Why do PC's slow down so much?

my pc is 4 years old, no slowdown whatsoever

ssd helps, no fragmenting
most importantly keep your pc clean, firefox, adblock and noscript has probably done more for me than any anti virus. most malware comes from dodgy ads these days.
oh and stay away from download managers, almost got hit by 1 on the official core temp website recently.
yes and i barely ever dl windows updates either..
 
I hate it when I go over to my mums house or to a non-techy friend and look on their PC to find a desktop full of shortcuts that they have no idea about, or open their browser to find half a dozen toolbars :eek:

And they wonder why their computer is running slow!! :rolleyes:

Keep it clean, keep it simple ;)
 
Also as someone has already said, 7 years old.

Nuff' said, unless you are on top of maintenance, barely install anything and keep heavy multitasking to a bare minimum, may as well turn it into a cheap HTPC.
 
I myself have always done a nice fresh reinstall every ... perhaps once a year I suppose.

This came to a halt with Windows 7

I have only just reinstalled and that was only because I did a motherboard swap.

I think the bnest thing you can do, is simply not put tons of junk onto your PC.

What I have always done, is had a relatively small HD for Windows, and only put windows and utilties onto it... NOTHING ELSE. With SSD Drives being so cheap, I am now using 60GB SSDs in all my PCs. I then have another HD for Apps & Games.
I currently have E: for Media and a further F: for the less used useless junk that I cant really justify putting into the other 3

At this time however, I also have a 120GB SSD for my downloading torrents that then get moved onto my NAS once they have downloaded to then seed them.

Having seperate rives not just seperate partitions mean that I can hammer the hell out of my PC and I see ZERO slowdown, even over huge lengths of time.
 
I know i'm just reiterating the point already made, but a re-install will make it snappy again.

Got some pcs at work with 'designed for windows 98' on them, re-install XP and it's a perfectly usable machine (for a week...)
 
Why all the absurd advice to reinstall windows every few months? With regular house cleaning it should be fine for years.

But if you absolutely must reinstall windows every few months (completely unnecessary unless you're obsessive compulsive), its far easier and faster to take an image of a fresh install (with base apps already installed) and then restore it. You could do that every day if you wanted and it would only take about 15 minutes.
 
the OS will slowly clog up over time: windows updates, WMI repo, temp files, CCM, software updates also.

It is a good idea to rebuild/reimage every now and then IMO. It get's rid of all the crap and you end up installing only the newest updates. (unless someone can give me solid evidence that "regular house cleaning" can keep a PC as speedy as a clean build.
 
Wucked said:
(completely unnecessary unless you're obsessive compulsive)
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Where is emoticon to show me being completely guilty of being exactly that!


I fancy boys said:
no one has time to manually reinstall the os that often....
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Unless you are me...

I have got my mate to bring me all my LAN PCs ( 11 of ) and all my Laptops ( 5 of ) and all I have been doing for the past couple of months is installing and reinstalling versious flavours of Windows and Linux.

This does however have the advantage that I now have the perfect OS in each PC.
 
Do you guys think that the actual hardware can deteriorate to a point where it's less effective?
What about older ram? Can that not dimish it's ability to hold data, in a similar way that SSD's do (albeit they have trim etc).
Maybe a lot is just perception; old pc compared to new lightning fast ones?
 
Start > Run > MSCONFIG

Disable all programs from starting on boot that you dont need.

Disk check > disk cleanup > Disk defrag

Reboot

Should hopefully boost a little performance on old machines
 
Banzai_Joe said:
Do you guys think that the actual hardware can deteriorate to a point where it's less effective?
What about older ram? Can that not dimish it's ability to hold data, in a similar way that SSD's do (albeit they have trim etc).
Maybe a lot is just perception; old pc compared to new lightning fast ones?
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I am 99% sure that old hardware does indeed get slower.

The problem is that I am 100% sure that the remaining 1% is right. LOL

No, seriously, its simply the perception that its slower... I have seen plenty of aged PCs runing like a charm and then I have seen plenty of top notch kit running like a dog too!

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As long as you dont chuck junk onto it, and you dont let anything install itself behind your back, you should be fine.

The most basic tools like CCleaner and a defrag once in a blue moon is usually all you need... Oh and a good antivirus too!
 
FatRakoon said:
The most basic tools like CCleaner and a defrag once in a blue moon is usually all you need... Oh and a good antivirus too!
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My system is as fast as it was when I built it and I do not not defrag, use AV or tools like CCleaner...and I never will.

It's installing crap like that which slows a system down in the first place.
 
Sin_Chase said:
My system is as fast as it was when I built it and I do not not defrag, use AV or tools like CCleaner...and I never will.

It's installing crap like that which slows a system down in the first place.
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Depends on your apps really, but some apps install and intergrate into the system, these will of course slow the system down at some level or other, while others sit at the side-line and only jump in when called up.

An A/V Will slow it down and some are worse than others I agree, but my defragger and ccleaner certainly do not.

However, even if they did, I am happy to accept that small price in knowing that I am in fact helping keep my PC in as good shape as I can.

I am actually confident that my firewall is doing a sterling job, but even so, I also have Windows firewall left on, plus my A/V... I have not had any infection of any kind of hack that the firewall has not stopped, but still, an A/V is again extra security "just in case".
 
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