Slow Vista

I have a fairly new Dell Inspiron 531S. It's less than a year old; I don't use it often because it runs very slowly. I'm sure it's a hardware issue but I don't get any of this hardware stuff. It has 512MB of RAM. My C Drive is total size 64.4 GB; free space is 40.9. Can anyone guide me through what I need to make this run quicker? I appreciate any information I can get. Thank you!

 

For starters try upgrading the ram, 1GB is recommended and you would notice an improvement with just that upgrade. Also, Dell installs alot of unnecessary programs, if you don't use them you really don't need them

 

Ah yes, I meant to say just the same, my fingers got the best of me. However Dell is notorious for adding programs to the start up menu

Vista: Use Defender to Monitor and Disable Startup Programs
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2065/vista_use_defender_monitor_disable_startup_programs

 

Fwiw. Did you buy it new?
Where did you find that it had 512mbs ram? It should have 2 Gbs as standard.

 

Thank you, everyone. It says 512 MB in the system information.

I think I'm going to try upgrading the RAM; is this difficult to do?