After you have done that it is time to do some startup configurations.  The first thing you should do is click on the 'Start Menu' and in the box at the bottom type in 'MSCONFIG' and then hit [ENTER].  A new screen will popup.  There are two things you need to do here, first click on the 'Boot' tab and next to the box that says 'No GUI boot' un-check the box and you have just shaved a few seconds off of your startup!  The next thing to do while in this screen is to click on the 'Startup' tab.  Here is a list of all the programs that startup when your computer does.  Often when you install a new program it will add itself to this list but things like iTunes do not need to startup with your computer (unless you want it to).  So under this tab un-check the boxes next to all of the programs that you do not need at startup!  This will shave considerable time off of most people's startup.  Make sure you do not turn off essential programs though!  Don't turn off your operating system (OS), your firewall, your spyware protection, etc.  Most programs you will recognize however I recommend not turning off programs you don't recognize without at least figuring out what they are and what they do.

The last step in speeding up your computer is to adjust your virtual memory.  On 'My Computer' right-click and go to 'Properties'.  A new screen will popup, from here click on 'Advanced System Settings' and then click on the 'Advanced' tab.  Under 'Performance' click on 'Settings'.  In the screen that comes up click on 'Advanced' again and then under 'Virtual Memory' click on 'Change'.  Un-check the box that says, 'Automatic manage paging file size for all drives' and then select your main hard drive disk (HDD), typically it will be 'C'.  Now select 'Custom Size' and from here determine the size your paging file should be.  Normally you want to make the 'Initial Size' about twice the amount of RAM you have, so if you have 2 GB RAM then make the initial size 4096 MB and your maximum size 2 GB larger than that.

That is all for this article, you learned some quick tricks to speed up your system and perhaps bring some life into an older computer of yours.