In an attempt to speed up my pc, I have INVESTED in a Seagate 320GB external hard drive. I've moved all the music and pics onto this but the pc is still slow on start up and for all tasks. I have 4 GB of program files but still have 14GB of space on the pc hard drive. Is there any improvements I can make ?

p.s. I'm no computer bofin, so be gentle with the gargon !

Many Thanks NooNoo64...... How about telling us about the machine ......... the make and model , What processor is in it , how much ram .........
Details like that will assist in offering an opinion.
What sort of maintainance do you regularly do ?

DL65  15% free drive space is recommended for proper Windows function. Please answer with how much free space you have as well as the other questions put to you.I have a P4 1.8Ghz with 256ram...I know...it's old like me. Maintenance is a gray area, although I do run the norton disc clean which scans the system. Out of 40Gb I have on the C: 2.93 of the 18.4 available and the D: 11.8 of the 14Gb's. This is after the music and pictures (big files) have been moved to the 320Gb hard drive.
I'm a little worried now because maybe I'm just getting USED to faster PC's at work.

Your thoughts
Thanks256 meg RAM and Norton on an XP system can be a slowdown, but I would definitely clear up some disk space on the C drive. What are you using for spyware protection?If this PC is running XP, yuo will see a significant improvement, upgrading that 256MB to 512MB or more.Rob Pomeroy is correct. After you have the required amount of free space, disk space has no significant IMPACT on speed. (Though having breathing space is always a good thing.) Buying some better memory will allow your PC to run faster, longer. In fact, as far as computer parts go, it's hardly expensive. A 512 MB stick sells for about $75.How much disk space is being used for My Documents?  If that's still on C, you could move it to D.If you have removed so many large files did you run your FILE defragmenting program even on Win XP ?  

If you haven't then I would suggest running a disk clean up and then running scandisk & defrag



On Win 98x you can click on Start      Run    and type in Scandisk       and   click OK for error checking
and Start Run type in defrag and click ok for the file defragmentation

WinXP
Double click on my computer
Right click your mouse and select Properties from the drop down menu
Select Disk Cleanup
Once you have done that click on the tools menu tab in the same window
then run Error-Checking then the defragmentation