There is nothing more annoying than a computer that takes forever to get around to booting up. Maybe you just have 5 minutes before you have to run out the door, but you absolutely must check your email before you go – if your computer takes 5 minutes to boot up completely, well...you're out of luck. This is a frustrating problem that many computer users face, and if you are experiencing this issue, you likely want to ge

t it taken care of as soon as possible. The good news is that there are many things you can do to speed up your computer's boot time yourself, and you do not have to take it out to the local computer repair shop and pay an arm and a leg to have it done. You can fix the problem yourself!

One of the ways to speed up computer boot time is to make some changes to your hardware. Hardware experiences wear and tear over time that can cause it to slow down. And the more programs and applications you have installed on your hard drive, the more it can slow down. If your computer's hardware has to handle top heavy programs and applications that it may not be strong enough for, then you can save yourself a lot of frustration by making some upgrades.

One of the most important components of your computer is the CPU. The Central Processing Unit is a little chip that lives on your motherboard and basically acts as the brain of your entire computer. It has to process all of the information for every task you are trying to perform with your computer. An old CPU can't handle newer programs and applications as well as a new CPU can – it just was not built to handle them. For example, certain CPUs cannot handle running the latest version of the operating system Windows Vista. Or your CPU may technically be able to RUN Vista, but it isn't strong enough to run it WELL. In that case, you need to upgrade your CPU, and you will see a lot of your speed issues disappear. When you upgrade a CPU, you may also need to get a new motherboard. Not all CPUs work with all motherboards, and a new motherboard can also do a lot to speed up your computer's boot time.

Another important piece of hardware that affects your computer's speeds is your RAM. The general RAM rule of thumb to follow is that the more RAM you have, the better off you will be. 2 gigs of RAM is better than a mere 512 MB of RAM, for obvious reasons. The more RAM you have, the faster your computer will be able to boot up and run in general.