What actually makes a computer slower over time?

Robbo

Robbo

Robbo

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As I'm sure you all know, the longer you have a PC, the slower it tends to get and generally does not run as it did when Windows was freshly installed.

Now, I understand that you'll end up with more files in folders/applications installed and things like that, but surely it shouldn't make that much difference on a powerful computer?

My PC is very slow for a few minutes when turned on and then all of a sudden it just 'works' and is very quick as I'd expect it to be.

I've always had this problem (for years) but just assumed it's something that happens and you can't really do anything about it... or can you?
 
Hard disk getting more full, becoming more fragmented, seek time of hard disk increases. Registry increases in size. Installing and uninstalling leaves behind registry values, files, folders and other stuff such as ActiveX components and drivers.
It's a good idea to do a clean install every 6 months to ensure everything isn't too cluttered.
 
Generally, people install stuff then leave all the junk services running in the background (I keep my eye on services.msc & msconfig as adobe reader always re-adds itself to system startup)

Sometimes these services are required for some things to work (itunes installs all sorts of nonsense)
 
postmanfw said:
Operating system not running as it should...clean install will sort it :)
Click to expand...

+1 over time the hdd fills up with all sorts of rubbish that slows it down. seemingly every website wants you to install this plugin or that extension, and before you know it, that huge hard drive you bought if filling up with meaningless rubbish

i usually refresh my machines every 6 months to make sure they are always quick and clean - i did this machine im typing on two days ago :)
 
It slows down rapidly during startup due to background services and processes which start up despite them not being used. To give it a quick boost you can head into msconfig and untick anything that doesn't need to be started. iTunes helper for instance.

Again, if you don't defragment your computer, the windows files end up all over your HDD in all kinds of places, thus taking the HDD seek arm longer searching and loading the necessary files.
 
Win 7 is as fast today as the day I installed it as beta :) Default defrag and caching does it's job well, and I know there are plenty people on here who are in the same position.

That said, older hard-drives slow down more than newer ones, and programs are bigger now than they were back then. Increasing ram really helps.
 
Robbo said:
Was that not clear? Read what I wrote instead of just the title.
Click to expand...

I'm fairly sure he means that the degenerating over time is unique to windows, and nothing to do with the computer itself. Not everyone thinks "PC" and "computer running windows" are synonyms.

I'm also interested in why this happens (to windows boxes) though. My best guess is that the registry corrupts over time, or that windows does a poor job of dealing with open files in general. The cynic in me thinks it's a result of buggy code.
 
Download "Autoruns" (it's an official technet tool - DON'T USE MSCONFIG {if anyone cares why I can post a few links but cba right now}) and remove start-up entries you don't want.

Get an SSD, or get more RAM (preferably SSD).

These are the best things you can do.
 
The main things which will slow down the pre-desktop boot sequence are peripherals, the more you have plugged in the slower it's going to be. Once on the desktop all the fancy widgets or background services you have running will take a while to load however, they can easily be addressed by loading up msconfig.exe to tweak the startup programs and services.msc to tweak the start up services (you can do that as well in msconfig but services gives you better control and allows you to use setting such as delayed startup for a service you may need but don't want it to start until you need it).

To see what's going on at boot you can install the Windows Performance Analysis Toolkit.

Follow this guide for analysis

And follow this one for optimisation (this has shaved 20 seconds off boot time, from a one minute boot time, for me in the past)

With regards to registries getting corrupted and slowing down your computer, I've never seen a single instance where a registry clean has provided any noticeable change to the boot. The registry file is tiny compared to a lot of the other items that are loaded into the RAM at startup and once there access times are insignificant.

Your mileage may vary with this one, depending on how often you do it, but I have found that deleting the prefetch folder can significantly speed up the boot process (Moreso on XP machines than Vista/7 machines but it still has an impact). Your initial boot after that may be a tad slower but further reboots should be quicker (again, mileage may vary).

Make sure you have the most up to date drivers, badly written drivers can, and do, slow down the boot process.

Your computer is never going to be as fast as a day 1 install simply because you start loading on all the programs you want it to run but there's no reason why it should be incredibly slow either.
 
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Just don't install crap

Go through your add/remove and remove anything you don't need

Check your taskbar for things that are running that you don't need, even things like sound card taskbar icons, nvidia taskbar icons, wireless network stuff

Get it down to a bare minimum, then run ccleaner to remove temp files, clear out your system restore and run a full defrag
 
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