A fragmented hard drive can be one of the causes of a slow computer. What does it mean when a hard drive is fragmented? Well, just imagine a puzzle that hasn't been put together yet, scattered all over the floor. This is what windows does to files that are stored on a hard drive. The files are split into pieces like the puzzle, or fragmented, then scattered all over the hard drive. De-fragmenting the computer or hard drive, is the same thing as you putting the puzzle together. A puzzle is a lot easier to look at when it is assembled as one piece and the same goes for the computer. It doesn't have to look at each file piece to figure out what the file is because it has been assembled as one file instead of pieces of the file.

De-fragmenting your computer on a regular basis will help ensure that your computer continues to run smooth. While this is an easy fix, you may or may-not see any real improvement by defraging your computer.

I have put together a little tutorial on how to Defragment your Windows XP computer. Windows Vista has taken care of the defragment process and has become fully automated so you don't have to worry about it. However, if you are like me, you want some control over the defrag process. This article explains how to speed up defragmenting of Windows Vista.

Most computer manufacturers sell you a computer with the bare minimum amount of memory that will allow Windows to run. When you first get the computer, it seems fast because you haven't had a chance to load up your favorite programs (mentioned below) which tend to eat up memory and slow the computer down.

Computers with Windows XP are usually shipped with 256MB of memory which really isn't enough to run Windows XP smoothly. This is a cost thing associated with the manufacturer plus, memory was a lot more expensive several years ago compared to today. I personally recommend an absolute minimum of 512MB of memory for Windows XP but I would rather see a XP computer with 1024MB of memory (or 1GB) instead. This gives the computer plenty of buffer to work with.

Windows Vista is another beast. While it will run with 512MB of memory which is the minimum requirement, I personally recommend 1GB as an absolute minimum and 2GB as a general recommendation. Most of the newer computers that you can purchase today, come with Windows Vista. Memory is currently very cheap compared to the past and it makes for a very in-expensive but well-worth-it upgrade.

To check to see how much memory you have, you can go to the 'control panel' and open 'system properties'.

If you are interest in upgrading the memory on your computer, Contact us for more information.

When you first received your computer, you probably only had the bare programs that came with the computer. As time went on, you found different programs that you either liked, wanted to try out or found you needed to load onto your computer. Adding programs isn't the problem. It's the stuff those programs want to load when you start windows that becomes the problem. See, many of these programs like Yahoo Messenger, Adobe Reader and Limewire, all want to load a small piece of their program when windows starts, to make their program load a little faster or run all the time when Windows is running. These little pieces of the program use memory (mentioned above) and the less memory your computer has, the slower the computer is going to run. Two ways of fixing the loading program issue is to 1) Install more memory, or 2) Remove the code that starts the programs (or, remove the program altogether.) This step can be tricky for someone who doesn't know a lot about computers and it is recommended to have a professional help you with this step.