XP Slow? - How To Fix It Now

The Windows Registry is like a phonebook for your computer. It basically contains details of file locations and settings that will control the behaviour of your computer. The problem occurs when the phonebook gets really large and contains invalid or wrong details. This normally happens when you remove programs from your computer or replace drivers (the small programs that tell your computer how to talk to devices like printers, keyboards & iPod's etc.) and cause the registry to become inefficient.As an example, it's like looking up a person's name in the phonebook, calling the number and finding out that the number has been disconnected. So you can imagine, what sort of problem this can be for your computer and the reason why it takes longer to do simple things like start a program. This is the Number ONE reason for the XP Slow effect.

This happens over time and is caused from everyday use of your computer, it's just one of those things that happen as a result of using your PC. It happens when files get scattered all over your hard drive and your computer has to go and grab pieces of each file to start a program or open a spreadsheet. The best way to describe the 'Fragment Effect' is to compare it to a filing cabinet where you have folders for all your important files.

The problem starts when your filing cabinet fills up and the original folders you had for example, your telephone bills cannot fit any more bills. So normally, you would start a new folder for your telephone bills and then start putting all the new bills into that folder.The problem is when you need to find a particular telephone bill, you now have 2 folders to look through, and they may be in different drawers, causing things take a little longer than if you had just the one folder to look through. So you can imagine what this can be like if you had over 100,000 files to look through.

The first thing that you can do, is defragment your hard drive. Luckily Windows XP comes with a program that will do this for you. Be aware that you may want to leave this to run over night as it can take several hours to organise all the files on your hard drive. The program is called "Disk Defragmenter" and is usually located in your Start menu here: "Start-> All Programs-> Accessories-> System Tools" Folder.

To fix your computer from the 'Registry Effect', you'll need to get a program that will clean up your registry by removing items that are no longer needed (those disconnected phone numbers) and fix any invalid entries. This will speed up your computer and be the most noticeable change that you'll see. It will reduce the number of errors and reduce / eliminate the number of times your computer will hang/freeze. Probably the most noticeable change after running a registry cleaner will be the startup time of your PC, which is always an added bonus.

Like all things in life, there is the good, the bad and the ugly. Stay away from the freebies that you can download off the internet, they generally do more harm than good. That's the ugly. Then there are programs that are relatively cheap, and do a reasonable job, but won't make much difference to the speed of your computer. That's the bad. And finally, there are quality Registry Cleaners that are worth your hard earned money and so much more. That's the Good.

If you're wanting to know which are the GOOD registry cleaners, check them out here: The Best Registry Cleaners

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