What's the best way to improve system preformance?

What slows a lot of puters down are the amount of programs that are running in the background. Download and install CCleaner from Piriform. Once you have it installed click on tools and then startup and see what is being started when you power up. You should have no more then 5 to 10 programs running at startup for optimal performance. I have seen up to 50 programs being started when the user turned on the system. One of the programs that I found that hinders HP lappy is the support assistance. Check and see how many of the manufacturers bloat is in the start folder. Also, just about any program that you install today puts itself in the start folder. They all want to start so they can phone home. You can use the disable feature of Cleaner to stop the program from loading at startup. The great thing about the disable feature is that you can come back and add the program back to the startup if you want it. If you use delete then it is gone and you will have to add it back manually.

If you have a large number of programs running and need help deciding what to disable, then look in the bottom right corner of the window. There is a botton that says save to text file. Click it and then post the text file, we will see what we can help you with.

Tip DO NOT disable or delete anything that has anything to do with the touch pad or the video card. I learned the hard way on that one.

http://www.piriform.com/

This program can also keep your hard drive from being loaded down with junk from the internet. You should read the home page of CCleaner and see what other things it can do for you.

The no.1 antivirus is you. Learn how the internet works and how they plant things on your puter. Remember, free is never free on the internet. When they say free think about what else is going to be installed on your puter. When they say free think about your personal data being leaked by what the free AV let in. ESET is the best AV on the market in my opinion. They do not sell you out to corporate spyware or adware. It is not free but they do have a 30 free trail. They do not place a toolbar that you do not want or track what you do. These companies offering free AV have to make money some how. They do it by selling out to the corporation who peddle spyware and adware. There is a lot of free AV and firewalls on the market that are more spyware then security product. All AV have white list, that is one of the biggest strength to ESET, theirs is not for sell. The best thing about ESET is their PUP (potential unwanted program) protection. It will also alert you to rouge web sites that plant drive by viruses. It runs light on your system and does not lag your CPU while your working or playing.

http://www.eset.com/

Check this site to help you with your decision, it will open to real world protection test or how accurate the different AV are. Also look at the false alarm test and the performance test. False alarm test shows you how many files it identifies as a virus but they are not and the performance test show how light or heavy it is on your system. You have to pick the year and month to see the other two I recommended.

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php

more RAM and an SSD are the 2 biggest boosts to speed you can do.

Next would be a clean install of the OS

As far as AV - I dont think anything comes close to webroot secure anywhere 2013.

I am a sysadmin and monitor hundreds of computers. I have installed it on my more "troublesome" employees. Since putting webroot SA on their computer.... quiet as a church mouse.

It is the smallest, and fastest as well - not to mention PC World gave it the highest score, ever given.

add more ram.

uninstall any unneeded programs.

Norton,kaspersky make good anti-virus programs.