If your Windows personal computer is increasingly taking more time to respond, then read on.

Ever thought that probably it's possible to restore the computer to its original speed and keep it running fast?

Start with the three basic problems that typically slow down your machine. The speed of your processor, the amount and type of RAM, and the speed and size of your Hard Drive are usually the three biggest factors.

The biggest problem with PC hardware slowdowns is usually not having enough memory. Adding more RAM to a Windows PC is usually the most effective way to speed it up (up to a point).

Most PCs don't come with enough, and these days it's cheap, therefore it never hurts to have more.

To find out how much RAM you have now right-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and select Properties. Under the General tab, you will find information on the version of windows, who it's licensed to, the licence key, and the type of computer.

The very last item is the amount of RAM. Windows XP will display the amount of RAM in megabytes. Older versions of Windows will display an amount in kilobytes, divide by 1000 to get the amount in megabytes.

Back-up your data

Your machine has to eventually fail. Hard Drives crash, files get corrupted, and power outages happen. If it happens in the next five minutes how much work will you lose?

If your answer is more than a few days work, you're not doing enough to backup data. If you're saving important work to your hard drive, you should be backing it up to other media such as diskette, zip disk, CD, at least once a week.

If backing up to media, store the media in a different place than your PC. What if your PC and backup disks are both in the basement when it floods?

Avoid running mutliple applications

If you typing a letter on say MS Word and now want to browse the Internet, save the letter and close the word processor first.

Don't keep applications open if you are not currently using them all. The more applications you open, the more your PC slows down.

Reboot regularly

Windows PCs were never designed to run for weeks and weeks without rebooting. Rebooting regularly clears memory problems and is good for the life of your PC.

Older versions of Windows such as 95, 98, should be rebooted (or turned off) every day. Newer versions of Windows such as 2000 and XP should be rebooted about once a week if left on for long periods of time.

Remove desktop items

Here is something that most people are ignorant about. All the files and programmes stored on the desktop are loaded into the memory via your windows 'user profile'.

A messy desktop equals a slow PC. Desktop shortcuts are not much of a problem because of their small size.

Files, downloads, and programmes should be stored in a folder on your hard drive or a network drive, not on the desktop.

Remove Startup items

Speed up your windows load time and reduce the amount of RAM used by removing startup items. Startup items are programmes that load at startup, so they load faster when you request them.

Startup items are found under Start > Programs > Startup. In recent versions of windows you can simply right click on each icon in the start menu to remove it.

Remove all programmes in your startup menu that you don't want to load on startup, it's generally safe to remove them all.

If you cannot remove the items from the start menu, use windows explorer to find the following folder and remove them from there: C:\Documents and Settings\MyUsername\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

Defrag hard drive regularly

Over time, the files on your hard disk will become fragmented. This means that the data on the hard drive gets less orderly as files are added, re-written, and deleted from your hard drive.

Restoring a logical order to the files your hard drive is called defragmentation. Defragmenting can take an hour or more to complete, depending on the number of files on your computer and its speed. Do not use your computer while defragmenting.

To defragment Click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter . Click on Settings and make sure Rearrange program files so my programs start faster and Check the drive for errors are checked.

Remove temp files

Windows regularly writes temporary files to its temp folder: C:\windows\Temp Windows does not regularly remove these files, they take up needed disk space. It's safe to remove them.

Keep free space on your hard drive

Windows requires 'swap space' on your Hard Drive to be able to run properly.

Leave at least 100 megabytes of free disk space on your hard drive, never completely fill the drive.

Use partitions for applications and data

When setting up a new PC, or when reformatting your PC to reinstall, use separate partitions for applications and data.

This can mean making two partitions on one Hard Drive, or if you can afford it: one hard drive for applications and one hard drive for data. Ask for this type of configuration when you purchase a new PC as this cannot easily be done to a PC once you're using it.