In 2005 I finally purchased my first Windows PC. In the 15 years before I had used an Apple Macintosh computer for my school and university work. Of course I had to use Windows machines from time to time but I never owned one: the university and school supplied these machines and it wasn't my responsibility to maintain them. Since then I have learned by trial and error the best ways to keep and a Windows PC from becoming frustratingly slow.

Most people are aware that Windows machines need a firewall and antivirus application in order to ensure that the computer performs well. I know from experience with my mum's computer that if a machine doesn't have these it will literally seize up within a couple of weeks. Spyware and adware completely took over her machine and she can do a single thing because pop-up windows were sprouting left right and centre quicker than she could close them.

This might be a trivial error and I am assuming that the readers of this article already know this simple r rule. In response to this need many people would go out and get Norton Internet Security, the most popular applications that I am aware of to meet this need. This was my initial choice when I started installing the necessary applications on my computer for the first time. After a few months of usage my computer had ground to a really slow speed that was just a fraction of what it was like when it was new. I set about trying to reverse this undesirable trend and upon investigation found that Norton was holding system resources like crazy.

Norton is a very nice application for a given computer users because it is very easy to set up and run. Having said that, I found the level of system resources it was hogging unacceptably high. And for this reason I got rid of it and instead started using a couple of free applications.

Tip #1
AVG from Grisoft is my preferred antivirus software - in the two years that I have been running this free programme it has performed marvellously in detecting all the malicious files that ended up on my computer. There are different versions of the software and I only have the basic free version running.

Tip #2
Kerio personal firewall is another fantastic application that in my experience is just as good as any other firewall you can find. Just like AVG, it has a basic version that is free to download and use.

Tip #3
When your computer is brand new it will start and run very quickly. With time it will become slower and slower - this is very typical. This happens because there is too much junk accumulating on the PC. I try to keep applications and add-ons to a bare minimum to avoid clogging up Windows XP.

Tip #4
Sometimes your PC will get infected by a virus that makes your PC slow and can't be removed. I'm sorry to say the solution is to backup your files, wipe your hard drive, and reinstall everything. This is a good weekends worth of work, but there is a short cut that can get you to the same stage in less than an hour. When your machine is working perfectly with all your software installed, but with no viruses you should back up using Acronis True Image. This makes an exact copy of hard drive and stores it one very large file. If later on you need to reinstall windows - you can revert back to this old restore point. If you have lots documents stored in the My Documents folder, then you will need to back these up. Also don't forget to backup your emails. Ideally these personal files should not be on the same partition as Windows - it makes the process easier.

Tip #5
Instead of shutting your PC down use hibernate. If your computer supports hibernation you can save the state of your system without using any power. Just enable it in the Hibernate tab in Power Options in the Control Panel. As long as you haven't got tons of programs running, it should be much quicker to hibernate as opposed to shutting down.

Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to significantly speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can eliminate slow boot times today and transform your really slow computer.