to make my computer faster?

i have a P4 2.66
add more ram?

More RAM should help. Bigger hard drive (for Windows swap file) or better yet second hard drive. Better video card (believe it or not)

And the usual stuff, check what TSR programs you have running, uninstall unneccesary/unused software, blah,blah,blah.....

I suck at computers.

Ram is probably the best bang for the buck. You could partition your existing hard drive, but that might be to much, but its free at least

One thing I kinda mentioned, but after Googling this subject, I feel I should expand upon.

Do NOT try using one of thos "Boost your speed" programs. There is no way running yet another background (TSR) program is going to do anything but take up more resources, therefore slowing your computer down.

ok good to know

i have 512 of ram so i should be able to upgrade to 1 gig?

Partioning your HD actually has the potential of slowing the computer down. If it'* using the same physical HD to find stuff on 2 seperate virtual HDs, it takes that much longer to seek and process the info. If you're going to use multiple drives, make 'em real drives. If you really wanna go all out, get an add on IDE controller so you can pput each drive on a seperate channel, and still have one avaoilable for CD drives and whatnot

Partition the drive, have your windows on logic C, then games, music, everything else on D....my boss told me that one, and love the reaction time.

Just make sure, when you try to install something, the default directory will be C:\programs, but change that and put it in your D:. So yea, if you know how to use it, it can benefit you greatly.

You can if you have an additional slot on your mobo for another stick. It'* best to upgrade RAM in equal pairs. If you have 2 256s, ditch them for 2 512s.

More ram never hurts and is almost always going to give you better performance, but you have to address what you are using the computer for.

Office applications (Word, Excel, etc) should work fine with the 512 you have. Games and such should be ok too, but you might need a better graphics card. I prefer ATI, and would go with a 9600 or better, but NVidia makes nice ones too.

One thing that can help, is to run AdAware SE (Its free from Lavasoft) and Spybot Search & Destroy (also free) . Both will root out most of the spyware junk that tends to slow down your PC. Run one, then the other, and you should be clean. Do it once a week to keep it that way. So many websites are depositing scripts and stuff on our PCs these days, its become necessary to clean it up now and then.

Also, defragment your hard drive. This can have a positive impact on your drive access times. Last, remove any items in your startup folder that you don't need to have run every time you boot. Idle applications that you rarely use are just tying up memory.

Hope this helps.