# General > Technical Support >  can anyone help my pc is too slow

## del 123

hi my pc is very slow,its not the fastest & best of pcs,but should be faster than it is.when i put it on it takes ages before you can go on it.hardly any memory used up.checked for viruses and seems to be ok

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## teddybear1873

> hi my pc is very slow,its not the fastest & best of pcs,but should be faster than it is.when i put it on it takes ages before you can go on it.hardly any memory used up.checked for viruses and seems to be ok


Need an idea of the specs of the pc and what operating system your using.

You can make sure your cache is cleared, defrag, empty recycle bin and temp folders.

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## Cedric Farthsbottom III

What we do is get rid of any unwanted stuff in your documents,pictures etc.I'm not a computer expert,as Bobinovich can tell ye :: ,it does work for us though. :Smile: 

As ye can tell I'm no computer expert,Teddybear has just answered it above me in his post LOL.

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## Vistravi

How much memory does it have? Anything under 1 GB and you're needing a memory upgrade. 

What do you use it for? Internet use and gaming? Do the kids play their games on it? Have you got many installed programs on it? 

If you store alot of pictures on the hard drive they may be taking alot of memory usage. I have had this similar problem and just keep them on a flash drive and on a back up flash drive. Considering i had almost 500 pictures it defintly made a difference! 

What windows are you running? XP and Vista tend to use alot of memory to run. I was running XP on my laptop but my partner flashed it and put on windows 7 and it runs so much faster now. 

Defintly go through everything with a fine tooth comb and only keep what you need. I did this to one of the pcs at work and it made a difference in the performance to the kids delight as they're games no longer freeze on them! 

It also benefical having an external hard drive to store your files on. My partner has two, one for music and the other for films and tv series. External hard drives really help keep the pc memory free and allows the machine to work that bit faster. Also file transfers are easily done as you just unplug and go!

I'm in no means an expert but i know a bit to get me by. Having a partner that is quite knowledgable in how to fix up a pc helps alot  :Wink:

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## bigjjuk

if u have a sd card slot, buy a 4gb or more and put it in, you will then be given an option to use the card for pics or use it to speed up system, thats the option u want, i hope this helps

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## del 123

> Need an idea of the specs of the pc and what operating system your using.
> 
> You can make sure your cache is cleared, defrag, empty recycle bin and temp folders.


hi yes think thats ok,but how do you check temp folders?
capacity is 145gb but only used 30.5gb.memory is low think about 512mb.so is quite slow,but was def faster than it is now.its a philips iqon pc.thanks everyone for your help

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## del 123

> How much memory does it have? Anything under 1 GB and you're needing a memory upgrade. 
> 
> What do you use it for? Internet use and gaming? Do the kids play their games on it? Have you got many installed programs on it? 
> 
> If you store alot of pictures on the hard drive they may be taking alot of memory usage. I have had this similar problem and just keep them on a flash drive and on a back up flash drive. Considering i had almost 500 pictures it defintly made a difference! 
> 
> What windows are you running? XP and Vista tend to use alot of memory to run. I was running XP on my laptop but my partner flashed it and put on windows 7 and it runs so much faster now. 
> 
> Defintly go through everything with a fine tooth comb and only keep what you need. I did this to one of the pcs at work and it made a difference in the performance to the kids delight as they're games no longer freeze on them! 
> ...


no not used for films or games,have got some pictures etc on it,but dont think enough to slow it down much,just seems to be something slowing it down&freezing it,thanks again

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## del 123

> if u have a sd card slot, buy a 4gb or more and put it in, you will then be given an option to use the card for pics or use it to speed up system, thats the option u want, i hope this helps


hi does that increase the memory in the pc then?i know i have one for mobile phone,thanks

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## del 123

> How much memory does it have? Anything under 1 GB and you're needing a memory upgrade. 
> 
> What do you use it for? Internet use and gaming? Do the kids play their games on it? Have you got many installed programs on it? 
> 
> If you store alot of pictures on the hard drive they may be taking alot of memory usage. I have had this similar problem and just keep them on a flash drive and on a back up flash drive. Considering i had almost 500 pictures it defintly made a difference! 
> 
> What windows are you running? XP and Vista tend to use alot of memory to run. I was running XP on my laptop but my partner flashed it and put on windows 7 and it runs so much faster now. 
> 
> Defintly go through everything with a fine tooth comb and only keep what you need. I did this to one of the pcs at work and it made a difference in the performance to the kids delight as they're games no longer freeze on them! 
> ...


its windows xp,thanks i will go through everything

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## dx100uk

download and run ccleaner 

dx

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## robglysen

Lets not get memory and hard drive confused, pictures wont slow a pc down unless the hard drive is nearly full in which case windows will warn you.

Go to the run option from start menu and type msconfig

in the box go to startup tab

(this is for a windowsx xp machine by the way)

All those boxes are probrams your pc is running on startup, you can probably disable a lot of them and not have any problems.

Be aware some of them maybe your anti virus, networking, internet or say, tv card software. if your not sure what one is google it.

Also some malware can leave stuff in this list.

If your not too confident fiddling with this stuff you might want to find someone who is.

A bit more memory always helps (not to be confused with hard drive)

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## M R

Stick another Gig of ram in it..........finnd out what type of mem you have. (download CPUID Hardware Monitor - google it)....£20 - ish should get you an additional gig of ram,   easy to install provided safe precations taken.

As Rob has mentioned, Little point in buyin an SD card as a memory \ storage upgrade in my opinion,  money better spent on internal memory.

Some Pen Flash drives will give you  SPEEDUP option wich allows the pc to use the pen drive as memory,   never found this to be much benefit,   may make a noticable difference on a pc with low ram tho.

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## Bobinovich

With XP and 512Mb of memory it shouldn't run too bad.  Try downloading and installing the free MalwareBytes package (www.malwarebytes.org) and run a full scan - it will quite often pick up malware on your system and delete it.  Certainly won't do any harm.

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## M R

Suppose it should run ok with 512mb,  but it's low spec these days.

Would also be checking whats in your startup folder,  and msconfig \ startup,  be suprised if theres not lots of un-needed progs etc starting up..

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## Vistravi

> Stick another Gig of ram in it..........finnd out what type of mem you have. (download CPUID Hardware Monitor - google it)....£20 - ish should get you an additional gig of ram,   easy to install provided safe precations taken.
> 
> As Rob has mentioned, Little point in buyin an SD card as a memory \ storage upgrade in my opinion,  money better spent on internal memory.
> 
> Some Pen Flash drives will give you  SPEEDUP option wich allows the pc to use the pen drive as memory,   never found this to be much benefit,   may make a noticable difference on a pc with low ram tho.


I agree. Upgrading my ram made a big diference to my laptop. Also you can change the type of memory you have to a faster type. 
There is a shop called Jetek in scarbster you can get internal memory from or you may find it cheaper getting it from ebay. Make sure you check what type the ram is first though!

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## Bobinovich

> I agree. Upgrading my ram made a big diference to my laptop. Also you can change the type of memory you have to a faster type. 
> There is a shop called Jetek in scarbster you can get internal memory from or you may find it cheaper getting it from ebay. Make sure you check what type the ram is first though!


I also agree that adding more RAM is a great way to boost a PC's speed, however I've found 512Mb to be quite adequate for the vast majority of people using Windows XP.

You do however need to be careful when buying additional RAM modules.  There are numerous types (from older DIMMs, DDR SDRAM and the newer DDR2 & DDR3 SDRAM are the most common), and different speeds within those different types.  You've also got to take into account the number of, and current population of the, memory slots in the system.

You *may* be able to increase the memory speed used inside the machine, but only if your motherboard will handle it.  If you mix module speeds the system will default to the speed of the slowest installed module, thereby negating any potential speed increase.

However, based on the original post and the phrase "just seems to be something slowing it down&freezing it" I figured it was more likely to be a software problem (hence the Malwarebytes recommendation) than to be solved by throwing more RAM at it.

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## M R

To bring the PC upto date,   it needs more memory.  512mb is very low,  in my opinion.   Had a family member using 256mb,   nearly killed myself waiting for it to boot up.  stuck another 256mb in it for her (had 1 lying around) and she noticed a fair difference.  Still extremly slow

Over time a PC \ Operating system will slow down,  yes you can run CCleaner or any of the other 1 click cleaners \ tune and it will improve the speed some, or kill it if incorrectly used,   but never to the point of a clean install,   which still leaves you with a system that is not as fast as you remember it.

Messing about with Photos required ram,  photos are not getting smaller these days.   average decent camera is now 12mp,   don't know what physical size that make a photo once on the pc,  but it's gonna be pretty large.

I will step out of this one now.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.   :Wink:

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## Deemac

Hey Bobinovich, my new PC has 12Gb of RAM! - will that be any use for running Wordpad? I'm new to this PC lark . . . . . :Wink:  :Smile:

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## Bobinovich

Sheesh, you need to double that for Notepad, let alone the wonders of Wordpad!  In fact just throw the system away as you've obviously been conned into a heap of junk - I'll take it off your hands for bits  :: !

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## robglysen

My rubbish board doesnt like over 2 gig of ram mind you I remember having no hard drive (just floppies) and 512K of ram /oldfart

Im sure some on here can trump that, anyone remember the hercules green screen monitors?  The 16K display cards were gigantic.

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## Ricco

My PC was getting to be a real dog - soooo slowww!  With a 3GHz processor I figured that it would be cheaper to upgrade the memory by 2Gb than to buy a new PC.  So, quick search on the 'net sourced  some RAM for £60 and I now wear goggles when using the PC because the speed makes my eyes water.  :Grin:

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