<p>What do I need to delete to make my computer run faster? I am guessing that it is either photos or itunes videos, but I am far from a computer expert. </p>
<p>Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Is it a PC? How old? What operating system? How much free space do you have left on the hard drive?</p>
<p>^ this.</p>
<p>And, photos can bog a system down. If you want to store them, it is best to get an external harddrive. I got mine for about 60 and it has a bunch of space. Videos can take up a lot of space as well.</p>
<p>But in reality, once a computer starts to get older, it will get slower.</p>
<p>There isn’t nearly enough information to give a real answer here. There are a huge number of possible problems. I would suggest first comparing the amount of memory you’re using to the amount of physical memory (as in RAM, not hard drive space). Another thing you could do is see what processes are running and use google to see if any of them are known to cause problems.</p>
<p>The last time it happened to me, it was a virus. :(</p>
<p>^ Mac or PC.</p>
<p>Is this your problem?
[The</a> Associated Press: Hundreds of thousands may lose Internet in July](<a href=“http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iI7DcgyNz1cmKLhL2DeK5bJMOZfw?docId=a4861b90953e40eea31e6a94f72eb1d3]The”>http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iI7DcgyNz1cmKLhL2DeK5bJMOZfw?docId=a4861b90953e40eea31e6a94f72eb1d3)</p>
<p>Have you tried rebooting? Completely shut down your computer and router for a few mins.</p>
<p>Here’s some ideas:</p>
<p>1) Virus or other malware</p>
<p>2) Your hard drive(s) may need to be defragmented</p>
<p>3) Too many auxiliary programs running that you don’t know about. These get set up when you install other programs and run in the background to look for updates or whatever. Get enough of them going and it can impact your computer.</p>
<p>4) You are running out of disk space. Empty the recycle bin, your browser cache, clean out your temp directory.</p>
<p>It would help if you could be a little more specific about what you mean by “run faster”.</p>
<p>It is a PC (Acer), six years old, runs Windows XP. I believe the hard drive has 3.16 GB free space.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is a virus–it has been gtting progressively slower over several years.</p>
<p>I am not sure how to check these things:</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li>Disk space is somewhat low. The OS uses virtual memory and things like swap files and those require disk space. The less that space is one big block - if it’s fragmented - the worse the problem gets because the OS has to break things up and reassemble them. </li>
<li>The world requires more than a 6 year old PC can do. </li>
<li>Over time, any OS develops gunk. You could reinstall but I’m guessing that isn’t something you’re comfortable doing.</li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here’s the steps in XP:</p>
<p>Start button -> Control Panel(In second column menu away from left side of screen) -> </p>
<p>If Classic view: -> System</p>
<p>If category view: Performance & Maintenance -> System </p>
<p>Once you click on System, you can view the total system RAM, Processor speed of your system, and what XP service pack you’re running. Hopefully, you’re running SP3.</p>
<p>For amount of physical and virtual memory used by system in realtime, ctrl-alt-delete and select “Task Manager”. Click on the Performance tab.</p>
<p>Download CCleaner from [CCleaner</a> - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download](<a href=“http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner]CCleaner”>Speed up, optimize and clean your PC for free | CCleaner for PC)</p>
<p>Select the “Cleaner” icon on the left, and the Windows tab at the top, and press the “Analyze” button at the bottom. Report back with the results.</p>
<p>Then select the “Tools” icon, and press the “Startup” button, report what is in it.</p>
<p>Then select the “Uninstall” button, take a look through your installed applications and uninstall the ones you never use.</p>
<p>Next, download and install Defraggler from [Defraggler</a> - File and Disk Defragmentation - Free Download](<a href=“http://www.piriform.com/defraggler]Defraggler”>Download Defraggler for free | Defrag SSD and HDD drives) .</p>
<p>Run it, and analyze each hard drive. Most likely they will be heavily fragmented if you don’t regularly defragment your drive. Go ahead and defragment the ones that need it.</p>
<p>Next, run the task manager (Start->Run->Task Manager). Click the performance tab, and report back what it says in the “Commit Charge” and “Physical Memory” sections.</p>
<p>
My desktop is 8 years old and runs fine. But it does require care and feeding.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Indeed. In fact, if most of your tasks consist of MSOffice applications and internet access, even a 10-12 year old computer would be fine so long as it isn’t subjected to physical abuse or operating system/software problems from downloaded viruses/malware/adware. </p>
<p>Heck, am running Windows 7 off of one Uncle’s old 2002 era P4 desktop with 1 GB RAM as an experiment…runs surprisingly well. Only issue is a crappy video card…but that’s merely cosmetic.</p>
<p>One of our computers is over 10 yrs. old. It was awful, until I added RAM. It now has approx. 1.2Gb RAM and that made a HUGE difference. Children still think it is slow, but to be honest, I could not tell that much speed difference between it and a new laptop with the Pentium i5. We do not use it to watch videos however.</p>
<p>Easiest way to speed any computer up, guaranteed. </p>
<p>Go to C>windows>system32>Microsoft>protect and delete that folder. Over time junk accumulate in it and really slows down your computer. You might get a warning, but ignore that</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, have no issues with watching DVDs or even compressed divx video files. </p>
<p>Only if it requires more recent codecs does it start becoming an issue. </p>
<p>Granted, I won’t be using my Uncle’s 10 year old P4 to encode video files or multimedia editing in Adobe CS 5.5.</p>
<p>I’d suggest going with a new computer if costs aren’t an issue. Web pages have been steadily growing over time in terms of the amount of data coming over the wire and the complexity in using tools that aren’t the most efficient.</p>
<p>My laptop is over four years old and runs fine for me but I mostly use it for work and it was a high-spec system to begin with.</p>
<p>Newer systems have an incredible number of improvements over something six years old and the processors and overall system should be more energy efficient. If you want to get something really fast, go with a Solid-State Disk - you won’t believe the performance improvement. Disks, memory and PCs are ridiculously cheap compared to six years ago.</p>
<p>I’m tempted to try rsingh13’s fix.</p>
<p>Anyone have any issues with that?</p>
<p>That folder contains keys used when using the encryption built into the OS.</p>
<p>There are reports of people having hundreds of thousands or millions of files in that folder, which can really slow things down if something navigates to that folder like AV. On my machine there are only 20 or so very small files. I don’t think deleting them will do much of anything.</p>