What slows down Windows?

Rebooting this computer takes something like 3-4 minutes. Opening a new tab in IE7 takes something like 5 seconds, even when there's only 1 tab currently open. Heck, starting Outlook 2007 takes well over a minute.

No, this isn't an Atom-based notebook. This is a 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM running an improperly configured corporate image of Windows XP Pro.

I always used to believe that faster hardware always meant a faster computer, but this experience would indicate otherwise...

 

I'll trade my netbook with you. instant IE8 startup, rebooting under 30 seconds, outlook 2010 starts under 5 seconds. Joking... about the trading part while other things are true

Errors in registry, disk defragmentation, and conflicts in driver, files as well as programs installed all make the operating system slower

 

Probably a lot of crap running in the background. Check the # of processes running, and see if you can reduce them.

msconfig from Run will let you temporarily disable the crap....adobe, java version schedulers, helpers, etc... check the web for loads of tuturials on killing it all.

Get revouninstaller and delete any apps that you don't need - you would be surprised at all of the stuff that these utils do and load up that you are not aware of.

Defrag the disk and update your drivers if needed.

Then run a program like adaware or some other spyware tool to remove any other crap...

Good luck....sometimes after a couple of years on a system you just need to re-OS it. I moved from Vista to Windows 7 and I think it is a breath of fresh air.

R

 

This is supposedly a fresh image, and I'm not sure what sorts of trouble I would run into with the IT department if I were to do some of those things... Especially the uninstalling part.

The saddest part of all this is, there's a second identically imaged computer with an old 3 ghz P4 and 1 GB of RAM sitting right beside this one, and I can't tell the difference between the 2 computers.

 

Take it up with your IT department, show them the comp next to you. Best bet!

cheers ...

 

What you should do is ddo a clean install with everything you want, and backup it up. Then once a month just reinstall that back up. Then its new system every month, otherwise it starts to slow down, no matter what you do.

Backup software is great.

 

Good advice, but OP is being concerned of running into trouble with her/his own IT department should any changes are being made to the notebook

cheers ...

 

Wut?

My 400Mhz PIII starts up XP in less than that...

 

Does 'improperly configured corporate image" equal "pirated from the office"??

 

I have an MSDN Premium account, why would I want their crappy image? Heck, I would format and reinstall in a heartbeat as others have suggested if not for IT policies and restrictions.

Besides, given the plethora of choices on BT, I wouldn't use their image even if I didn't have an MSDN account or the other billion connections the company has with MS that allow me to get their software legally for free.

 

Outlook was never an agile program to startup. 3-4 minutes on a bootup could be anything. It depends on what devices are connected, the drivers used to detect them, network, network policies, etc etc. Bootup always has like 10000 factors. You should get your IT department to compare your computer to a baseline benchmark, if they ever made a baseline to begin with.

 

Just check Event Viewer on the boot sequence see if anything is causing timeouts.

 

ok, a) you have a corporate machine you want to mod but can't because b) corporate it will crucify you?

 

Even if it's unlikely to come to anything, perhaps I should ask. Guess it never hurts to ask

That's the idea, but a significantly modified machine wouldn't be able to connect to the corporate network anyway, at which point I would have to call IT, which would then result in my crucifixion. I might as well just save myself the headaches in the first place.

The most I could do is uninstall some programs, but I have a feeling that the programs most responsible for these issues are the custom corporate ones that can't be uninstalled for the reason listed above. This is like an inescapable form of bloatware hell.

 

Just a daft idea... could you wreck the OS (e.g destroy by deleting a few registry keys) and then ask for a new image?

Or maybe ask your IT department why they use XP rather than Vista or Win7.

Maybe a new image would help...
(If other computers work correctly... but this makes me think - drivers?...)

 

I would suggest CCleaner along with JKDefragGUI, and then you could disable services.

As long as you don't disable anything that looks serious, and don't use CCleaner's registry cleaner you should be ok.

 

Any IT guy would prefer that you at least consult them before you start making undocumented changes to your machine. One of the biggest waste of time is when you are trying to fix a machine and you don't realize the user has made significant changes to the computer settings. In that case, troubleshooting often means throwing any and all possible scenarios back into the blender.

 

Nothing wrong with Ccleaner's registry cleaner...just back up the registry before hand if you want to be extra safe.

 

No, but it's a corporate PC so to be safe, I wouldn't touch the registry much.

Using CCleaner shouldn't make any changes besides cleaning useless files, so I don't think there is anything wrong with using it.

 

The answer is obvious. Win7 is still too new to have gone through all the testing and validation IT requires (this alone usually takes a year or more), and I don't know of any companies that use Vista. Besides, if XP runs this slowly, Vista would surely be worse.

I don't expect the corporate world to start moving away from XP until 2011 at the earliest. 2012 for those companies that insist on SP1.

 

Start/run/type msconfig/under start up uncheck everything you dont need/reboot

 

Well, the testing maybe...

But the assumption because XP runs badly, Vista runs worse is wrong.

In fact, because XP is so weighted down with a few hundred updates it might run worse.
Then Vista will utilize modern hardware much better than XP.

There is no way of telling without trying - but making a blanket assumption is wrong.

 

I feel comfortable making this blanket statement because just about everyone who's ever measured XP's performance against Vista's has concluded that even after all this time, XP remains faster unless if you have an extremely high end machine involving things like SLI/CFX or 6+ GB of RAM.

Vista greatly narrowed the performance gap with SP1, but I still have yet to see a benchmark where Vista is decisively faster than XP on an ordinary computer.

A bunch of performance benchmarks were published around the time XP SP3 came out in 2008, and another bunch when Windows 7 came out a few months ago... While XP and 7 both did well (in different areas), Vista rarely took first place.

 

2+ GB is enough for Vista - and benchmarks... that test what?
All benchmarks are good for is seeing if a component performs as the spec sheet states.

And you don't need 6+ GB for Vista - 2+ is enough with 4GB recommended.

 

You're a real Vista fanboy, aren't you?

So, if you don't believe in benchmarks, what makes you so convinced that Vista is faster than XP?

 

I like Vista for being better than XP.

Its for me more stable than XP too.
Faster - as I said earlier you have to test on a case by case basis.

Vista uses the GPU for drawing your windows under Aero taking away CPU load compared in XP.
Superfetch is another nice addition.

And XP on my old laptop - it works well as a recovery/clean install with SP2 - add SP3 and its slow... add the updates and its even worse... and it degrades pretty quickly with boot times getting longer in a few weeks but then staying at that point.

I just don't get all the XP love.

Same as I don't get the Win7 hype - if you buy a new laptop, yes, definitely - on an old one that runs Vista - why bother? There is no gain that is worth the expenditure.

 

Ahh, anecdotal evidence. I see.

Aero is slow by design. It's technically impossible for Aero's animations to be faster than XP's near instantaneous window operations.

As for Superfetch... I've only noticed a difference when I open and close a program several times in a row, which is a rather rare thing.

XP is the fastest, most reliable, and and most compatible for most people.

I see that you have a Sony laptop though, and given how tightly Sony controls what people can and can't do with their hardware (even going so far as to disable features like VT for no good reason), I'm not surprised that Vista runs best for you. I mean, Sony is the only brand where upgrading a Vista laptop to Windows 7 isn't simple and intuitive.

I simply like the UI fixes. I've never gotten over how dumb it is that you can have any color taskbar you want so long as it's black, or how pressing the Show Desktop button minimizes the sidebar as well, or...

Besides, I don't have to pay for Windows 7.

 

XP stable? All those random BSODs that I got.. that was in no way stable.
At least the few times when I got one in Vista it was caused by something "external" (oddly enough KIS on the factory install) - but its still very few.

Superfetch - well, maybe you don't use the same programmes often enough - after 1 or 2 weeks it makes a difference on a HDD.

Aero - its slow due to animations - if I switch them off (like the increasing Window) it'll be instantaneous too.
Oh, and XP keeps the UI underneath a fullscreen application like a game - so it wastes resources.

Sony laptop - Fn keys would be a problem on Win7 - I'd have to read up on that, all else works on a clean instal - guess what I did try one - with an MSDN-AA copy of Win7 - looks horrible and isn't any faster on a HDD than Vista.
Gains - zero.
Windows7 is the same at its Core as Vista - yes a few tweaks here and there but not worth an upgrade.

VT - I have VT enabled - what's the problem?

Taskbar - in XP you get 3 colours... ugly blue, ugly green and acceptable silver - not that much better, is it?

Sidebar - don't use it - no use for it.

Just accept that XP is dead and should have been dead for at least 2 years.
The only use for XP is old computer nowadays - something like 1,6GHz Pentium M processors... but that runs Win7 well...

 

Stability - Vista was a trainwreck before SP1, and even today things aren't all that great for people with old pre-Vista computers that don't have Vista drivers, which is probably a good half of the world given XP's current usage share.

Aero and gaming - I can't decide which minor irritation is worse, XP keeping everything running underneath, or Vista and 7 allowing developers to turn off Aero when a game launches, which is quite a jarring and sadly, common, thing.

Sony and VT - Some of Sony's older consumer-oriented models with VT-capable CPUs have it disabled with no option to enable it in the BIOS.

But this is simply an example of how Sony likes to control the computers they sell with an iron fist, something which could have a negative impact on the performance of an OS that's not officially supported. Which might be why you had such a horrible experience with XP, and which is also why Sony laptop owners are missing out on the Windows 7 experience and finding that Windows 7 doesn't just work out of the box.

Taskbar - 3 is a 300% increase from 1. That's much better. Besides, you forgot Royale.

Anyways, you're missing the point - it's not specifically the taskbar and sidebar that I find unbearable, it's the combination of a million minor problems like that which make Vista's UI a total disaster. I thought I made that pretty clear in my previous post with the trailing "or".

I'd say Vista is more dead than XP right now - even Microsoft has pretty much abandoned it and wants everyone to forget it ever existed, just like the situation with Windows ME. In fact, at this point I'm wondering if Vista was ever alive to begin with.

 

On my Vaio I never tried XP - I do have a downgrade disc.
My XP problems are from a laptop designed for XP that came with XP drivers.

And Vista - well, if the manufacturers of hardware don't write drivers, that's not the OS' fault is it.

ME - that was out first computer - actually ran very well - possibly better than my XP machine afterwards...

 

It is not the developers who do it, it disables when there is a fullscreen application because Aero (dwm) use the GPU, which the games need.

 

Ah people were saying the same thing about 98SE back when XP first came out. Now they are singing XP's praises.

They both have infinitely many colors available. But that really has nothing to do with the original post does it?

Considering Vista lives inside Windows 7, it is dead only in name. But again, this has nothing really to do with the original issue.

The original issue should be best resolved by chatting with your IT department.