Slow Computer Performance

[bearcub]

I know this is an Excel forum but I don't where else to turn. My computer is running rather slow, does anyone know of any free software that is virus free that will help speed up my computer performance. My excel files are taking forever to load and I don't have any programs open other than one instance of Excel.

Thank you for your help in advance,

Michael

 

[mole999]

If its not 64bit OS then adding more memory doesn't work (32 bit addresses 3Gb)

Have a look at Belarc Advisor, its free and will show whether you have a good configuration

with dell you can download a small program that will evaluate your system ID and then you might be able to look at options.

You shouldn't need to defrag weekly, if thats happening you may be close the maximum capacity on the drive (File Explorer will show the drive as red if too full)

 

[igold]

@mole999

Yes you are right. It has been so long since I have dealt with 32 bit architecture that I forgot about it's limitations! Additionally, Belarc Advisor is good program as well.

As I previously stated in my Post #5 , the OP begets more questions than answers!

 

[igold]

Whatever you decide to do...

Don't call the **** Squad!

 

[bearcub]

I do have a 64 bit OS with a 1T hard drive. I've only used about 340G of disk space so I have plenty of available hard drive memory available. I was thinking that maybe I had too many programs that have to be loaded into RAM which will causes the slow performance. Is this possible? For example, I have a different version of the same music notation software - Finale - loaded on my computer. I only use the latest version, not the earlier ones. Maybe I should uninstall the earlier versions. Do you think this might help? It might be equivalent to having to versions of Excel running on your computer at the same time.

 

[igold]

Given that you have plenty of disk space available, just having a program that resides on the disk is of no consequence. What does matter is what background processes and or programs that are currently running (eating up resources). BTW, there is no such thing as hard drive memory (unless you want to include a paging file, but that is not germane). You have Hard Drive Space and you have RAM or memory.

Take a look at the icons next to your clock on the bottom right of your screen, right after you boot up. Are there a lot there. If this is a Dell machine, I would bet that there is a lot of "Bloatware" that is loading which you are never going to use. If you can reduce some of that overhead, you can pick up resources.

Also, as was intimated on another post, I would do full Virus and Malware scans.