Help! old computer, need to dump virtual memory - any thing else that could be slowing it down?

[davidtennantsmistress]

help! the computer is approx 6 yrs old, but it's so slow, painfully - seems to be getting slower as well. Am currently going thru deleting everything which isn't used & deleting all files ie cookies etc etc, (mum has a habit of downloading stuff she never uses as it pops up on the screen)

am going to re boot afterplus also defrag it as well when i've finished taking stuff off, but my questions are:

what else could be slowing it down (she's had the world supply of cookies on there)
How do I get more virtal memory/dump the old virtual memory.
how do we stop all of the programmes starting up when she switches the computer on.
Am also going to be doing a virus checker as well.

anything else you can think of why it's sooo slow - other than age of course!

I mean she's only used 10GB of her hard drive so surely it should be quicker?? (has a 40gb hard drive)

you shouldn't have to dump virtual memory - that's automatic. if there's space on the drive, then windows should increase the amount of virtual memory as needed.

do install an antivirus.
also have you tried running a spyware checker?
have you uninstalled all chat software (msn and the like)?, (and any other software you don't use)

finally age won't be making it slow per se, but it might need more memory (not virtual memory). try the above first though.

thanks senora, She uses MSN so have that on but have taken off the Yahoos etc, and the 3/4 differnt internet things she had on there (firefox, bt, IE, yahoo!!! list was endless there) have taken off all of the unused programmes as well.

when you say spywear do you mean as in the spybot ones? - i've always been reluctant to use those as I don't want the adwear checkers etc added/installed.

Antivirus she's using mccafee atm, (it's a work's computer so is limited to what she can use on here) i'd put AGV on but as I understand you can only use one checker at a time.

ok this is the gen on it.

Dell insprion 2600
cpu 1200mhz
256gb ram
1.2 ghz.

it keeps coming up with virtual memory is too slow - i'm surrently running this programme and have the control pannel open, surely it should be able to do more?

Some tools which may help:

CCleaner - clears out unused files

Startup Manager for Windows 95,98,2000,XP

256GB of RAM... hmm, that sounds wrong. 256MB perhaps.

Looks like maximum RAM permitted is 512MB, which isn't a lot. You could upgrade the memory so that you are at the maximum, it would help a little, as more of Windows will load into RAM rather than from Virtual Memory (hard drive being used as memory - this is a lot slower to access than a RAM chip).
Memory upgrade, around £22.00