Fast Tips to Speed Up a Slow Windows PC

so actually maintain your PC?

maybe dump windows & install a stable operating system

Hello Garth:

I frequently work on friends' computers and the occasional business machine. Almost universally these machines have not been maintained in years. Typically they are loaded with spyware and occasionally with viruses.

I recently did one for a friend and though the exact number escapes me there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pieces of spyware on it, needless to say the computer had almost stopped working. Oh by the way, she was doing her banking on this computer.

So it would not surprise me at all if the majority of the machines replaced for performance issues were actually only in need of maintenance.

What would you suggest? Would it also be as capable of gaming? I have a love/hate relationship with Windows. I would guess most do.

What kind of gaming?

I've been using different forms of linux for about 3 years now

surfing, pictures, music, email, no problem

depends on if there are dealbreaker apps, windows only?

I am talking Gears of War and all the most demanding games. I guess they are all designed for Windows.

you should stay with windows then

or buy an Xbox

We have a Playstation Three and a Wii. Will add an X Box. Mainly use them in the Winter. Just bought the HP Touchpad on closeout. It runs a proprietary OS.

Will buy another 17" Windows desktop replacement laptop when my HP is dead. Right now they start about $1,400 with a Core i7 processor, a good dedicated graphics card, and 8 MB memory. Probably will be even cheaper by then, or better.

All the game consoles will be upgraded and, available in 2012 by Christmas, my best guess.

I really don't game that much, and shouldn't spend the money, but am fascinated by the technology. The X Box reportedly has the best motion sensor technology by far. I was a big Doom fan. My daughter likes gaming too. The hand me downs will go to grateful relatives.

Just a note for you. HP's are designed for work computers, not gaming computers. All of my gamer friends and I stay away from HP's.

If you want to try getting your feet wet before you make any decisions you can download virtual box from oracle. You can run multiple versions of Linux in a virtual environment. You didn't say what version of windows you had the love hate relationship with.

I have migrated to windows 7 as far as I'm concerned it's a vast improvement over any previous windows versions.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

virtualbox is fun, you can install an operating system from a file, without bothering to burn a CD

Installing on an old HDD is good too

I ran this computer for a couple of months with Mint installed on a 8g flash drive

slow on some things, good for a test run..

Hello Garth:

I agree Virtualbox is fun. I need to do some more work with it; my main use has been trying to acquit myself with Linux. I have a few versions running on my Virtualbox, along with multiple versions of windows.

Currently I do not envision migrating away from windows. In my opinion window 7 was a major step forward for Microsoft, and it was about time. If you or anyone else is curious about the ends and outs of windows 7 I would be happy to relate my experiences. There are a lot of little tricks and economy moves.

For example you can obtain the three license upgrade pack [which is what I did] of home premium for about $150. The trick to setting up your home or small Office Network this way is to buy one copy of windows 7 professional or higher.

Again this is what I did, so I have three computers running on home premium, and on what amounts to my server im running professional.

The home version of windows 7 has many of the features such as network back up and synchronization disabled. However utilizing one professional version of windows 7 allows you to fully utilize all the features on the machines running home premium.

I've been very impressed with the advances made in the user interface of the Linux based operating systems. I have a feeling this is going to become useful to me in the future.

As I said I do a lot of tinkering with computers for people. I frequently end up with obsolete machines that need to be a reload. Most of the time the software for these machines is long gone. And even though it is completely legal to load my copy of windows XP and use the authorization numbers from the machine I'm working on, Microsoft has made it difficult.

Windows XP will no longer update without service pack 3 installed. This can be a time consuming process since the copy I possess is only a service pack one version.

I generally end up either giving away or selling these machines for what I have in them usually, 30 or $40.00 at most to someone in need of a computer. Even in this day and age there are a lot of people that cannot afford a computer.

So Linux looks like a great answer. These outdated machines certainly would be faster not dragging around the windows overhead. And it sure would relieve the frustrations of trying to license and update a copy of windows XP.