Some programs use up resources and then forget to free them up when the program closes. Over a period of time, your computer starts running slower and slower, and eventually may crash.  How do you prevent this?  Run the Resource Meter on your task bar and watch the green indicators.  If the green bars on the Resource Meter Icon drop to a single yellow or red bar, your resources are getting too low and you need to terminate one or more programs or restart your computer.  The Resource Meter will use a tiny percentage of resources itself, but you can use it to watch how much each application uses when you start it up, and whether the resources return to normal when it shuts down.

A more informative report of your usage of system resources, is “System Information” from Symantec'sNorton Utilities. I often endorse the use of Norton System Works 2001 and use these tools to diagnose misbehaving computers.  I never allow the 'System Doctor'  to run automatically in the background because I find it slows down most systems, but I will run the Win Doctor  and Disk Doctor  on a regular basis.

If you are running Windows 98, there is a little used program msconfig  that you can access by going to Start , Run  and enter msconfig  in the box and hit Enter.  This program is not available for Windows 95 or Windows ME systems as far as I am aware.  Click on the Startup  tab and look at the list of applications running when your computer starts up.  Unclick any application for which you don't think you need running, such as the reminders to register in 14 days.  Click apply  and allow your system to restart. If you find that you needed that program, run msconfig  again and click on the box to turn it back on.