Dear Computer Lady,

I have a fairly new computer and its running very slow.  There is plenty of room on the hard drive so I just don’t understand. One of my daughters friends said that the memory may be full.
What’s the difference between the memory and the hard drive?

Also can I clean out the memory?

Thanks so much for your help in advance, I have learned a lot from your newsletters…. keep it up! Pam

Dear Pam,

There are two different kinds of memory in your computer.

One, is memory that is used for storage, usually that is your hard drive. When your hard drive gets too full, your computer will slow down, however, with the large hard drives in systems these days, that is not usually an issue.

The other type of memory is working memory, usually referred to as RAM memory. RAM cannot hold onto information when the power is off, so it gets cleared out and re-loaded each time you restart your computer. That is why re-booting your computer often fixes problems.

There are two ways you can speed up your computer if the RAM is too full. One is to purchase more RAM, and the other is to stop some of the programs that are loading when the computer boots.

If you are running Windows 98 or ME, you might want to consider adding memory if you have less than 128MB of RAM. If you are using Windows XP, you should have more than 128MB. If you are working with photos, music or video, 512MB of RAM is good.

If you have plenty of RAM, but your computer is running slower and slower, you have too many programs loading when your computer starts. Take a look at the icons in your system tray, located in the lower right of your screen. Are there more than 5 or 6 icons there? They all represent programs that are loaded in memory and running the whole time you use your computer. There can also be other programs running that didn’t put an icon in the system tray.

To see all the items that are loading when your computer starts, click on “Start” then “Run” and type MSCONFIG in the Run dialog box. Click the “OK” button, or just hit the enter key to display the “System Configuration Utility” window.

Click on the “Startup” tab, and you will see a long list of items. Every item with a check mark in front of it is running. To stop items from running the next time you start your computer, just remove the check mark and click “OK” when you are done. You will be prompted to restart your computer.

You can turn off any items you wish, but some you will want to keep running, especially, things like your antivirus.

Elizabeth