For weeks my wife complained her desktop PC was getting slower. It took a long time to start up and shut down, programs were slow to load, and “out of memory” or other error messages were increasingly frequent. Occasionally the PC, now a few years old, froze entirely or crashed. As the in-house Mr Fixit, I was expected to spring into action and resolve things instantly.

Sometimes it is not that easy. Unfortunately, the more you use your PC, the slower it gets. While ageing PCs are particularly prone to slowing down, even relatively new mach­ines are not immune.