Why do PCs get slower when nothing changes?

LeeUK said:
Six years down the line it ends up all bloated and sluggish when nothing has changed, same software, same web browser, nothing else. CCleaner, etc, ran regularly but just goes slow again after a day.
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This is your problem. If you are staying on the same installation of Windows for 6 years without reinstalling, then no wonder your system feels slow. :eek:

In the days of Windows XP, I used to reinstall Windows every 6 months, give or take a few months depending on what state I'd got Windows in to. Now it's about every year, but with my SSD drive the slowdown is far less noticeable than with a harddrive.

If I had your current spec and wanted to breath some life into it, I'd overclock the CPU and fit an SSD drive into it. If it's got DDR3 memory, you're lucky enough that the memory prices are still reasonable - if it's DDR2, forget it and consider upgrading the entire system.
 

Pretty much windows attitude to not being reinstalled in six months if on xp, or six years if on win7, or not upgrading to 10 when it is free, prior to then a fresh ten install.
 
NoobCannon said:
Acclimated bloatware probably. Hence reinstalling windows makes you feel like youve bought a new pc!
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Or just don't be lazy and maintain your compy properly, that way it will still run like day 1 every day, for many years. My machine is still on the same Windows 7 install from 2009, it is now on an SSD of course but it is crash free, bloat free, mess free.
 
darael said:
This is your problem. If you are staying on the same installation of Windows for 6 years without reinstalling, then no wonder your system feels slow. :eek:

In the days of Windows XP, I used to reinstall Windows every 6 months, give or take a few months depending on what state I'd got Windows in to. Now it's about every year, but with my SSD drive the slowdown is far less noticeable than with a harddrive.

If I had your current spec and wanted to breath some life into it, I'd overclock the CPU and fit an SSD drive into it. If it's got DDR3 memory, you're lucky enough that the memory prices are still reasonable - if it's DDR2, forget it and consider upgrading the entire system.
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This. I was the same. Fresh install every 6 months to keep the pic speedy and snappy
 
No SSD and hard Drive getting full? Done a defrag lately?

Check memory usage, hard disk access, and CPU usage. Also not clear to me what speed the RAM is running at.

I run windows 7 on an old UL30A laptop, with an ancient SSD, 3GB, a [email protected], and it's still fine (relatively speaking). Something must be rotting away. Bloatware would be my guess.

Upgrading to windows 10... Well, it's been pretty solid so far. Cortana is annoying as hell (and makes my Edge and IE browser crash if I disable it, but who cares, right?). But yeah, same old crap.

As for the 100% disk usage idea, it could be that stupid windows search indexing, or an overzealous AV. Again, monitoring disk access will tell you. The regular Window Performance Monitor should be able to tell you that.
 
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Defrag is a waste of time. It is not going to speed up your computer that much, neither is a registry cleaner. Amount of time i see people using this as a solution when they do nothing for performance.

Disk usage annoys me big time. This is why i disable, auto defrag scheduled task, scandisk scheduled tasks, the win defender scheduled tasks, razer game scanner service, make windows indexing only index my start menu. Usually stops the constant disk usage when idle. Disabling virus scanners also helps (seriously), disable win defender in local group policy on windows 10. It will also help with perceived performance.
 
i'm guessing its really do do with updates, there's only so much you can tack on to a bit of software before it really justifies just rebuilding it from the ground up [hence different versions of software].

the big one that gets me is leaving a computer turned off for more than a few days seems to lead to a massive swarm of updates from all sources that means when you use it it just turns into a massive pool of lag.
 
adolf hamster said:
the big one that gets me is leaving a computer turned off for more than a few days seems to lead to a massive swarm of updates from all sources that means when you use it it just turns into a massive pool of lag.
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Hmm... Updates in general or Windows? Sometimes my PC is off for a few months and never run into that issue.
 
I'm liking Win10 a lot so far, ok I've turned a lot of stuff off, rationalized the start menu and done some other tweaks.

I like it's clean look, feels about the same performance wise as a fresh win7 installation - my outgoing win7 installation was in place for about 3 years, so it feels more snappy to me.

Windows installs just seem to slowly bork themselves over time though, regardless of how light and clean you run. Death, taxes and reinstalling windows once every few years.
 
Probably a lot has to do with badly programmed software , memory leaks for example. Not unloading objects when they are not needed. Also a lot of software install themselves as servicesl, which means they are loaded into memory at startup and are running constantly, taking up memory and CPU cycles. Anti-virus can also be a huge draw on a PC. Never use it personally.
 
jsmoke said:
Probably a lot has to do with badly programmed software , memory leaks for example. Not unloading objects when they are not needed. Also a lot of software install themselves as servicesl, which means they are loaded into memory at startup and are running constantly, taking up memory and CPU cycles. Anti-virus can also be a huge draw on a PC. Never use it personally.
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It's actually a lot less to do with this.

In general people are damn lazy and don't use common sense. So stuff gets clogged up, when new software is installed, instead of the custom option being used, they use the "click next on everything and install with defaults" - Which usually also installs Ask Toolbar, SuperWhizzbang Search Assistant, eBuddy... and all that kind of guff.

Hardware failures are one thing, and are nowhere near as common as PICNIC. People need to have the will to learn what is what and understand basic maintenance. A PC is more like a car than you'd imagine.

There is absolutely no reason a well maintained Windows install (7 and above) should need to be reinstalled annually.
 
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mattyfez said:
I'm liking Win10 a lot so far, ok I've turned a lot of stuff off, rationalized the start menu and done some other tweaks.

I like it's clean look, feels about the same performance wise as a fresh win7 installation - my outgoing win7 installation was in place for about 3 years, so it feels more snappy to me.
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I'm in a similar position. Had W10 since it's release and ironed out most of the niggles. What did you do to your start menu as I'd like to customise mine but just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.
 
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