Background

Your computer has two types of memory. RAM or Short Term and Disk Drive or Long Term. This is the difference between keeping numbers in your head and writing them on a piece of paper. Most people can only keep 7 numbers at a time in their short term memory. Anything larger and they need to write it down. It is much quicker for most people to add two small numbers in their head than do the math on paper. Example: add 2+2 in your head. Almost instant right? Your computer works the same way. It can only hold so much information in its short term memory (RAM). Once the RAM is full, it starts storing short term information on the hard drive which is much much slower than RAM. When this happens, your computer feels sluggish and unresponsive.

Fortunately, this is one of the easiest and least expensive performance problems to fix. Just add more RAM. The following shows how to determine if your computer may need more RAM.

Instructions

Click on the Windows "Start" button at the bottom left of your computer screen.

Click on the "Run" text in the menu.

A window will pop up. Type "taskmgr" in the white box. See image below.

Click "Ok"

This will open a window like the one below.

As shown above, click on the "Performance" tab.

This page of information shows your computer's memory usage. IF the "Memory in use" is a larger number than the "Physical Memory Available", your computer is out of short term memory (RAM) and is using the slower hard drive (swapping).