IS YOUR PC as slow as mo-lasses on a winter morning in Ladakh? With a little de¬tective work, you can track down the cause of your system's sluggishness, and get it running at full speed again.

The Windows Task Manag¬er offers a quick and easy way to check the load on your CPU. To open it, press <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> (in Vista, you must then click Start Task Manager). Click the Per¬ftrmance tab to see graphs showing CPU usage (see the image at right). If your pro¬cessor consistently runs at more than 50 percent of capacity, you may have a problem. To distinguish between your system's CPU usage for Windows and its CPU usage for any applica-tions, select View•Show Ker¬nelTImes. Windows breaks the CPU usage graph into a red line for Windows and a green bar for applications.

Click the Processes tab to view all your currently run¬ning processes-the micro¬programs that make up your applications-and to display the CPU usage for each one under the CPU column. Re¬install any program that you discover is eating up processes unnecessarily, or find and install a less processor¬hungry alternative.

Take Your System's Slowdowns to Task Task Manager's Performance tab provides a quick snap¬shot of your PC's RAM use, too. In XP, if the Total Com¬mit Charge regularly exceeds the Total Physical Memory, your system must frequently rely on the slower, hard drive-based page file (aka virtual memory or swap file). The greater this reliance, the slower your performance. (In Vista, click Resource Monitor and then the Memory bar near the bottom of the window to view your Commit Charge by application.)

Total Commit Charge is the sum of physical RAM and the virtual memory cur¬rently in use. Peak Commit Charge is the amount of combined physical and vir¬tual memory currently avail¬able to your Pc. Allowing the Total Commit Charge to hover near the Peak Commit Charge can lead to trouble.

The most effective way to cure memory bottlenecks in your machine is by adding RAM, but increasing the size of the swap file or moving it to a faster drive may help as well.

If you suspect that your hard drive is slowing down your PC, click Start•Run (just Start in Vista), type perfmon, and then press <Enter> to open XP's System Monitor or Vista's Reliability and Performance Monitor. If your system is running XP but you don't see '% Disk Time', right-click Counter near the bottom of the win¬dow and select Add Counters. Then choose PhysicalDisk under 'Performance object', select % Disk TIme in the list below the menu, and end by clicking Add and Close. If the % Disk Time counter consis-tently runs higher than 40 to 50 percent, your drive may be hindering your PC's per-formance. If you're running Vista, you can check on your disk use in the Disk graph under Resource Overview.
A Fresh Perspective on Peripherals
Instead of upgrading to a hard drive that spins faster and has more cache, you could add a second drive con¬figured in a RAID 0 array. A cheaper (but less effective) option is to defrag your drive; in XP , right-click My Comput¬er, select Manage, and click Disk Difragmenter.Difragment. In Vista, click Start, type disk defragmenter, press <Enter>, and select Difragment now.

Your graphics chip may not be able to keep up with today's latest games and other graphics-inten¬sive applications. Check your system's documenta¬tion or the vendor's Web site to identify your PC's graphics configuration and to determine whether you can add an AGP or PCI Express graphics card. (Some budget PCs won't let you upgrade their graphics at all.)

The Windows Experience Index in Vista runs a basic check of your machine's graphics capabilities. To open it, click Start, type per¬formance information, and press <Enter>. For an expla¬nation of the scores, browse to www.windowsvi 5 ta b lo 9 .co m/b lo 9 s/wi n d ows-vista/ages/458117.a spx.

For detailed instructions on how to reinstall Windows XP, browse to www.pcworld. in/ind ia/how _to/Wi ndows/How_ to_ReinstalL Windows_ XP/3866684/l0.