jchin888: Thanks for your suggestions, I used cleaner and found I had heaps of things running at start up so I cleared it and now opening all my files and start up is significantly faster but I can't multitask without it slowing down significantly. I was thinking about upgrading the ram from 4 to 8. Any thoughts?

Damager: Grab the free version of CCleaner from here

and use the default options to delete crap from your pc and registry. See how you go.

muzzIT: Hi,

There are a few more things you can do to help increase the speed of your PC.

Defrag and Optimize your hard drive using a 3rd party application like Ultradefrag or Defraggler, Personally I use Ultradefrag and do full optimization (can take a few hours, and some times you need to run it a few times through), after the initial optimization you can just do a quick defrag and optimize once a month or so to keep the system running good.

I noticed someone has already mentioned CCleaner, which is a good program, I have also been using Temp File Cleaner to remove temp files (including windows prefetch data) and have had good results with it.

The next thing I would do is run a registry cleaner, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner is a good one to have installed, also it keeps track of all the repairs it does so if something brakes after running a repair you can restore it, CCleaner has a registry cleaner built in as well but you have to manually save the registry files if you want to be able to restore them.

Other things to consider are removing unwanted software, Running through a Malwarebytes full scan and removing any PUP (Potentially Unwanted Programs, usually toolbars etc) and a full virus scan as well.

With these general maintenance processes done every month or so you can keep any windows system running within a few % of its initial speed.

Hope this helps.

jaymz: for future reference i found the following article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/6152/use-advanced-tools-to-troubleshoot-performance-problems-in-windows-7/

muzzIT:

Just had a quick read through the above article, while I did know about the resource monitor and performance monitor, there are a few things listed in that article that I did not know and will use for future reference.

Thanks for the link Jaymz, it was very informative

and you are correct in stating that finding out what is causing the issue in the first place is a better place to start as by running defrag and optimization you could be just masking the issue.

How ever in my experience the topical reason for a system running slow is either lack of memory (and the OP has 4GB which is sufficient for windows 7) or the system is clogged up with unwanted / unused programs, malware / viruses (one of the biggest causes of memory wastage), temp files, fragmented hard drive and bag registry entries.

Another thing you can do to help with system performance is to not have icons all over your desktop, every icon that needs to be loaded takes up memory, the less icons you have the less memory you use, now while this might not seem like a big thing, it can make a noticeable difference in the overall performance of you system.

Murray.

jchin888: Thanks for your suggestions, I used cleaner and found I had heaps of things running at start up so I cleared it and now opening all my files and start up is significantly faster but I can't multitask without it slowing down significantly. I was thinking about upgrading the ram from 4 to 8. Any thoughts?

• There's not much of the usual software that combines to require more than 4GB of RAM. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) + email will run fine in that. So do you have some humungous application that you run?
• If the disk light is on/flashing all the time then you may have disk thrashing as Windows moves item in and out of virtual memory which is stored on the disk. You haven't mentioned that, and it is quite obvious, so it is unlikely to be the problem.
• If you're running 32-bit Windows 7 then anything above 4GB will be of little use. More than 4GB is most useful for 64-bit Windows which can access it as one flat memory space.