Registry needs cleaning (i think)Can I do it without buying software to do for me?

[robin]

My computer has pretty much ground to a halt from strart up to shut dowm.
I have a 5yr old hp pavilion 6838. 40gb hard drive ith 256 ram. I was told to clean the registry and that would speed things up a good deal.
My question is could i do this without buying soft ware to do it for me.
I don't have the money that I can spend on stuff like that.
Also does it use a lot of ram when I have a lot of folders with e-mials stored there.Would that slow me down as well.
I suppose i could have some malware hidden some but I try to find it with AVAST,spy bot and destory,microsoft mallicious software removal on a regular basis.
After the third formating and starting over I thought I had a pretty good machine and I do not want to go through another start ing again.

Could someone give me some suggestions or theory,or plan of action I could pull off and speed this thing a little bit,without spending any money. If I can't this one to improve,I don't think it will long before I'll have to go back to using homing pigions as my internet.
If someone can I could use your help.

Yours Truly
Robin B
East Central ALABAMA:disgust:

[uripyores]

There's plenty of choice here - all free or trial.
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58529

Use the back up option in case of accidents - most have them.

[robin]

Thanks Mr. or Mrs. whichever the case may be.I'll try some of those.
But what about the keeping a lot of e-mails and other junk like that. Will that slow me down as well?

[Sir Yuck]

no, it won't. only the programs that load when you turn your computer on, will slow it down on start up.

[robin]

Thank You for your responce
Robin

[uripyores]

Thanks Mr. or Mrs. whichever the case may be

Mr. :D