Computers can get slow very easily. Almost immediately after powering on for the first time, your computer can have an unbelievable number of registry errors, even before you install any applications.

Although the registry is not the only reason your computer may be running slow. There are a number of possible causes and here are the most common:

• Your hard drive could be filling up - typically you will get pop up dialogs telling you this.
• Your hard drive could also be heavily fragmented - meaning your files which are broken up into smaller pieces to be stored are now scattered all over different sectors of your hard drive.
• You could have a driver conflict - in which case you would have systray errors telling you this or you would notice specific devices acting strange.
• Your system infected with a virus or a spyware program that's taking up all resources? - this is also very common.
• The windows registry needs attention - easily the most common cause for a slow computer.

So these are the most common reasons your computer is running so slow. The hard drive issues can be easily fixed by deleting some old data and running the defrag untility. The driver conflict can be fixed quickly by using a driver tool, and if you're already running antivirus and anti spyware and your scans come back clean then you may have neglected to give your registry the proper maintenance it needs.

The registry is one of the most badly maintained components in the windows environment. All the installing and uninstalling of applications, multiple updates and sudden crashes leave marks on the registry and this prolonged activity ends up costing you in performance.

Your computer is most likely running slow due to a very fragmented registry that contains invalid or empty registry keys, missing paths, and/or corruption. The fix?

The easiest and most convenient way to fix your registry and get your slow computer back up to decent performance is to use a registry cleaner. That is, if you want the fastest way to get your computer optimized.

Registry Mechanic and Registry Utilities are very good programs with lots of great features to help you fix your slow computer's registry, but SpeedyPC is a more thorough program addressing a number of other options to optimize not just the registry but your entire system. SpeedyPC is a free download.