How can I speed up my computer?

[FreakoidOrganisoid]

I've defragmented

I've deleted programmes I don't use

I've deleted cookies/temporary files etc

and still it is slooooooow

Not only online but I especially notice it when opening long threads.

Have done a speedtest thingy (but don't really know what is good!)

What can I do?

Depends which operating system...

Windows tends to slow down as it gets older and the registry gets full of junk. Even removing unused programs - it still leaves some residue.

You can get (free) registry tools that do a clear out, but they don't return all the performance - but that can return a bit.

The only way I've returned my system to pretty much original performance was wiping the disk and reinstalling everything (I built the system so i have all the bits needed) - but that takes a couple of days each time.

You might want to consider a anti-virus/spyware scan just in case.

Presuming that it's Windows....

I'd be curious to know if it's anything in particular that's slowing it down or, as liamsdaddy says, just the general kipple of Windows being more than a bit rubbish.

Press CTRL-ALT-DEL and bring up the task manager. Click the CPU (twice I think) column header to sort by CPU usage from high to low.

Leave it in the background and when your machine feels "slow" take a peek at it and see what, if anything, keeps on popping up near the top.

I'd also download and install this:
www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

It will check for "bad" applications that might be slowing things down.

Finally how much memory does the machine say that it has and is that how much it should have?

A memory chip might have worked loose and lack of memory is one thing that will really slow Windows down.

Yes it is windows (shows how clueless I am!)

I have norton, but actually doing that CPU thing norton seems to be slowing it down quite a bit.

Memory ok as far as I can tell.

Thanks for your help.

Have you downloaded and tried AdAware? If not I'd recommend it.

Something might be triggering Norton into doing lots of something.

Or Norton might be misbehaving, which is quite possible and if so I'm not too sure what to do with it.

You might consider Linux. My mother has an ancient PC with a 600MHz Athlon processor. Running Windows it's like wading through treacle, but it's got a dual boot set up with Vector Linux light, which is tuned for older less powerful systems and it flies when she's running Linux.

I would back up all your info onto an external hard drive and do a clean re-install of windows.

some programs here