How to hold down your RAM (this is nothing to do with sheep).

This is my suggested first avenue when you lot complain about slow PCs, you can just tidy up your machine a bit so it uses a little less RAM.


All the software that loads when you turn the PC on is a huge killer of RAM. Most of it's because you want it to of course, iTunes will load in secret so it can help you out when you plug your iPod in. If you're happy to manually turn iTunes on when you plug it in, you can save a little bit of memory by stopping iTunes from loading when you turn the PC on.

This gizmo's handy ( http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe ) as it'll tell you exactly what's happening on your PC at any given moment.
It's got the added feature that you can right click on anything you don't recognise and choose Search Online, this might help you find out a bit more about what you're messing with.
Just to labour my point though, if you don't understand it, leave it alone until you do understand it.


So, back to tidying stuff. First port of call, the Control Panel. From here you can select the Remove Programs option and browse for stuff you don't need anymore. If you don't know what it is, don't remove it!
If you put it there, and you don't use it, remove it. The more software you remove, the faster your PC goes.

If you'd like to see what software's loaded when you boot your machine, click here http://live.sysinternals.com/autoruns.exe and choose Run.
99% of the list that appears will be completely alien to you, don't worry about it, just don't turn off stuff you don't understand. In case it's imporant!
If you're sure you don't want something to load, untick it. Simple as that.

Next, what paranoid security stuff have you got installed? If my opinion, the likes of Norton AntiVirus and McAfee have a lot to answer for. So I get rid of them straight away. They can be replaced by a lightweight and FREE (yes, that's right, free!) virus scanner like AVG Free (which is my favourite), or Avast. The only downside is that they'll try to sell you their own extra paranoia software every six months or so. Not a problem in my book. I may even buy it one day, just to say thanks for all the free stuff!


That's the raw basics of making the most of the machine you've got, without spending more cash on it.
The more you learn about each of these little areas, the less you'll have to spend!
 
All this typing's made me hungry, I'm off.