1. Buy an additional hard drive and dedicate it to your paging file. The paging file is a file on your hard disk that is used when you have no more RAM available to run applications. Windows creates a paging file on your hard drive that simulates RAM. This can cause big slow downs on your system because the same disk that your computer is accessing for files is trying to write to the page file. When you dedicate a separate drive this disk access can happen simultaneously. You should not need anything more than about 20-40GB. You can find those on E-Bay or a used computer store for next to nothing. The article below will help you move the paging file once you have installed and formatted your additional hard drive:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886/

2. Double the RAM installed in your computer. This is, by far, the easiest way to drastically increase the performance of your computer. Many benchmarks have been performed indicating that increasing the RAM in your computer doesn't provide much benefit until you can, at least, double it. Check with your computer's manufacturer for details on what type of RAM you should by and how to install it.

3. Clean up your hard drive. This is prob

ably the most time consuming but does provide quite a benefit. The first step is to remove all those old programs and kids games that you no longer use. Once you have finished this task, defrag the hard drive! You will be surprised at the performance boost this can give that old computer. Defrag organizes your files in a way that allows for the quickest access of files. When you have fragmentation, any one file can be in pieces all over your hard drive. Obviously it takes less time when the parts of your file are all together. Below is a nice set of instructions for running defrag and uninstalling programs:

http://helpdesk.its.uiowa.edu/windows/instructions/defrag.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307895

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