Why is my PC so slow?

Your PC can be slow for a variety of reasons, but here is one way to see what it is doing.

To use Task Manager:

• Right Click on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.  On the "drop up" menu, pick Task Manager.
• Click on the second tab from the left, Processes
• Click on the 3rd heading, i.e. CPU, and it will start to sort processes based on how much CPU time they are using
  • You may have to click it a couple of times to make sure that it is sorting in descending order, i.e. to make sure that the processes using the highest CPU are first
  • If you don't recognize a process name (and you probably won't), do a Google search for it.
  • For instance, one of the worst offenders is RTVSCAN.EXE
    • If you do a Google search for it, you will see that it is a process for Norton Anti-virus, which is notorious for slowing down your machine without telling you to do things that it thinks are more important than what you are doing.  Most times, they are wrong, but it is unforgivable that they don't warn you.
  • Another might be avgwdsvc.exe
    • again, if you fdo a Google search for it, you'll see that it is used by AVG anti-virus, who does the same sleazy thing as Norton, but I hate them less because they are free for home use

More later, including a demo...