How To Clean Your Sluggish Computer

While shopping in the supermarket one evening, I received a phone call from a client who "urgently" needed help cleaning his computer.  He told me it was sluggish, and he was ready to throw it out of the window.  I carried my basket to a quiet aisle and asked him some pertinent questions such as, how old his computer was, what operating system he was using, and asked him to describe what he meant by sluggish.


I found out that his computer was about five to six years old, it was running Windows XP, and by sluggish he meant that it was running super slow - documents and programs were taking too long to open and Microsoft Internet Explorer was loading very slowly.


Since then, I have had to troubleshoot and provide tech support sessions for two other people who were running Windows XP on older computers.  I realized that there are probably more people that choose to hold on to their computers (as long as they can) than I could imagine.  Hey, given our current economy, I can say I don't blame them.  Not everyone needs or is interested in the latest, greatest thing.


So to those of you who are hanging on to your old PC's, I will be posting a series of tips and advice on cleaning your sluggish computers just for you.  These instructions will be very simple.  Even those who feel they are technically challenged should be able to follow them.


This series will include:

1. How to Free Up Disk Space on Your Computer's Hard drive 

2. Speeding Up Your Internet Explorer Browser

3. Cleaning Hard to Find Problems in Windows Explorer

4. How to Stop Programs from Running in Scheduled Tasks 

5. Rearranging and Compressing Files for Increased Speed

Until tomorrow...