First off let's look at the task manager in Windows XP(r). While on the desktop with nothing else running. Hit Ctrl and Alt and tap the Del button. This brings up a window with graphs. If your CPU usage is 100% and not varying you have a program that is hung or some bugger robbing your cpu horse power. Ok look at Physical Memory. This is memory that is available after your video card sucks some off for it. Mine is 360k. Now look at the PF Usage. If your computer is using more PF memory than Physical memory, your computer is using more ram than it has installed. How could this be? It is using the Hard Drive as Ram scratch pad. The hard drive is 12 times slower than ram. Get the pictue? Adding more ram will give more ram area but what the heck is taking all that ram in the first place is slowing the computer down. Get rid of the programs first then buy more ram if you need it!

Second thing to do, and I will gurantee this will speed up you boot time and shutting down time and will allow the computer to seem to run faster is:

Go START then RUN then type in MSCONFIG and hit ENTER. The System Configuration Utility will pop up. Click the Start Up tab. You will see a box with every program that is trying to steal your ram and cpu horsepower. You can actually unclick ALL of them and your computer will work. Which ones do you need? Who knows? If something does not work then you have to go back in and figure out which file it needs to start and click it back on. Like Epson(r) or HP (r) printers take goobs of ram just to tell you your out of ink. I will know when it quits printing.

The boxes will stay there empty and if you get in trouble you can go back and click them all!

Hit apply and reboot, a reminder will come up, mark it "do not show this again." Go back to paragraph one and look at the Task Manager again! FREE RAM!

Assuming you can get on the Internet, these are trusted sites for scanning your computer. In order for you to scan your computer for boogers we need to clean the 3000+ cookies, tempoary files, history, and just anything we don't need so the rest of the scanners do not have to scan these files again. I have seen Computer Cleaner give you back 3 GIGS of hard drive space. Run Computer Cleaner then Ad Aware and Spy Bot and Trend Micro's Micro house. Remember any time you use these programs get the latest update or your wasting your time.

Run these programs from top to bottom order for the most part. I like to run the Cleaner first and then Ad Aware then Spy Bot. Then run Ad Aware and Spy Bot again, then do the Bit Defender and Then House Calls.

You need to donate to these people if you like their product. Do not call us to ask how to use them.

The "More Help" button takes you to the CNet site with more trusted free help.

There are some bad or rouge websites that promise you free scans and they add something to your computer and charge you to get it off!

If you can't get your system clean then take you computer to a professional for cleaning. It may even have to be erased and reloaded.