Fortunatly I have not done the registery cleaner. The ones I opened yesterday after they did the scans had a fee to fix. Thank Goodness!!! I had not thought about a back up!!! I have been ill for awhile and my mind is not as it should be so I am so glad there was a fee and I passed up on it. Background, my old laptop died last Wednesday, a friend at church told me to speak to one of the Deacons because he could probably set me up with an inexpensive laptop. I contacted him thru facebook and on Sunday he gave me a laptop and said see if it does everything you need and it is free! My only complaint is it is very slow. I was hoping to help the speed of the laptop. For now I will only do the cleanups that came on the system. Thank you! Oh, and I do realize that a big part of the slowness is probably because the RAM is only 512mb. Thank you everyone!
You’re correct on the slowdown due to sorely needed ram.
It is probably the best and cheapest investment you can make to speed up your system
and stop your own frustration. 
Whilst it is relatively cheap to purchase RAM, it isn’t too easy to install on a laptop if you have to have someone else install it (if at all possible) then the labour cost is likely to exceed the cost of RAM.
Which, obviously when looking for an inexpensive laptop in the first place may preclude this upgrade.
Cost is my concern. I may just have to tell the person that gave it to me that with all my programs it is running to slow. I did a disk cleanup that was in the accessories. It may be a tiny bit faster but not adequate. I can’t sit and wait forever while doing things on the computer. Typing this message is easier than before the disk clean up. So we will see.
Thanks!
I don’t know if you have defragmented the hard drive as that in itself if badly fragmented could slow the system.
I did do a defrag yesterday but that was before I did the disk clean up. Should I do another defrag? The system is running a bit better since the disk clean up but would be nice if it was faster.
If you were to take the system into a repair shop they would more than likely install the ram for free if you were purchasing from them, they would already have the back off to check which ram you needed and it only takes 10-20 seconds to install it.
Depending on the amount of ram ( 1Gb - 2Gb ) and type I’d say your probably looking at anywhere from $20 to $60.
Thank you! I will start looking into this. We need to do it for both computers.
I quickly browsed through this thread and noticed, reg cleaner, temp file cleaner, defrag, etc. I didn’t see specs, apps loaded in memory at start, how many apps you normally have running in a session, etc. I have a few questions.
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What programs are loaded into memory when the computer starts? If there are many, are there any that you can do without? Reducing what starts can help with low memory problems. Running very few apps simultaneously will help too. How many apps do you run simultaneously?
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What are the system specs of your old computer and your newly acquired computer. I have a dual core laptop and a pentium 4 single core pc. I don’t have much patience anymore to sign on to the Pentium 4 single core after using the laptop with the dual core processor. Most tasks on the dual core laptop happen without delay.
My question is, are you comparing apples to apples? Did your previous computer have better specs than your newly acquired computer?
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What about the operating system condition? Fully updated? All programs and drivers updated? Is it clean? Has it crashed or ever had a virus that has damaged anything important?
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What antivirus program was installed before avast and how did you remove it?
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Were you given any recovery cd’s?
I see one huge problem. You have only 512 MB of RAM. you might want to increase your Ram to a minimum of 2 GB.
I went from 3GB to 6GB. The fact that you have only 512 MB of RAM could be a major player as to why your machine is
running slow.
Its all right saying throw some more RAM at it. But upgrading RAM on a laptop (and most likely an old laptop) is no easy task and one that may be disproportionately expensive. The older the laptop the greater the possibility in a lower max RAM size.
I am going to respond below in the body of your message…
Will you please give the model # (extended model number) of the Dell Latitude? Some had 2 slots that would only hold 256mb each which adds up to 512mb total. You could possibly already be maxed out on the memory you can add. No way of knowing without a model # or physically accessing the laptop.
Are you using Windows XP? Or Windows 2000? What is your processor speed? Go to control panel → system to find this.
Follow these instructions to view which programs are starting at boot. Will you please expand the command line and post an image of the programs located under the startup tab? At this point, please do not make any changes to any settings. → http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/quickly-remove-items-from-windows-xp-startup/
I think the first thing that should be attempted is to reduce resource usage as much as possible and scan the system for integrity.
Honestly, this is no power house setup and could possibly date back to around early 2000 (assuming this due to the Pentium 3 processor). It’s difficult for me to know how slow, slow is. Whether you are maxed out on the memory you can add is yet to be determined. If it were me and memory could be added, I wouldn’t. It would be best to save this money for a newer laptop with better specs. Maybe refurbished? Not my call though.
Will you please run AVG removal utility from here → http://singularlabs.com/uninstallers/security-software/
This is to make certain any remnants are fully removed.
This issue has already been discussed.
Responding below…
Looks like the laptop has a maximum RAM of 512MB and a lowly Intel Pentium III CPU, http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latc600/en/ug/specs.htm.
I don’t know which uninstaller to choose. All I remember is that it had AVG and I uninstalled it and installed Avast.
Will you please run AVG removal utility from here → http://singularlabs.com/uninstallers/security-software/
This is to make certain any remnants are fully removed.
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Great! 
Have learned that a big part of my issue is the 1.??? USB. He is going to try to find a 2.0. My ISP is a USB Modem, I do a lot of work on flash drives. The older version of the USB would be causing the internet especially to be slow. Hopefully he will have what I need and I can get it on Sunday.