If you want to do some recommended changes; to help secure your PC and to free up some of the available resources, that might make the computer more responsive. First off, some settings that I recommend, start with the "start bar". right click on a blank portion of the start menu bar and select properties. In the taskbar properties tab:
Uncheck
"lock the taskbar"
"auto-hide the taksbar"
"group similar taskbar buttons"
"hide inactive icons"
then click apply.

In the start menu tab:
click on "classic start menu"
then click on apply, then click on OK.

If you don't like the classic style start menu, you can put it back to "start menu"

If you want to help secure the machine; open the control pannel.. find "security center"
open "security center" then click on "firewall" make sure that "firewall" is on, then find the "exceptions" tab, then uncheck anything that you do not want to have access to the network" the defaut acception that you should uncheck is "remote assistance" then click OK.

close the security center windows, then go back into the control pannel and open "system" find the "remote" tab, then uncheck "remote assistance" and "remote desktop" click on apply, then OK.

Find and click on the the "advanced" tab, then under performance section click on settings, in the "vissual effects" tab click "adjust for best performance, click on apply, then select "custom" and then click apply; then click OK.

In the "advanced" tab, in the performance section you will find another "advanced" tab, down at the bottom is "virtual memory" click on change, then set your virtual memory to a fixed size "minimum 3072 and maximum 3072" click on SET, then OK.

Find in the advanced tab, find "startup and recovery" click on settings, then uncheck "automatically restart" ~the reason you want this unchecked is if you encounter an unrecoverable error, the PC will post up a (BSOD)~ blue screen of death, with an error code, instead of just restarting.. The error code is usefull in troubleshooting the issue that caused the computer to stop working right.

There's more..