There are motives for your reduced speed and any one of them could result in a crash and an up close and personal viewing of the BSOD, (Blue Screen of Death). A slowdown occurs over a period of time. Essentially, if you are on dial-up that is slow to begin with and if you have less than 512MB of RAM, that too can be a major cause. Here are 10 others:

1. Start up overload. As you add additional programs, they claim start-up status quickly and quietly. The more programs you have that are loading at start-up, the slower the start-up. Go to start, all programs, scroll to Startup and see how many programs are lurking there. The decision is yours. Remove the programs you do not want, or are not necessary, to be starting at boot-up.

Back up, or set a system restore point before you begin - don't forget, "I told you so!" No need to panic! Just follow along! Click Start, move to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and click System Restore, set your criteria. Next click on: Start, Run, type "msconfig" no quotes, OK this window. At the top of the page, click on Startup. Don't be surprised at what you see if you have never been here before. Use your logical reasoning to select those that you do not need at start-up. Uncheck to disable them. This will not remove this program from your machine; it will just stop it from starting at boot-up. This can take some time, especially if you are not sure of what you do, or do not, need. DO NOT REMOVE: The Firewall, Anti-virus or anti-spyware programs. Remember, if you do make a mistake, you have your backup or restore available. Be safe, remove them one at a time; you can always put it back. OK the window, and restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

2. Spyware: Malicious programs that stealthily embed themselves into your software. They are installed in your software, without your knowledge, in many ways. Through e-mail especially, the ones that are multi-forwarded. You know who sent it to you, but what about all of those other names? Who are they? Through free scans or free downloads. Through Web sites that you visit that specialize in this practice, and music downloads.

These must be removed from your computer before they cause damage to your operating system and applications and bring your system to a halt. Using your browser, go to www.freeware.com. There you will find many anti-spyware programs. Ad-Aware SE, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Spyware Terminator are three good ones. Run them frequently and keep them updated.