Why do PCs get slower when nothing changes?

Sliver said:
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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Not a lot really, just got rid of the tiles and shrunk it down a bit -

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Why not just install Classic Shell? It's free and restores the classic menu and adds oodles of customisation. It > Windows 10's "start menu", if you can call it that.
 
I defragged not long ago and when I did it wasn't even fragmented much. The only AV and firewall I got running is that Microsoft standard install one.

Ran CCleaner last night and PC is already bogging down again tonight.
 
LeeUK said:
I defragged not long ago and when I did it wasn't even fragmented much. The only AV and firewall I got running is that Microsoft standard install one.

Ran CCleaner last night and PC is already bogging down again tonight.
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If you bought an SSD to replace your HD (which you could use for storage) things will run much quicker. Honestly, the difference is obvious.
 
Sliver said:
If you bought an SSD to replace your HD (which you could use for storage) things will run much quicker. Honestly, the difference is obvious.
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This, I upgraded the HDD in my laptop from 2008 to an SSD last year. It made a huge different to how responsive it feels.
 
All depends on if you're black or a feminist. If black then it's because it's racist, if you're a feminist then it's because of double standards.
 
Evolution of software probably, back in the day Amiga Word processing software used to fit on a 800KB floppy disk, ran on a 7mhz processor and used less than half a megabyte of RAM. I bet Microsoft Word's tray icon can't even fit into that tiny footprint. Every new version of an application tends to demand more of the hardware. Windows being registry based probably doesn't help either, I doubt stuff like Registry Cleaner gets rid of everything. There's all that memory prefetchng/superfetching built into Windows since Vista as well, I imagine that eventually bogs down.
 
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adolf hamster said:
Windows, av, steam etc, they all rush in for updates the moment you boot up
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It is probably why it doesn't happen for me then. As I have Windows set to check and notify for updates. Only Norton updates and don't have Steam to run on bootup.
 
They all do update at boot if your PC has been off for a bit, but those updates happen so quick and seamlessly, you can just get on with whatever task you wanted.

That is if you're on an SSD. They are so cheap now that there's no excuse to complain about speed if you've not cloned over to an SSD. You have a problem with stuff loading at boot, this is the solution.
 
LeeUK said:
How come you buy/build a PC with all the current hardware and it speeds along happily. Six years down the line it ends up all bloated and sluggish when nothing has changed, same software, same web browser, nothing else.

Is it some conspiracy theory to make you get a new machine with the current up to date tech, just for the same thing to happen again a few years down the line...?
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The software changes, windows gets bloated with updates, browser is constantly updating, website content is constantly heavier, etc...
CCleaner, etc, ran regularly but just goes slow again after a day.
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Did you notice a difference after a run of Ccleaner ? :eek: I have never really noticed any change.


Do a fresh Windows install ( using a new image, not one that needs 100+ updates that each install and fragment the hell out of the hdd individually) on a formatted partition. Use low res browsers ( Opera, Green browser), run no realtime AV ( biggest slowdown of em all), disable I/O heavy crud like file indexing, automatic backups and automatic updates. And see the result, Windows will fly.

Or on your current install, you'd need a defragmenter, that not only defragments the files, but also puts files in the same folder beside each other. You're still losing a hell of a lot on seek time, if all the files in a folder are elsewhere on the hdd, despite the files individually being in 1 piece/defragmented. Long story short, windows update makes a mess out of the file system.

The biggest slowdown on any non SSD pc ( and SSD pc's too, just to a lesser extent) are i/o ops, the hdd/ssd is simply to slow. Though with a low end Conroe, CPU lag is also starting to be an issue. ( a quicker c2q is usually still more than fast enough, hell it's still a faster cpu than probably most laptop cpu's sold these days.)


tl:dr: Windows ( update) makes a mess of the filesystem.

If you only browse the net and read mail, install an OS suited better for this: Chrome OS or Lubuntu.
 
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mrk said:
They all do update at boot if your PC has been off for a bit, but those updates happen so quick and seamlessly, you can just get on with whatever task you wanted.

That is if you're on an SSD. They are so cheap now that there's no excuse to complain about speed if you've not cloned over to an SSD. You have a problem with stuff loading at boot, this is the solution.
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True but I still rarely have items start on bootup with my SSDs.
 
I have 8 load at boot (all frequently used and important), but they all load at the same time and instantly, this includes STEAM. Gone are the days of being concerned about load times at boot.
 
I only run updates manually, never let them do their thing in the background. CCleaner makes a difference when it has cleaned 500MB+ of history away but don't notice again after a few hours.

Thinking about getting an SSD then install a new current image of Win7.
 
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