why is my computer slow?

I have an older computer with internet explorer 8 and sometimes, well, alot of times it takes forever to load just regular pages like the topics on this site. I have high speed (phone line) too. Once in a while I'll get error messages that say "windows has encountered a problem and wants to shut down"....or.... "a certain script is causing windows to have problems...do you want to ignore this script?". Is it time for a new computer? Or maybe a better explorer like firefox or google chrome? I also have a free antivirus system called Avast and I wonder if that is slowing me down too. What explorer system are you guys using?

theres a few things u can do.

go to control panel/accesories/system tools, and run a disk clean up, and a defragment.

download mozilla firefox and use that instead of internet explorer. download some malware detectors like spybot search and destroy, and run ur anti virus.

other than that theres also some programs u can download to speed up ur pc. do a google search. also buy more ram.

Thanks. I do go thru the system tools and perform disc cleaning and defragmenting. I also do a virus check plus the spybot thing once in awhile. Doesn't seem to do too much. I wonder if my mouse is defective. Sometimes I'll click on something and absolutely nothing happens...nothing freezes up and my cursor still moves around but the left clicks that I do just does nothing...or it takes realllllly long for a change to happen. Anyway I'll try molliza firefox. Is there a link?

mozilla is slow for an older computer I'd try opera, or google chrome. You could run ccleaner every once in a while too will speed things up if you got a lot to clean outwww.piriform.com/CCLEANER

Best bet is to sign up at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/

Issues like this are pretty hard to diagnose and need system logs etc.

did you check its thyroid? If it goes slow in the begining when you open it, it might be worth supporting adrenals as well. For RAM related errors, repair the gut to produce more neurotransmitters.
Hope it helps...

Kidding. My advice for older computers, older than 2008 is DSL - damn small linux. It will give best performance for hardware you can get...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_Small_Linux

If you need computer for more than just browsing the web, you might consider some other distributions of linux such as Ubuntu if your hardware supports it.

For optimising the Windows, buying more RAM will do nothing if your problems are software related. In this regard checking up the trojans and viruses is a must or maybe ending unnecesairly processes. If you are advanced user, you can turn off some processes in your registry to have more free RAM. ''Ask google'' is a good info here. For browsing - forget the Internet Exporer. This is why.