal resources, that does the job better.

For a wonderful free or affordable anti-virus package I recommend using AVG Antivirus. by Grisoft. It uses minimal resources, has timely updates to its virus dictionary, and does an excellent job of cleaning your system. If you own a business for a very affordable price you can buy the business edition.

Another plague of todays world is spy-ware. An in a high tech day and age you need a high-tech solution. Another product by Safer Networking is Spybot Search and Destroy. This product is an excellent free spy-ware cleaner and it is extremely slow on system resources.

In the firewall game field you have two options. A software firewall and a hardware firewall. Hands down I will always recommend a hardware firewall in the form of a router. There are many reasons for this. Software firewalls are buggy and can be manipulated. Hardware firewalls are reliable and do a better job of restricting ports in my opinion. Routers also offer you the double benefit of potentially giving wireless access and offering many other built in services. A router normally allows you to take your single internet connection and hooking up 4 wired computers(standard) and many more wireless computers. Many manufacturers offer these D-link, Linksys, Airlink, Netgear and many others.

Using less resource intensive programs will improve your speed. In Part 3 we will discuss how to disable startup programs, how to uninstall unused programs, and finally discuss how you go about disabling startup services. We will also touch just a little on what services are safe to disable and which ones are not.