How to speed up Windows

Windows tends to slow down after you've been using it for a while. This can make things work very slowly. And even when you have a new Windows PC, the performance could be improved. Here are a number of things you can do to improve performance.

1. Remove unnecessary items from startup. here
2. Delete unneeded files and programs here
3. Use a basic theme. The Windows Classic theme is a bit dull but good if you want to get the most out of your Windows PC. Also get a simple background. High resolution images slow Windows down during startup.
4. Remove unwanted fonts.
5. Clean the registry. Abexo is a good free registry cleaner. Be careful though. I wouldn't recommend you clean your registry unless you know what you are doing.
6. Turn off the indexing service. You can do this from Windows features in Vista and Add/remove windows components in windows XP.
7. Defragment your hard drive. This doesn't have as much of an impact as it used to years ago, but it will still help to do it now and again.
8. Scan for viruses/spyware. They slow your PC down a lot.
9. Get more RAM. There's only so much you can do to improve speed on the software side of things. RAM has dropped a lot in price, so it doesn't cost a lot to add more RAM