A few years ago I purchased a Dell computer which is now getting quite slow on boot-up, loading software, etc. Is that because there are a lot of shortcuts on the desktop? I would welcome any suggestions that you have for speeding-up the computer. In any case, I am considering purchasing a new computer with an upgraded processor. Is there some way to link the old computer with the new computer to increase my total computer capacity or power? The current computer has about 50 GB free on the hard drive.

The amount of shortcuts on the desktop does not slow down the computer, but the fact that there are a lot of shortcuts indicate that there are many programs installed on the computer. As you have a lot of programs installed this could be potentially slowing down the performance. Generally, installing programs on the computer does not slow down performance, unless they exhaust the amount of free disk space on the computer. This does not appear to be the case in your situation, as there is 50 GB free on the hard drive. The real performance toll on the computer comes when these programs are used, as then they start occupying memory and also CPU time. When you are trying to run multiple programs at the same time, on a relatively low performance computer, this starts to put a resource burden on the machine and put the computer under significant resource constraints. For example, if the computer only has 512 MB of RAM and one program needs 256 MB of RAM to operate, that only leaves 256 MB for other programs plus the operating system (Windows) to use. Such memory constraints result in a problem called memory paging, whereby the computer is constantly trying to switch data between the hard drive and memory resulting in significant performance degrading and thrashing of the hard drive (i.e. when you hear the hard drive constantly being accessed).

The above scenario is only a problem when you are trying to open multiple programs at one time. However, many programs also install themselves so they load at startup. This means as soon as you start Windows, quite a few programs and processes load themselves and immediately start occupying memory. In many cases, these programs and processes which load at startup are not used and therefore are occupying resources for no useful purpose. As such, we should take a look at the programs and processes which load on startup and see whether these can be rationalised. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and click OK. In the System Configuration Utility window that appears click the “Startup” tab. This will display all the programs and processes which load on Windows startup. Look through this list and identify any processes which you recognise and deem non-essential. For example, you may notice a process related to a program that you do not use regularly and you deem can be safely disabled from loading on startup. To disable the process from loading, simply untick the entry for that process in the listing on the Startup tab. Additionally, I suggest that you write down the names of any processes which you disable from loading on startup, in case things go awry and you need to re-enable these processes. Once you are finished click the OK button and restart your computer. When the computer restarts those processes should not load. Be aware, you may be presented with a message informing you that your computer is running in selective startup mode. This simply means that not all processes are loading on startup, primarily because you have selectively disabled some processes from loading on startup. You can safely ignore this message and tick the box so it does not appear again.

Should you find that the computer is still slow you may simply be suffering the effects of bit rot. This rather flattering term simply means that over time computers slow down due to the accumulation of redundant data from the installation, usage, and uninstallation of programs. This is present on most computers and the only way around this problem is to backup any data you wish to keep, format the hard drive and then reinstall Windows from scratch. However, since you are looking at purchasing a new computer your best option would be to buy the new computer and then transfer your data across. Once you are satisfied that all your data is present on the new computer that provides an opportunity to reinstall Windows on the older computer since you don’t need to worry about backing-up any data (since it should all be on the new computer).

Regarding your second question about tethering two computers together, there may be some home-brew ways to accomplish this task but strictly speaking this is not something that you would normally do. You could connect your old computer onto a network and use this as a file server, but it is likely that your new computer will have a much larger hard drive than your old, making it unnecessary to use the older computer as server. As for sharing capacity between computers this is not really possible, since the link between the computers would be a speed bottleneck and there is no suitable medium found on home computers for this purpose. You are much better off simply buying a higher powered computer and using that separately from the old computer.