your slow PC

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier, yet sometimes it feels like they exist only to cause us endless amounts of frustration. Popular advice for slow computers includes antivirus, RAM upgrades, or even reinstalling Windows from scratch, but these make a lot of assumptions about what's wrong with your computer (that may not be true).

Upgrading your RAM will help if you have 1GB or less in your system. If you multitask a lot, you'll probably even notice a difference upgrading from 2GB to 4GB. You're best off checking the resource monitor(or Activity Monitor on OS X)" to see how much you use on a regular basis. If your RAM usage isn't running up against its limit, then you're probably fine.

Now let's talk about antivirus. It's not only important to have antivirus software installed, but it's important to have the right kind. Check and see if you have a trusted, updated antivirus program running on your machine. If you do, and it says your computer is uninfected, then you're probably safe. Next, find out what antivirus software you're using. Some programs, like Norton or McAfee, are remarkably slow and bloated. In fact, they're probably one of the reasons your computer is so slow. We recommend ditching other antivirus apps and using Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free, lightweight, and will let you know if you download anything suspicious. (Note that Windows 8 users already have Windows Defender built-in, so they don't even need to install anything). You should never have two antivirus apps running at once.

So we've spent a lot of time telling you what not to do, but your computer's still slow and you want a solution. You can start by running a few diagnostics, but chances are, you just have too many apps running at once (especially poorly made ones). Here's what we recommend you do:

Stop Running So Many Apps at Once: Take a look at your system tray (or menu bar). If you have more than a few icons there, you have too many. If something is running that you didn't start, take it out of your startup queue. If you don't know what something is, find out if it's something you really need. If it's something you know you don't want, then uninstall it completely.

Of course, this all assumes you have a relatively new computer that can handle the work you need to do. If you're trying to run the newest version of Photoshop on a 10 year old machine, no amount of responsibility will make it run fast—you'll need a new computer (and you can repurpose that old one). But, barring really old hardware or other special circumstances, you should be able to take any computer and get it running fast again with a bit of care and common sense.