Or in Internet Explorer go to tools - Internet options

In the first tab of the window that pops up it says Browsing history in the middle somewhere. Click on the delete button. From there you can tick what you want to delete. Temporary internet files is one of the things you can delete there.

p.s. if the menu isn't showing in Internet Explorer, right click next to your tabs, to the right of your tabs and tick menu bar.

If your computer is still slow you might want to run a virus scan. And a malware scan, and a adware scan. But unfortunately I can't help you with the last two.

I found the fix on this support page, lo and behold i downloaded it and installed as mine needed the same fix.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;812248
click this link
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9648760
your computer will download a quick fix installer.
run the installer, when another window opens to tell you the process is finished, run disc clean. mine cleaned in 35 seconds. =)

you might be able to find other help with your slow machine issues at the same Microsoft support site.
Just go here http://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com/Portal?gssnb=1

I recommend downloading the Fix It Center program and installing it. I did!

good luck =)

OK, lots of great ideas here!!! I haven't had time to do much, but I did reboot both the computer and the modem, and it's a bit better. Still not like it used to be, but at least it's not as bad as yesterday. I should have some weekend time to try out some of the suggestions...thanks everyone!

I'll check out the fix-it program.

I installed it and it downloaded all the trouble shooter programs i need for my system setup.
It scans your computer and downloads relevant program troubleshooters for you.Then you
can run them as you need them.I ran all of them just to see what would happen.They fixed errors
i didn't even know i had.It even trashes the dead plug-ins and add-ons on Internet Explorer that
are no longer usable. I liked that! (i don't use IE very often though), but i did notice it kept trying
to open up ads and pages like pop ups.NO MORE! ... i liked that too. =)
After the fix i ran Disc Clean , and it got rid of 3+ gigs of trash files on my system...nice!

All in all id say its worth the download which is small.And after that quick fix with Disc Clean WOW!
I'll be using this program for now on.

Hi 2T , I found that over time little bits of of program are added that need more and more processes to be open, (just in case you might need them). So when you had a new system , you might have had 25 -35 processes running. You may find that you now have 50-60 processes running. CTL Alt DEl will bring up the windows task manager. Have a look at this (processes tab) and see if anything is "eating "your cpu cycles. If your system is idle. (you are not doing anything on the computer) then there should be no cpu usage!
There are many ways to cull processes that do not need to run all the time . One good program that analyses the start up procedure and is free is Soluto. It analyses the start up and tells you which processes are not normally required and gives you the choice of changing how it loads , etc.
Together with the other suggestions you should be able to speed up your system somewhat more. Good luck

Wbool63

You will have to have at least 512 mb of ram to run this program (Soluto) too so check before you download it. =)

Looks like a nice piece of freeware though.

Soluto isn't currently available. I put my email on the Soluto site, to try to get it.

I downloaded the Soluto freeware and it is pretty decent.After the initial install you reboot and it will give you a timer down on the left hand corner of your screen, how much time it takes for your machine to boot up.
After your boot-up another screen pops up telling you what loaded how long it took and if you can safely make it pause or delay during boot to boot faster.It also shows you which files you cannot delay or pause during boot because they are necessary.

I thought it was a freeware to watch your RAM and help to control your running programs...ah well.
It will be handy to watch how long it takes new programs to start up.Normally though i make sure none of my programs boot unless i manually start them.

I like some of the menu items it has
On going frustration research
My machine just frustrated me...wonder what that does...lol

I usually go to start - run and then type in msconfig

then in the startup tab you can tick and untick what programs you want to start up (in the background usually) while starting up windows.

What I do is leave everything that I don't know what it is ticked. And untick stuff like CD burning software, software for printer and scanner that you can start from the start menu, and any other programs that you can just start from the start menu when you need them.

Obviously, leave virus scanner software and such ticked as you want that to always run.

If something doesn't work any more you can always come back and tick them again.

Thanks Jolie that is great advice. =)

Microsoft and many others advise against using msconfig this way! It was meant to diagnose problems only. The items are still there but disabled. You should use a program that removes the items.

Like Jolie, I sometimes use msconfig, but generally I run "services.msc" I have never had any problems running that. As far as I know altering the start up to manual means that it will not load as a process until you invoke it when you need it. (eg from your Start / All programs tab! )
As Bilbo says Msconfig and its tabs is primarily a diagnostic tool !
Soluto basically alters the services at start up for you.
Cheers wbool63

so many different ways to clean up! Since I just got a message about not enough swap memory or something like that, I did some minor cleaning, mainly eliminated a bunch of stuff that my grandaughter had on her desktop (uninstalled stuff, deleted files, etc)...it seems to be running faster now!!! I also took off a bunch of unused desktop icons from everyone's desktop, and made sure that there was only the minimum on start up. I'm too scared to actually go into msconfig or anything like that, I never even opened the tower without a computer-savvy person helping.
Yesterday I got to spend a few hours playing with a macbook (not online, though)...Oy, I'm in love, lol! I'm really wanting one although I'm not sure how to translate certain Windows stuff into Apple...like what do they call add/remove programs. I was sort of disappointed that there was no graphics/drawing program installed, so I didn't get to try out that sort of thing, but I did find that iPhoto and Photobooth were super easy to do minor photo-editing. I want to try gfx on the mac before I make any decisions.

The people from Soluto sent me an email with a link to download it. I went from 5:30 (5min, 30sec) to 4:40. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same. I hate Quicktime, as it keeps re-enabling it's fast launch, which takes up my time and space.

Don't forget flash cookies during your cleanup. Many users are not even aware that Flash tracking cookies (otherwise known as Local Shared Objects) even exist or how much of an insidious privacy invasion they are.

A couple of interesting articles here and here.

Also, a bloated Window's registry can really bog you down as well. Getting a bloated registry over time seems unavoidable, unless you're really on top of it.

MalwareBytes is a phenominal program for keeping things running. I use the free version and I love it. It has saved several machines that were stuck with a faux virus hoax!

I just used malwarebytes a couple weeks ago...it found over 300 things it got rid of!!! BTW, not sure what a registry is and how to clean it up. I'm just happy that my 6 yr old computer is running faster than it has in months.

Can Malwarebytes be run at the same time as regular anti virus software? I was always told that you cannot have two anti vurus softwares installed at the same time. Want to make sure that Malwarebytes isn't anti virus software.

Whool63, any pointers of what to do when you're in services.msc?

Malwarebytes free version does not run as a live app. You ned to manualy run a system scan. The paid version runs as a background app.

Malwarebytes also looks for malware type actions, which can detect problems that aren't yet identified as problems.

With Malwarebytes, as with any anti-malware program, you should always review the actions before you click delete. These programs aren't perfect. For example, I ran a scan and it detected over 80 problems. When I looked, some of the pograms didn't make sense. I tend to group programs into sub folders by type. All the problems were in the folder "AV" for Audio/Video. Since there is a rouge anti-virus program that installs in a folder called AV, it marked all the programs in that folder for deletion. If I would have not checked, it would have deleted al my programs, including GIMP.