Hello All, I've an AST Pentium II computer with Window 95 installed. I usually use Word, Photoshop, Excel and also use it to connect it to the Internet. The speed is becoming kind of slow. How can I increase the speed of the computer? Can I add more RAMs or what should I do? What sort of RAMs are available? I'm not familiar with computer stuff. Will appreciate any help from you. Thank you very much for your help.

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two things: add more ram (you should have no less than 64MB) or close some prgrams. the more prgrams you open, the more memory it uses. when the pc is all out of memory, then it looks on the hard drive for the information (this is known as swapping), which is ten times slower than RAM memory. Another thing you can try is running defrag (click on start, click on run, and type in the word defrag then click ok). This will increase speed quite a bit sometimes. Or you can download memturbo from www.download.com. it keeps track of how much memopry is being used, and can automatically regain some of your ram back! E-mail me with any more questions!

First of all check the minimum size of virtual memory (Here the path: Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Perfomance - Virtual Memory, field 'Minimum'). This value must be at least two times (better three times) higher than ammount of RAM. For example if you have 32Mb of RAM the optimal size of virtual memory is 96Mb. If this value smaller than I said, than you can change it in the next way: Mark the field: 'Let my specify my own virtual memory settings' - now you can change values in 'Minimum' field, after this type needed value in this field. Note: the size of virtual memory shall not exceed maximum free size on your HDD. After this mark the field 'Let Windows manage my vitual memory settings (Recomended)'. Your changes will be accepted only after you restart Windows. The virtual memory is the file on disk C named 'win386.swp'. After Windows restarts I recommend to defragment your HDD. Normally I do it with Norton Speed Disk with 'Optimize swap file' option enabled. The operation described above can solve problem of virtual memory bottlenecks. The second way to increase system perfomance is to overlock it. That's simple. The processor speed is calculated by the next formula: Bus speed*Multiplier. So, if you increase this values you insrease overall perfomance, (if you increase multiplier, you increase only processor speed, and if you increase bus speed, you increase the perfomance of all systems in your computer). Instructions how to do this you can find in motherboards manual. If your processor clock is under 350MHz it means that bus speed of it is 66MHz. You can increase it up to 75MHz without any problems. For example if you have 266MHz Pentium II, than it's bus clock is 66MHz and multiplier is 4 (4*66=266MHz). If you increase bus clock to 75MHz you'll get 300MHz processor clock and overall perfomance increase of all systems in your computer. But you can leave bus clock speed alone and increase multiplier only (for example to 4.5), and you'll get 300MHz processor clock, but all systems would work at normal speed. The result of these two operations is increase of perfomance for about 30%, but be awared this could decrease system reliability. If you have lower than 64Mb of RAM I suggest you to buy more RAM. The optimal ammount of RAM is 128Mb. It's better to buy PC133 SDRAM memory from one of popular manufacturers like Micron, Samsung, Toshiba, IBM, Siemens. But before you buy it you shall look at your computer manual to see memory configuration of it. For example if you have 32Mb of RAM you cannot install 128Mb, you can install only 16Mb, 32Mb or 64Mb RAM modules. Good luck, Evgeniy Bulygin.

Hello, My coputer is really starting to run slow on the internet and offline. when I first got in I did not have much of a problem. Its got 466mhz and I know plenty of memory becaus I have not saved anything since I got it. So I was wondering if there is something that I could do to make it better or faster?