When I start the internet everything is extremely slow, eventually causing the computer to freeze and requiring a restart. In case it is relevant, a few days ago McAfee Antivirus detected a Trojan on the computer, which has subsequently been cleaned. How can I speed up the computer?

There could be many reasons for the computer operating slowly, ranging from too many programs running in the background to perhaps a spyware or adware infection on the computer. Since you recently had a virus infection on your computer, before anything else you should conduct a full virus scan on the computer using McAfee Antivirus. Prior to starting the scan, make sure you update McAfee with the latest virus definition files to ensure you are protected against recent threats. Once the virus scan has completed, I also suggest you scan the computer for spyware and adware. The three utilities I recommend for this purpose are Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoft.de), Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org), and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads). These three utilities are free and should be able to detect most spyware and adware which may install itself on the computer. Once downloaded, install the programs and then run each program one at a time (i.e. do not attempt to run them all at once, since they will conflict with each other). If any threats are detected by the scans make sure you take the appropriate action to remove the identified threat.

Once the scans have been completed, restart the computer and check whether the poor performance has been fixed. If the computer is still performing below expectations, it is possible that too many programs are running in the background. Since background programs and processes occupy processing power and memory, having many programs running in the background leaves fewer resources for other programs, which may actually need the extra capacity, thus slowing down computer performance. Close all non-essential programs which are running, and also programs running in the background (such as in the system tray, next to the clock). If you find the system performance increases significantly, it appears the background programs are hogging quite a bit of system resources. In this situation, the best compromise is to stop these programs automatically loading in the background on startup. All this means is the functions these background programs provide will not be available unless you manually start the programs. So, make sure you only disable non-essential programs and processes which you do not need to regularly use!

To disable particular programs from loading on startup, first go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘All Programs’ > ‘Startup’. The Startup folder contains some of the programs which load on startup. If you wish to disable any of those programs from automatically loading, simply right-click on the entry and delete them from the Startup program group. However, some programs are not included in the Startup program group, even though they load on startup. To see these other programs which load on startup, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes) and click OK. In the window that appears, click the ‘Startup’ tab. This will list all the programs and processes which load on startup. To disable a particular entry from loading, simply untick that entry. Be aware, some of these processes are likely to be necessary for the system to function so you should be very careful when disabling processes, and only disable ones which you know are non-essential and safe to disable. If you are unsure of the purpose of any of the processes, it is best to err on the side of caution and not disable that entry. Once you are finished, click OK to save and close and then restart the computer. Be aware, once the computer restarts, a message may appear warning the computer is running in Selective Startup mode. This just means that not everything is loading on startup (i.e. selective startup mode) because you have disabled some processes from loading on startup. You can safely ignore this message should it appear.

After this process, if the computer still runs slowly the most likely cause is simply a build-up of programs and files over the years. Unfortunately Windows doesn’t handle longevity very well, as over time old files tend to build up along with old entries in the system registry and other Windows faculties. This generally results in the computer slowing down. The only way around this scenario is backing-up all your important data and completing a clean reinstallation of Windows. While this is not the most convenient process to complete, it will certainly result in the computer running faster. As this process will result in all data on your computer being lost, just make sure you have a backup (preferably several) of all your important data.