hi, im not sure if you will be able to help me at all, i was recently given this pc by a friend because mine stopped working completely and this pc is old, it runs very very very slow, as i would expect an old pc to run slow but this runs slower! i dont really have a problem except that it runs slow and i do know that there is not enough memory in the pc, was just wondering is there any way to delete any memory, apart from deleting some programmes on here which i have already tried? ive only had it for 2 days so i doubt its infected and thats why its making it run slow, also everytime i start up the pc (which takes about 2 hours) i get a message before windows loads which says (sorry i have forgot ill edit the post in 5 minutes after posting this and resarting to see what it says) and after i click enter and windows loads up i then get a box which comes up that says TextBridge instant OCR registration and for the life in me i can not find it to delete iit and the box will not go away its loaded up all the time which is quite annoying. cant have more than 1 programme running at once or have different ie's open because the pc just isnt fast enough, i know i was given the pc for free so im not really moaning, its just i have to make do with this pc for a while untill something new comes along, so any help would be much appriciated. thanks alot8)

Welcome to PCHF, there are many things that can be done to sped up windows, maybe not drastically, but it surely will be able to help a tiny bit.

What version of windows is it?

I'll leave this one with you GaRHaR.

Just a note - the textbridge thing will be from a Simplex scanner I think. I used to have to same, so can probably be removed if there is no scanner present.

hi, thanks for the quick replies. its windows 98 that im running, the message that comes up when i turn my pc is on :-
Access was denied when opening a device file that maybe needed to run Windows.

If the device file is on a remote disk, you may not have proper access permission to use it. Contact your administrator.
If the file is on a local disk, the disk maybe damaged. Run CHDSK programme on the disk containing the device file.

You may need to uninstall the device file again or remove it from SYSTEM.INI.C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM
Press any key to continue

No i dont have a scanner present,but i have looked in add/remove prorgrammes to delete the text bridge thing, but cant find it.

Anyway, again, thanks for the quick replies and hope you can help. Hope to hear from you soon

98...now i used to do alot of speed tweaking in 98, i just hope i can remember enough to help you out (at least it's not ME)

First things first, lets get rid of your startup error message.

Goto Start -> Run -> msconfig
if you're in 98se, it should be there...*hopefully* otherwise it's going to be even more fun

then select Startup, this should give you a list of most of the programs that are starting with windows...basically you don't need any of them, except anti-virus and driver processes.

hey thanks for the reply, i done what you said to do but the only things i didnt close down where scan registryt & system tray, as i was unsure if i needed these? i still get this error though before windows 98 loads up : -
Access was denied when opening a device file that maybe needed to run Windows.

If the device file is on a remote disk, you may not have proper access permission to use it. Contact your administrator.
If the file is on a local disk, the disk maybe damaged. Run CHDSK programme on the disk containing the device file.

You may need to uninstall the device file again or remove it from SYSTEM.INI.C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM
Press any key to continue

the pc loaded up alot quicker than before but is still running quite slow. any more help would be appriciated, thanks