Once the properties screen comes up, then click on Disk Cleanup which will clean out a bunch of no longer needed files. This will present a list of various files which you can mark for deletion by putting an x in the box alongside the ones you want to get rid of. Be sure the recycle bin is also marked.
After you finish up the cleanup, then go to the tools section on the ‘properties’ page. While in the tools window, click on ‘Defragment Now’ to consolidate all of the free space into a contiguous chunk. This will make it easier to avoid creating new fragmented files while making file access faster on the older files if they were fragmented.
A fragmented hard drive is the slowest part of reading and writing files because it takes much longer to read all of the fragmented parts of a file due to the disk head moving back and forth across various parts of the disk as opposed to reading and writing an unfragmented file when it can all be accessed with little or no head movement is much faster.
If possible, add a second hard drive and move your swap (page) file and temporary Internet Files to that drive. If you need help doing so, reply to this thread when you have a second hard drive to move these files to and I will help you.
When one doesn't have enough memory to keep everything in memory seldom or little used portions are swapped out to the page file to make more room to load or process files and data. This access to the swap file is slow when parts have to be swapped out just to fit new things into memory.
This often causes large movements of the disk heads to position then across the various parts of the hard drive. The situation is made worse when the hard drive is fragmented. THE BEST SOULTION IN THIS CASE IS TO SIMPLY PURCHASE MORE MEMORY AND IT CURRENTLY VERY AFFORDABLE.
How many memory sticks and which size to buy depends on how many memory slots your motherboard has and how many open slots you have.
I seem to remember you mentioning that you had 3gb of memory and therefore I suspect that you have an Intel board with either three or six slots.
If you have six slots with three open, then simply but three more sticks the same as what you already have. If you only have three slots, then you should replace all three sticks with three other sticks of at least 2gb each but preferably 4GB each of the required type.
Most of the memory manufacturers have a website where you can enter fory computer make and model and they will tell you what memory is compatible with your machine. You can either purchase from them or buy online from Newegg which may be cheaper.
Anything you can do to avoid disk access whether it is additional memory or keeping your hard disk defragged will greatly speed up your machine.
I can tell you right off the bat that I did a disk cleanup the other day and a defrag recently (I double-checked a moment ago, it’s at 0% - nothing to defrag). As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any memory problems. Still, the drag and errors surfing so many websites remains baffling and frustrating (and when I have just a few tabs open, clicking on a given website and watching as it wreaks havoc with a previously open tab to another website).
DJ if your not comfortable doing the RAM upgrade it doesn't take a geek to do it. Find a friend who has upgraded their own and they can likely do it for you. Just make sure the new chips match your current ones in type and in capacity.