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ARQ Internet Solutions
2875 Northwind
Suite 205-D
East Lansing, MI 48823

``If it touches the Internet,
we do it!''

The ARQ newsletter. Helpful tips for your Internet experience.

Why is my computer slow?
By Bob Fritz
Director of Support Services

"I just bought a new computer with one of the top new Pentium chip but everything is running slow!"

Well, there are a couple of things that can cause this problem. First, how much RAM do you have loaded on your machine? The more RAM you have on the machine the more efficiently it runs. With Win 95 the top limit for this is 64 MB of RAM. That has been increased for Win 98 to 128 MB of RAM. If you do not have the maximum amount of RAM allowed on your machine purchasing more RAM will most likely give your computer a performance boost.

If you are maxed out with RAM already don't despair, there are still a couple of options that can be tried. When you start up your machine, in the lower right hand corner you see a bunch of icons. Each icon represents a program running in the background on your machine. Each of those programs eats up some of the resources of your machine thereby slowing it down. But, the icons do not represent every program running in the background. Some of the programs running in the background do not have icons and will not show up on your desktop. To see a complete list of background programs hit your "Ctrl-Alt-Del" keys once all at the same time. This will bring up a window on your screen. In that window will be a list of every program presently running on your computer.

Now, you ask, "Do I need all these programs running?" No. A lot of programs will have extra features that are handled by the background programs. Most people don't ever use these "nifty" features. So, disabling or setting the programs up so that their background applications don't run will free up your system resources and allow your other programs to run faster.

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