Why Is My Computer Running Slow

This site has a free internet speed test as well as a free PC scan to optimize the speed of your computer:

http://www.speedtest.net/

However, you may need to pay to do anything beyond scanning your PC or testing your internet speed.

You could add Ram, that helps alot

like the others said
also keep in mind if you are stealing music and videos from other computers that there is a computer on the other end with their own internet access and what they pay their provider and all needs to go all the way to your computer
you do not pay for their internet access
nor do you pay for all the channels in between
you have no control over the other end

First thing which is absolutely critical is to clean all the junk from your system. Their are many scans available for free to do this. The best one I know of has a link to it here: http//www.htmf.com This is for any machine running Windows and requires no sign-up. It’s actually Free.

Next, look a the amount of memory and the speed of your processor.
I suggest at least 1 gig of Memory and a processor of at least 2 GHz

One other thing is the amount of bandwidth at your location. If you are on DSL and your on the end of the line, your speed could be very slow.
With DSL it’s first come, first served. Their are free tools available to check this. Do a Google search.

See this article Ways to speed up your PC:http://www.summaryworld.com/computers-and-internet/ways-to-speed-up-your-pc

The Windows Registry is the master control center for your operating system and applications it runs. Corruption or overload registry issues can cause all sorts of pc performance problems, including poor application startup times, slow Windows start-up, extremely slow shut down, slow internet surfing,inability to resume from computer sleep and more.Cleaning,compacting, and optimizing your Windows registry can go a long way to dramatically speeding up your computer’s performance, start-up and shutdown speed.
Recommended: Run a Registry Scan http://make-a-computer-run-better.com Now to Detect Errors and Improve your PC’s speed instantly!

How to keep the speed of your computer at peak performance?
Here are several tips I have collected from my 4 years computer using experience.
Free Up Disk Space: Disk comes with the ability to record, catalog and treat a set of instructions or data as a single unit. Source language programs, machine language programs, spreadsheets, data files, text documents, graphics files and batch files are examples. Over time, you will have no idea of how heavy the burden you brought to the disk. Optimize the hard disk to free up disk space and recoup system resources is the most effective way to get back the clean and fast disk space.

Fix Registry programs: The Windows Registry is a central hierarchical database comes to store information and settings for users, applications and hardware devices. It stores information that applications and system processes constantly retrieve and store during operation, such as a profile of user’s custom configurations, the types of documents that applications can open and create, as well as the hardware and network ports that exist and are being used.
Processes of continuous installation, reinstall and uninstall leave a bundle of empty registry keys, obsolete and old entries in the system. To fix the problem regularly, you can use a powerful registry tool which comes with the best and most enhanced problem detection algorithm to clean up your registry.

You could get more information from:
http://blog.quusoft.com/how-to-keep-your-pc-at-peak-performance/

1.Fix Any Registry errors:
Reg cure:http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n2uehzm2dua
ccleaner:http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
(if u install ccleaner check all the boxes on both tabs )

2.Defragment volumes of hard disks:
(Disk Defragmenter:)
Go to start–> all programs–>Accessories–>System Tools–>Disk Defragmenter

3.Stop unwanted programs from starting up:
Go to start–>Run–> and enter msconfig, select the (startup tab) and uncheck the programs from starting if your not sure what they are google them to see how they affect your computer and if they are needed.

4.Change the performance:
Right click on my computer–>go to properties–>select the advance tab–>under performance click settings–>Adjust for best performance.

Also Increase your
virtual memory:Right click on my computer–>go to properties–>select the advance tab–>under performance, click settings–>then go to advanced tab–>and find virtual memory once their change both values to (1.5 x ram), example i have 448 ram so i do 448×1.5 =672 so my values are 672

A good way to increase your internet speed is to use an Internet Optimizer like Internet Cyclone. This can improve internet speed by optimizing some registry settings.

You can download it from http://www.jordysoft.com/icyclone/internet-cyclone.aspx