Do computers slow down and why ?

I used to see a (subjective) improvement with disk defrags a long time ago (Win95/98) but not so much these days.

For me the stuff that grinds down a PC is the amount and quality of software running. When I'm troubleshooting "general sluggishness", once I've ruled out any obvious signs of malware, I look at the antivirus software and third party device drivers.

The problem is if you've installed Windows Naughty Edition you don't really know if your baseline was any good to start with.
 
I notice a lot of slowdown as well, defragging doesn't seem to help. My drives have a lot of data on them.

When I compare to a clean install I did on another slower machine (fresh drives) there is so much less noise coming from the drives when accessed and in general it feels more nippy.

I'm starting to think that when it comes to the Windows drive you really want it dedicated to OS and apps with a truckload of freespace (50%+), keeping file throughput to a minimum (temp/documents/pagefile/downloads/etc all put on a different drive). Doesn't really make that much sense logically (since defragging should resolve any issues) but it's a bit of a joke how clunky my PC is. I mean when I boot up I can actually see the icons pinned to the taskbar being filled in from blank icons (to be fair some icons are coming from other drives but they have loads of space too...).

Reluctant to go with such a setup though as however well intentioned I am, I always end up needing some storage space on my windows drive. Seems like a waste having say a hundred gig sat around idle.
 
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i have not ran a CHKSDK or SCANDSK in about 10 years on my own PC, i never found it to make and difference, i do the clean up manually and by the time i need to run a defrag ill just reload the PC with a fresh install.
i install all Apps and steam to a diff HDD, and just re map the paths.
Can have a nice new OS in 10% of the Defrag time.
 
chkdsk and scandsk won't do anything unless you have a problem with the file structure or physical drive.

I run O&O in the background and it defrags when I'm not loading the pc, this win7 install has been perfect for nearly 2 years now which is remarkable considering the use it gets.
 
I pretty much Never re-install anymore
I do a fresh install (with all my apps)
I then point my docs etc to another partition
I take an acronis image of my machine just after this , if it goes slow or boobs skyward a while later I then just restore my image from earlier and all is well.
 
Haven't disabled your pagefile have you?

To keep my pc clean, I install new apps on the first boot up, then I never install anything else, only new Games

I update things like mpc-hc / winamp / 7zip / paint.net

I don't install anything like iTunes (adds startup crapware to your pc), Photoshop, Office. Just little apps and games
 
I find that with XP, it gradually gets slower and takes much longer to boot up. When I first had XP on my netbook, it would boot up wthin 20seconds or so and now it takes close to a minute. I don't install any apps on it or do anything to it as it's only used for web browsing. However with Windows 7, boot time has been relatively the same since I first installed it.
 
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