1. Hardware Upgrade: Operating system and software performances are limited by the hardware capabilities. Upgrade your hardware – RAM, Processor and Hard drive, for a faster computer.

• For Windows Xp (the following hardware specifications are recommended for a faster computer)
  - 1-2 GB of RAM (If you are on budget Upgrading RAM alone is enough)
  - Pentium III (Dual core)/IV or Celeron M Processor
  - 80 GB Hard drive is sufficient. More the merrier. I have a 500 GB external Hard disk.
• For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the recommendations are,
  - 3-4 GB of RAM.
  - Pentium 4 Dual core or more.
  - 320 GB Hard drive is sufficient. You can always get an external Hard disk.

2. System maintenance and Performance tweaks:

• Disk Cleanup Tool:

  Run Disk cleanup tool from Start > All programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. No need to compress unused system files, just cleanup recycle bin and temporary folder. This is will give additional space if you lack enough of it on C: drive, for the page file (Virtual memory) to run well.

• Manage Desktop:

  Move files and folder from desktop to other locations, as the files on there will take up memory. Move all the files and folders except the short cut links.

• Scan Windows system files:

  Go to start, Run and then type sfc /scannow. This should start the System File check (sfc). This checks for corrupted system files (resulting from frequent new installation of programs, viruses and hard disk problems) and replaces with working versions. Running this just once in a while will do.

• Antivirus and Antispyware/Malware scan:

  Schedule your antivirus and antispyware program to run once in a week. Scanning for viruses and spywares regularly will ensure high performance of your computer.

• Uninstalling unneeded programs:

  Use your favorite uninstaller or Add or Remove programs from the control panel, and uninstall the unused or unneeded program. The whole process won’t take more than 1 hr, but its worth it, to keep hard disk compact and registry size small. I personally use Secure Uninstaller, it is much better than the Add or Remove programs tool as it completely uninstalls all the traces of the program (including registry keys) in a secure and safe way freeing up registry size as well as hard disk space ensuring a speed performing computer.

• Turn off Windows Theme visual Effects:

  Go to, Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Adjust Effects or Performance or Control Panel > System > Advanced Tab, click on settings near Performance, choose Adjust for best performance and OK. This should immediately speed up your computer.

• System start up programs management and services:

  I use a tool called Soluto, it lets you turn off unwanted start up programs and background windows services which speeds up boot time and save memory space.

• Hard disk Defragmentation:

  Scheduling this to run once in a month is good enough. If you have it schedule already, then good. Defragmentation tool, combines all the fragmented pieces of hard disk data into continuous block, which makes executing files much faster.

Note: To schedule any program, go to control panel > scheduled tasks or Task Scheduler 2.0 and choose the program from the list and choose the time interval over which the task should loop, and that’s it.

Hardware upgrades along with performance tweaks with system maintenance should speed up your computer to its max!

Process Explorer, shows the break down of sub process, showing memory usage of each one, helping you find what actually accounts for more of the overall memory usage of the process.

If in any case you are not aware of a particular sub process, google it to see if its a spyware and fix it.

Click on the image for full screen view. To get an interface like what you see in this image, in the Process Explorer, go View > Select Columns>Process memory tab. Check “Working set size”. Click OK. This will now show RAM/memory usage. Then, in main window, look for “System” process. Expand it, so sub processes are shown.

As you can see from the image above, the problem lies with the svchost.exe while i was expecting AVG module, avgwdsvc.exe to be the culprit. In that case, uninstalling AVG and reinstalling the latest version seldom helps. Looking for an alternative such as Avast or even better a paid one such as Kaspersky helps.

After examining, it seems that svchost should be a process on its own and in some cases it gets nested under system when sub process of svchost accessing that of system.

Researching more, shows that avdwdsvc.exe which is known as AVG Watchdog, a service that monitors other AVG components, to be examined. As expected the problem lies here. Seems like there is a memory leak, ie. more memory usage.

To fix this disable AVG watch dog service. To do that, go Start Button > Run > type services.msc. Find the service ‘AVG8 Watch Dog’, right click on it, click disable. Exit and reboot. By then the problem must be solved if not uninstall AVG.

To prevent high memory usage of processes, its must to have a reliable Registry Optimizer Tool, in addition to a firewall, antispyware and antivirus program. This is because, after a spyware fix, its must to clean its remnant, to avoid invalid registry entries slowing down your PC.

When buying a computer, the speed of the system is the most important feature sought after. To get the maximum PC speed, other viral components must meet their required specifications.  So even if you get a super fast computer with 6 GB of RAM and 3 Giga hertz of processing power, as the time moves on, your computer begins to take its toll and will depreciate in all powers eventually, which will certainly make you ask “Why the heck is my computer slow?”

Slow computers are so frustrating when it gets in the way when you are ready to complete a project and the slowness of your computer freezes up the screen or takes you a lot of time that you don’t deserve. So the need to discover and find out the solution behind why a computer depreciates in speed capabilities, how to fix it and prevent it in future, becomes vital.

Whatever your windows OS maybe, the main suspicion of a slow PC exists with the windows registry. Windows registry is the core hub of all the records of all active software programs, applications, and hardware device drivers. As you frequently install and remove programs, there are unwanted items in the registry because of the incomplete uninstallation of programs. As you might not be aware, a normal uninstaller never cleans the program completely out of your PC!

Other errors are result of an attack of malwares like virus and spyware that destructs your computer to its maximum. So those are the causes of computer errors that would reduce the computer to its slowness. Thus as you can see, the unhealthy registry which causes system error is the victim of a slow pc problem.

Since, registry is where all the applications go to before execution, fixing the registry will alleviate the slow PC problem to its minimum. Thus when an application accesses registry which is error free, it gets executed fast, thus preventing a slow execution. But on the flip side, when there is a registry issue that conflicts or gets in the way of a smooth execution of an application, that would create all the problem in the world, causing the application to execute slow and thus your computer becoming slow as a result! It also causes system freezes that will not resolve until you reboot your computer. In the worst case the computer even fails to reboot until you reboot it with a boot disk!

So before you panic that the only way to fixing up a slow PC is to reformat your hard disk and reinstall your OS, the truth is there are other methods that can resolve a slow PC without you having to loose all your precious data on your hard disk! Many tools are available in the internet marketplace to fix the registry which is the root cause of this problem. These are developed by software vendors that sell commercial registry cleaners that are just what you need. These tools are so easy to use, even a non-technical person can easily, install, run and maintain it without any worries. Those softwares also come with useful value-added utilities such as registry backup and defragmenter, system program startup management, antispyware, etc… which keep your PC safe and secured!

So equipped with the multi powered registry cleaner, you never have to face slow computers again! And finally you can say goodbye to that question – “why the heck is my computer slow?”!