It probably seems like yesterday your PC was going full speed ahead. With high speed Internet cable intact and plenty of RAM loaded up, you never had to wait for anything in cyberspace to appear right in front of your eyes. If you wanted a particular a website or program to run, all you had to do was click your mouse and on it came!

Now it seems, even though the computer is still relatively new, or even very new in some cases, and certainly no RAM has been removed, it sort of crawls along just barely making its way from Website to Website and application to application. What's worse, sometimes it doesn't make it to the Website before you see the old familiar "Website Cannot Be Found Check Internet Connection" and similar warnings.

So, what happened to your computer's speed, and how do you get it back? In this article we will discus a few unlikely things there is an outside chance may have happened and then we will discus three everyday common problems that are slowing down PC's all over the world right now. Then, we will talk about how to fix them.

What it Probably is Not

First, here are four things that possibly could have happened to your computer to slow it down, but they are unlikely.

1. Your virtual memory is no longer configured properly.
2. A bank of your RAM has failed.
3. The computer is overheating. (Make sure the cover is on and all the empty card slots are covered. Also, blow the dust out of the motherboard and surrounding area periodically. Make sure the fans, including the Microprocessor fan are working).
4. The hard drive is failing.

As I said, these things are not common. Don't worry about the first two unless you've followed everything else in this article and the computer is still slow. You should perform the steps mentioned about overheating as a normal part of the computer's upkeep. To put your mind at ease (hopefully), most failing hard drives that are causing slowdowns, get really noisy.

Now, for three more likely problems.

Background Operations

Any program you install on your computer will very likely add an icon to your system tray. This icon shows that the program is actually running and will pop up the moment it thinks you need it. Right-click on these icons and see if you can close their corresponding programs. You can still open the program anytime you want from the start menu.

In the meantime, having to many icons in the system tray, or sometimes one in particular, can steal all your computer's resources and slow it down.

Malware

You have to have a good antivirus program and a good antispyware program installed on your computer or not only could your identity be stolen but also, your computer's resources will be used up by these parasites. This, of course, will slow it down.

The key word is malware, which stands for Malicious Software and includes spyware, adware, Trojans, viruses and all this stuff. If you are not well guarded against malware, you better take care of that problem or your computer will slow down and maybe even worse things will happen!

Registry Corruption

Sometimes a computer owner will take impeccable care of the computer and have a top notch anti malware program installed but still the computer will slow down, maybe it will even slow down to the point it becomes unusable.

If this is the case, it is time to install and use a good registry cleaner. Actually, you should install a good registry cleaner before your computer gets a chance to act up.

Corrupt registries have become the number one computer slower-downer of all recently. I know, you never had to deal with corruption in the registry back in the Windows 98 days. But now, with windows Vista and XP being so complicated and so many more unwanted files entering into the registry daily, living without a registry clean, fix or repair program has become impossible.

To many, it seems very unlikely they could have a corrupt registry in their computer. Still, every day I find more folks who tell me cleaning the registry really revamped their computer's performance altogether!