Q. My computer has slowed down to a crawl. It also pauses in the middle of my Internet work and the hourglass will appear. It then requires me to wait a couple of minutes in order to continue writing e-mail.

I have no antivirus. What items are required in the startup menu? The computer is slow starting up also. I have a lot of accounting data on my PC, but never had a problem with speed until recently.

William Klein yahoo.com

A. First of all, Mr. K., insufficient memory creates these terrible slowdowns far more often than any other variable. This includes having a huge number of programs set to start automatically on bootup.

Second, there always is a chance that you have acquired some form of worm that is using your computer’s Web connection to send stuff you don’t even know about.

I’ll go out on a limb and insist that everybody must have 512 megabytes of memory to run Windows XP smoothly and urge you to upgrade if you’re not there. Chips are all but dirt-cheap and can either be installed by an amateur or done by a shop.

Next, point your browser to www.lavasoft.de and download and then run the free version of Ad-Aware Personal SE, which most likely will find the kind of worm that causes slowdowns, should it exist on your PC.

Only after the memory is added and a worm scan completed should you consider shutting down startup garbage.

To get a look at these startup items, use the Microsoft Configuration utility in Windows by clicking on Start and then Run and typing msconfig in the Run box. The list of tabs that this summons includes one for Startup.

You should look at the list of bootup items there and remove the checks from the boxes alongside each you want to try doing without. There even is a “Disable All” option. It’s best to experiment a bit by removing likely looking boxes in small groups at a time.

A final bit of tinkering can be done by tapping Control + Alt + Delete and clicking on the Processes tab in the box that comes up. This shows exactly what is running.

The items are listed alphabetically and show the memory usage of each. Click on the Memory column heading and the display will be sorted by how much memory each program is taking.

Q. Recently my husband and I have had an error box pop up on the computer screen when the desktop screen loads. It says: “MSScriptControl: Unknown error.” What does it mean?

Kathy Mathews,

Birmingham, Ala.

A. This error usually gets sent when programmers make mistakes in writing scripts that work along with versions of the Microsoft Visual Basic.Net programming language.

You probably can get rid of it by removing all of the temporary Internet files stored on your computer, but keep in mind that doing this will slow down your browser’s performance until it has gone back to your favorite spots and reacquired applets.

The command for clearing out temporary Internet files can be found by clicking on Tools in the browser window and then selecting Internet Options and then opening the General tab on the menu box. Under the heading Temporary Internet Files click on the Delete Files button.

Jim Coates writes for the Chicago Tribune.

via e-mail at jcoatestribune.com or snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim.)

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AP-NY-09-29-04 1133EDT