Slow Starting PC

Once upon a time your brand new PC booted up really quickly, over time your PC seems to have grown old and tired and now it seems to take an absolute age to start up. This should really be always the case. After all your PC hasn't physically change, no one has opened the computer and stolen pieces from inside. So in theory should still runs as fast as it once did.

Windows XP is notorious for slowing down over time, it just appears to grow old. If your PC is starting slowly you are probably experiencing a number of software clitches. The computers operating system is a massively complicated thing, millions of 1 and 0s doing things.

One of the first things that slow a PC on boot up, is simply too many bits of software installed. You'll be surprise at all the little programs that you aren't even aware on that start in the background. Press Control + Alt +Del at the same time and look at the task manager, if you look at the running processes and sort by user name you will see all those running in the background. Look at the names and do a quick google search on the process name. You then find what software they are associated, if its something you don't use uninstall it. You may find  there are loads of little programs that can be got rid off. Doing this will save a lot of time on start up.

Another cause of a slow running PC is a virus, install a virus scanner that can search your hard drive for potential viruses. There are some good free ones such as AVG.

Spyware is little bits of software that can clog up your PC, this is responsible for all the annoying pop up adverts. The other quite nasty element is they can broadcast your personal data over the internet.

Registry errors are a major source of errors and can result in a slow starting PC. There a number of good registry checkers that can search you hard drive for potential errors and fix them.

Here are a few resources you may find useful

Registry checker

Anti virus software

Spyware removal