My computer is getting slower and slower. I have seen software you can buy that ‘cleans’ your registry and restores speed to you computer. I have also heard they are not all effective and sometimes mess things up.
I have Windows XP Pro. I also know my hard drive is pretty full and I’m going to offload a bunch of pics and music to an external drive.
Recommendations?
the registry would be boot & initial program load time
get enough drive space back to run a disk cleanup and then a defrag
ah…wrong forum… 
Also uninstall any programs you may no longer need. Check your task manager to see what programs are running and using up your memory and cpu. Hopefully you have at least one gig of RAM installed on your computer.
Geek to the rescue here… I agree wholeheartedly about uninstalling software using your Add/Remove Programs options, which is found in Control Panel. You would be surprised how many junk programs get installed there, things you forgot you ever had!
I would also tell you that dumping your photos/videos/mp3s onto a large external hard drive is great, and will free up some much needed space. Let’s face it, hard drives are cheap as chips these days, so getting 250GB or more will provide some much needed breathing room for you, at a low cost.
Also, I am a big advocate of backing up ALL important files and doing a clean installation of WINXP when you feel it is time. For me, this is usually an annual thing as it lets me do computer “spring cleaning”, getting rid of junk programs or files, backing up the important stuff, and it allows WINXP to be back to it’s speedy self.
To put it simply, a reformat and a fresh install is a good thing, but only if everything is backed up properly!
Matt
I find myself uninstalling unneeded programs every few months. You’ll find programs you never knew you had, or only needed at the time. Problem is some of these programs like to startup when windows boots up. Get rid of them. Things like video games you no longer play, etc.
First and foremost though is to check your Task Manager and see what’s using up your resources. Use CTRL + ALT + DEL and click on the “Processes” tab. Sort by CPU first and see what there is slowing down your computer by using your processor. Typically, on my rig, “System Idle Process” uses up 99% of my CPU (meaning 99% is idle and unused) and everything else is at 0% (unless I am running programs at the time). "You can click on “End Process” to end programs that aren’t needed (Google the “Image Name” to make sure it’s not something you need). Then sort by “Mem Usage” to see what the real RAM hogs are. Get rid of anything you don’t need. If I am not running active programs, my web browser (in my case, Firefox) uses up the most memory but not much. If you see processes running that you didn’t specifically start or want to start such as Quicktime or Realplayer or whatever instant messaging program, go into those programs and uncheck the Startup with Windows option.
For fixing my registry and a lot more, I use Glary Utilities, which is free. http://www.glaryutilities.com/
All good advice above and I was going to suggest this registry cleaner as it is the one I use.
KAC
to be able to clean your cache and remove other unwanted temporary files (which usually doesn’t go away by themselves and would surprise you when you see the result of the cleaner!), try downloading and installing CCleaner. http://www.ccleaner.com/download/downloading
i use it everyday 'coz i want to clean the files that my browser stores on the hard drive.
If your processor is getting slower and slower, an obvious culprit could well be spyware.
I recommend Ad-aware, Spybot, and “hijack this!” Ad-aware has recently become slightly more commercially oriented but still has a free download, although it’s called something different.
Even Chiff&Fipple seems to want to download something onto my machine these days. Tracking software is a pest. Get rid of it.
Watch out too for these live messaging services. They kill your machine. Put them on your machine if you like, but not as part of the startup.
Here’s something I do regularly. Go to Start->Run and type msconfig
This brings up the System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup tab.
This shows everything that runs automatically when Windows starts.
Some of those things may not be necessary, and may be slowing down
your system. You can remove the check mark beside those things, and
they will not start automatically (they stay in the list, if you want to change
your mind later). Make sure you know what something is before you disable
it, though, because sometimes they’re printer driver software or the like.
It’s usually easy to find information using Google. I have one item in my
startup tab called avgcc. I google for “avgcc” and the first hit is this page:
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/avgcc.exe.html
which tells me that it is a component of my AVG anti-virus, so I leave
it running. Then I find one called “QTTask”, which the same site tells me
is the Taskbar icon for Quicktime, so I disable that.
I go through this for everything in the list, disabling what I don’t need, then
I hit “OK”, and reboot. When Windows first comes up after doing this, it
tells me that I have changed my configuration, so I click on the checkbox
that tells it not to run the Configuration Utility again on startup, and I’m
good.
This can also sometimes be a good way to track down spyware.