Keeping Windows up-to-date ensures your PC is protected from the latest known security holes and fixes bugs or errors of the operating system, which will help increase PC performance. You can easily check for and perform needed updates for Windows by visiting the following website: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com You can also configure Windows XP to automatically download updates when they become available:

1. Open the Control Panel.

If the Start menu is in classic look, the Control Panel is under Settings on the menu.

2. Click Security Center,  if the Control Panel is in category view; otherwise ignore this step and move to the next step.

3. Click Automatic Updates.

4. It’s recommended to use the Automatic option.

Adjust Visual Settings

You can increase the performance of your computer by sacrificing some visual effects in Windows XP. These effects include items such as shadowing, smoothing, and fading of fonts, menus, and your cursor.

1. Right-click My Computer and click Properties.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Click Settings, under the Performance area.

4. On the Visual Effects tab, select the Adjust for Best Performance option.

5. When you’re done.

Remove Unused Programs

Freeing up disk space helps increase overall performance of your PC. Therefore, you should remove any programs or software that you don’t use. Note Before removing software from your PC you may want to ensure you have saved any keys or serial numbers that are needed for the software. Therefore, it will be much easier if you want to reinstall the software at a later date. Follow these steps to remove (and to view) installed applications on your PC, in Windows XP:

1. Open the Control Panel.

If the Start menu is in classic look, the Control Panel is under Settings on the menu.

2. Click Add or Remove Programs.

3. The Add or Remove Programs window will appear.You may need to wait a few moments for the programs to load.

4. You can scroll up and down to view your installed programs. To remove a program, click the particular item and click the Change/Remove or Remove button.

Clean Up Your Personal Files

Organizing personal files and documents that are scattered throughout your PC and deleting old or unused files will help free up disk space. This also helps increase the overall performance of your PC. Here are some tips to keeping your personal files in order:

• Create separate personal folders Start with creating folders for each user of your PC. For example, if it’s a family PC you may want to create a separate folder for each member, in a convenient place such as the desktop or My Documents. This way everyone has a place to save and create their documents, which helps keep the files on your computer organized.

• Create sub-folders

For each of your topics or interests create a folder.

• Work Files

• School Files

• Church Files

• Vacations

• Family Pictures

• Downloads

Periodically clean up your files Once in awhile you should go through your folders and delete any files you don’t need anymore. Especially look for and remove large files.

Empty the Recycle Bin

Typically after deleting files they go to the Recycle Bin rather than being completely destroyed. After deleting files, especially larger files, you should empty the Recycle Bin. To open it, simply double-click the icon. Then to empty the Recycle Bin, you can click Empty the Recycle Bin on the left task pane. Check for Hard Drive Errors Data in hard drives can become corrupt, such as from power surges and improper shutdowns, which can cause disk errors.Typically, these are errors that won’t be noticeable to the PC user; therefore you should perform a hard drive scan at least once a month. Here is how to check your hard drive for errors (and fix it) using Windows XP:

1. Open My Computer.

2. Right-click the disk you would like to check (for instance, the C drive) and click Properties.

3. Click the Tools tab.

4. Click Check Now...,

5. It’s recommended to mark both check disk options, Automatically Fix File System Errors and Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors, to ensure any disk errors are properly addressed.

6. Click Start.

If the hard drive is currently in use, which will likely be the case, a pop-up message will appear. Click Yes to schedule the scan for the next restart, or to cancel the scan, click No.

Defragment the Hard Drive

Defragmenting your hard drive optimizes it by reorganizing files that are scattered around the disk drive. Moving this information into contiguous clusters allows for faster retrieval of files and results in an increase of overall system performance. Fragmentation worsens the more you install, uninstall, move, and delete files on your hard drive. However, hard drive fragmentation is common and occurs naturally. The amount of time that defragmentation takes depends on several factors, including the following:

• Amount of fragmentation

• Size of the hard drive

• Number and size of files on the hard drive

• Performance of your PC You can get an idea of the amount of fragmented files and folders before performing a defragmentation by analyzing the hard drive first. This allows you to better decide whether you would benefit from defragmenting the hard drive. Before performing the defragmentation you should first analyze the hard drive to get a feeling of the amount of fragmented files and folders on your hard drive.

Here is how to analyze your hard drive using Windows XP: 1. Open Disk Defragmenter, which can be accessed by browsing to the following path on your Start menu:

• Start

• Programs (or All Programs)

• Accessories

• System Tools

Then click Disk Defragmenter.

2. Click Analyze.

3. During the analysis you should see a depiction of the hard drive’s estimated fragmentation status.

You can refer to the color codes on the program and the following descriptions of the codes to better understand the status:

• Red This means most of the clusters are part of a fragmented file.

• Blue This means most of the clusters are contiguous files with clusters in the group that contain only free space and contiguous clusters.

• Green This means most of the clusters are part of a file that cannot be moved from its current location.

• White This means most of the clusters are free space and contiguous clusters.

4. At the end of the analysis, a pop-up message will appear. You can then compare your number to the following average number of fragments per file ranges, which gives you an idea of how bad your fragmentation is at the time:

• 1.00 Most or all files are contiguous.

• 1.10 About 10% of the files are in fragments of two or more pieces.

• 1.20

About 20% of the files are in fragments of two or more pieces.

• 1.30 About 30% of the files are in fragments of two or more pieces.

• 2.00 Most or all of the files are in fragments of two or more pieces.

• Close the window To close the pop-up window, for example if it recommends not performing a defragmentation, you can click Close.

Here is how to defragment your hard drive using Windows XP: 1. Open Disk Defragmenter, which can be accessed by browsing to the following path on your Start menu:

• Start

• Programs (or All Programs)

• Accessories

• System Tools Then click Disk Defragmenter.

2. Click Defragment. The amount of time that defragmentation takes, which can take up to several hours, depends on several factors including the following:

• Amount of fragmentation

• Size of the hard drive

• Number and size of files on the hard drive

• Performance of your PC You can refer to the color codes on the program and the following descriptions of the codes to better understand the statuses:

• Red This means most of the clusters are part of a fragmented file.

• Blue This means most of the clusters are contiguous files with clusters in the group that contain only free space and contiguous clusters.

• Green This means most of the clusters are part of a file that cannot be moved from its current location.

• White This means most of the clusters are free space and contiguous clusters.

4. At the end of the defragmentation, a pop-up message should appear that will let you know it has completed and displays the results.

Remove Additional Start-up Programs

Many software programs may add themselves (with or without your knowledge) to your Startup folder, which may cause a longer boot time when entering Windows and bog down your PC.

Here is how you can view and modify your start-up programs:

1. Open My Computer.

2. Browse to and open the Documents and Settings folder

3. Open the folder of your desired user account.

4. Open the Start Menu folder

5. Go to the Programs folder, and then open the Startup folder.

6. You should remove any programs that you don’t care to automatically run at Windows start-up.

To do this, simply click a particular program shortcut icon and press your Delete key, or right-click the item and click Delete. Now you should repeat Steps 3 through 6 in the preceding list, making sure you select the All Users folder, so you can access the Startup folder for all the user accounts on the PC.