Windows 7 with its hope and change may be just around the corner, but for now the world is stuck between Vista and XP.  Although Microsoft made a big push to phase out XP, the arrival of the Netbook market appears to have solidified a place for the continued use of the OS for at least a few more years.

If there is one tangible, atrocious thing to hold against Windows XP it is that over time the system begins to crawl.  As a tech support rep, I so often have customers who arrive complaining that thier system is running slower than it used to, to slow to use, or starts up too slowly. 

Unfortunately, at this stage the answer 90%-100% of the time is that they need to reformat their laptops.  With netbooks (lacking CDrom drives) being an increasingly important venue for XP, most users do not have external CDrom drives handy to make this switch even if they are actively backing up their files.  

Thus, its as important as ever to keep things running quickly and cleanly.  The good news is, by following a few easy habits you can keep your machine running like new for an almost indefinite time period.

The good news is, most of these steps are light weight and won't load down your system, so you can continually perfom the upkeep while doing most other Netbook class functions, I.E., word processing and browsing the internet.

Step 1: Download a Registry Cleaner and Use it

A dirty registry sounds bad right? right.  All those little files muck up your computer by wasting harddrive memory, fragmenting the harddrive space and otherwise disorganizing things.  

Getridofum.

CCleaner is a free and useful,  google it, download, and use it.

Step 2:  Windows System Utilities

Start ->Programs->Accessories->System Tools

Windows' Disk Cleanup is partially redundant to CCleaner, but it only takes a moment so its second opinion and slightly different functionality makee it worth running.

More important here is the Disk Defragmenter.  This is arguably your main weapon against a slow system.  Windows is built in a tree-like data structure.  The branches of this tree can get disorganized, causing open space between related data, and slowing the computer because it has to leap around this disorganization to do what it ought to be able to walking.

I like to think that the key here is iteration.  Just keep clicking defragment.  The first time you click it it might take as long as 90 minutes or so, but afterwards all those ssundry bars of blue and white and red and green will be a bit better organized.  

Since you can click it again, they will get even better organized.  Eventually it should only take it a minute or two to defragment.  When you hit this stage, there is little or nothing left to organize.

Step 3:  Antivirus Protection

There are essentially two classes of antivirus/antimalware protection.  One actually defends your computer from threats.  Reasonable brands of this include Symantec, AVG, Kaspersky, and McCafee.  Steer clear of Norton if possible, its heavy and impossible to uninstall.  To some degree that goes for McCafee too. The important thing is that you have one, and only one.  Multiple antivirus protection programs will not increase your security, they conflict and shut each other down.

The second class are antivirus scans.  Sure, you're 100-500 dollar antivirus protection program probably comes with a scan, and using it is a great idea.  But you likely won't get full coverage from just that.  For one, many of these official ones are bad at detecting and deleting a class of bug called Malware.

A lot of Malware in the past year show up as Fraud Antivirus software.

If you see ANYTHING antivirus that has a name you don't recognize (i.e., you SHOULD only have one virus protection software and you SHOULD know what it is) DON'T ClICK IT!

Examples:

- XP ANTIVIRUS 08

- ANTIVIRUS PRO 09

- blahblahVirusblahblah *this year*

To get rid of this garbage Google:

"Malwarebytes AntiMalware"

"Spybot Download" (link from download.com)

Download these, and update them once a week and scan with them whenever you remember too.

Last thing:
 

Try not to store very much stuff on the computer.  If the harddrive says it has 40 gigabytes, to use much more than twenty if you want to keep it running top speed.

Go through your programs regularly in

control panel-> Add and Remove programs

and delete anything you installed as a trial version or installed and aren't using.  Each program should have a purpose.  If you don't know what something is, google it.

If its slow on startup? You can disable startup programs:Start->Run

In the scary black box type "msconfig" without the quotation marks and hit OK.  This stufff opens System Configuration, in here click the Startup Tab.

Go through the list of programs and uncheck anything you don't want opening.  Again, if you don't know what something is google it.

Click ok and Restart.

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In summary, you've got a handy toolbox of cleaners, defragments, virus scanners and good habits.  Use them in the background whenever you think too and keep things healthy.

Even so, hold onto your disks that come with the computer.  You still might need those suckers.