Done that? Great. The chances are pretty good that you will have a fairly accurate recollection. Want to know why you are so familiar with that symbol? Well PC users end up staring at the Windows logo for what seems like an eternity every time we boot up. It is not uncommon for a system to display that animating picture for over 60 seconds. That means that in 1 year we might look at it for 25 hours. So, it's hardly surprising that you know this logo so well.

The start up process needn't be such a long drawn out process. There was a time, way back, when our computers were shiny and new, that booting up was as quick as maybe 10-15 seconds. So what happened?

The truth is that Windows XP need regular maintenance in order for it to keep running smoothly. Without some quick servicing once every few months the performance will get slower and slower. It's just the way XP works ? it gets bogged down shall we say.

If you called out a computer maintenance guy the chances are that he would get your PC back to its old self in less than half an hour. Is this a magic trick? No, it's actually something that most computer users could do themselves. That is if they knew how.