Your PC and you What's slowing your PC down? It's not the long years of hard labor. The most likely culprit is software taking up precious RAM while it runs. Maybe you downloaded a killer MP3 jukebox that also chugs memory, or maybe your machine can't handle running many programs at once. Whatever the reason, a lack of RAM will slow down your system dramatically. The following resource diet plan can help you find the big memory hogs and kick 'em out of your system. In This Story PC WorkoutLet My Resource GoFree the Disk SpaceLose More Bloat How Much RAM Do You Lose? It's easy to find out how much memory you're using: Run the System Monitor, a set of gauges for your PC. Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Monitor to start the program. When you first use the System Monitor, you'll probably see only its default gauge, called Kernel Processor Usage, which shows how hard the CPU is working at any given moment, similar to what a tachometer does. You need to add the more important "gas gauge"--the one that shows how much physical memory, or RAM, is available for use. To do this, select Edit, Add Item, select the Memory Manager category, and then click Unused physical memory at the bottom of the Item list. (Physical memory is the total amount of RAM on the memory modules plugged into slots on your motherboard.) Our test system displayed only a sliver of color at the bottom of the graph, meaning that, while we ran a word processor, one Web browser window, and an instant messaging program, only 2MB of our system's 64MB of RAM remained free. Once Windows uses up all the RAM or physical memory, it delves into much slower virtual memory on the hard drive. Your readings will vary, depending on how much RAM you have and how many programs you run at once, but in our case something really needed to be done. Clearly, Windows was loading more programs at startup than it needed or could handle. To cut out the bloat in the operating system, we turned to...