What slows down Windows OS computers?

Every personal Windows computer I have seen has slowed down over time. The same is not true of a Mac I own (at least so far, have only had it for a few months--I also own a PC). I have never gotten a truly cogent explanation of why this is for Windows computer. I used to think is was the registry. It is difficult to keep things from being added, and thus running in the background, and it is also difficult to edit the registry. But recently others have told me that is an unlikely explanation. An apparent solution is to reload the OS periodically, but that is a pain as it also means reloading all software.

I am now beginning to think it is a constellation of items. What would people say are the top 10 thinks that slow PCs down?

 

Registry, leftovers, random stuff that's been downloaded with/without your permission, etc. I've found that ever since I started using CCleaner regularly, I haven't experienced gradual slowdowns like I did before.

 

Mine haven't slowed down, none of them. Some of these have been running 24/7 for years.

If you experience slowdown, then it is extremely unlikely it has anything to do with the registry, per se. Most likely causes are startup programs and other sorts of add-ons that hook into various programs (like shell extensions, browser plugins, services, etc.). In order to keep these at bay, you need to be judicious about what programs you install, and understand what modifications they make to your system. While this is not really a problem with the operating system, but rather one with third-party software providers, it can ultimately lead to the kind of slowdown you describe.

Unfortunately, preventing this from happening requires a bit of expertise: At the very least, you need to understand how to monitor locations (in the registry and startup folders) that are used to run startup code, and also be able to check for services being added to your system. A shell extension manager (like ShellExView) is useful, too.

The main reason this issue does not exist to that extent on MacOS is the different ecology of the software infrastructure for this OS; in simple words, a lot less software that's available, in particular, a lot less poor quality software. Mac users are therefore a lot less likely to install just about any piece of garbage someone offers them on a street corner, simply because there's a lot less types peddling Mac software hanging out on stree corners...

 

Spyware and viruses slow computers down a ton. If your computer is slow you should run multiple anti-spyware/malware scanners.

 

... from a Live CD/DVD. You can't trust any AV software that's running on a possibly compromised system.

Michael

 

PLease do NOT run multiple antispywares lmao that's more likely to slow you down than a virus AND they're goign to make you even less secure than just one.

Anyway, anything that effects a windows computer probably effects a mac computer too.

 

Stupid people installing crap on their OS.

 

Dont download things you dont know about. Run a virus scan regularly, and install CCleaner and run it everyday to free up space.

 

Run CCleaner every day? Do you install and uninstall new applications every day? Or do you have so little space that you cant handle a few megabytes of browser cash and cookies????

Windows XP used to slow down a bunch. Windows 7 is much much better. One thing that slows down a lot of people's computers is still the auto run. So many applications want to start an auto updater or quick launch icon and crap like that... remove them all!!!

 

I keep my computers super clean as an advanced user. I still have one problem with most computers I get super slow response when loading/moving/transfering things.

You would say hard drive bottleneck but im maybe loading off a non OS drive and it still brings the system to a crawl.

Looking at a resource monitor my HDD use is not pegged, my cpu is not even 3% and my RAM is not even half used.

So its some kind of internal bottleneck I guess.

My laptop seems to do better than my desktop so maye has to do with the age of the motherboard & chipset (P55 with a Q6600 and 4GB DDR2 Ram)

Anybody know what this problem is and a fix?

 

:laugh: Not nice, but in a nutshell, that's it.

 

I always found it funny that people would say that MAC "doesnt get viruses, doesn't slow down, blah blah blah"

In my opinion the best way to prevent anything from happening to slow down your computer is to get computer knowledgeable and to take control of what your applications do. As other people have already said.

* Virus Scans
* Defraging
* Updates (Although not always good )
* Malware Scans (I believe most VS companies include this software already)

 

yea i usually download something every day, or uninstall. and it just keeps everything clean, it only takes 1o seconds, why wouldn't you ?

 

I forgot to add this:
+ smart alec Software Vendors adding their products to Windows startup to ring home for updates whenever you boot the system as if they patch their software on a daily basis.
Get your crap off my RAM...

 

Mainly drivers, buggy drivers can cause funny errors.

 

+1 to this adobe is one of the worst i have ever seen. They have like 6 auto start software only to be sure on of them will boot and start the others so they never misses an update.

 

Gets me every time. Im constantly checking my Startup Manager for Adobe files. Gets frustrating but . . .meh, you win and lose some. Right now I seem to have it under control. Between Adobe and Microsoft Office's OneNote Screen Clipper I dont know which is worse.

 

I had a similar problem on my old Vista laptop, copying/transferring any reasonably large file or installing a program would bring the whole computer to a crawl and actually cause explorer.exe to stop responding. I no longer have the laptop and unfortunately don't remember the command I finally used to fix it, but after a lot of googling I do remember that I finally traced it down to Windows' data execution prevention "feature." The ultimate fix was to disable that particular feature.

 

Do you guys want the troll post and the following comments removed? I find the scalding replies quite amusing. Doesn't bother me whether they stay or go -- I can go back and look at the deleted ones any time I need a laugh.

 

Nah. The first couple were actually helpful, especially since there probably are a few people out there who think the constant patches take a toll on the system. I mean, look what patches can do to games sometimes. I half-believed him in the first sentence before reading the rest and laughing.

 

Both Windows and OSX's slow down over time due to bad usage. Downloading of random crap, having background software running, filling up of hard drive, etc.

As stated above there are less programs for Mac's, thus less malicious programs. Now I won't say that software for Mac's is high quality most of the time because I measure quality with productivity/features/use of resources etc rather then with a shiny GUI that just work's (well works with the limited functions it has).

I have seen newer Macbook Pro's (i5/C2D) slow down drastically because of bad usage. Hard drives get filled, and bunch of crap downloaded. Not as in the same number as Windows based PC's but then again For every 10 computers, 9 are Windows based PC's, and 1 is OSX based Mac's.

 

One thing I noticed is one of my desktops slowed down when it got filled up. I'm thinking it has something to do with the format of the hard drive, how Mac has it's own type of format, and Windows is still using a rather old NTFS. I'm not expert in this, but wasn't Windows Vista suppose to usher in a new file system (WinFS or something?)? I'm suprised they didn't at least do that with Vista. I feel what is slowing Vista/7 is the file system these days.

 

?? Are you talking just to talk?

Anyways Windows uses NTFS because it's better than FAT32 for several reasons. There is an revised version of FAT32 that reduces it's limitations however they are still present in terms of security, and error prone.

Mac's use HSF+. If I recall correct there's no real benefits from using HFS+ for real world usage (servers/desktops/etc). In fact NTFS serves superior for high usage scenarios like servers.

The reason why computers (Mac or PC) feel slower as hard disk drives fill up is because of the nature of HDDs. They are mechanical devices that use magnetic reading/writing to store information. The information is written on platters, these platters are just circular discs or a disc (depending on size/platter size).
Obviously the inner circle of the platter can be read faster due to the smaller size of the "ring".
As data fills the hard drive, data begins to be stored on the outer part of the platter thus access times plummet and read/write times drop dramatically (sometimes over 50% of performance be lost) thus you eventually get performance losses. The symptoms are unresponsiveness of the operating system and programs, while leaving user input operations working well (mouses/keyboards/etc). Menus, start menus, file opening all become slower and can lead to error causing. Also as the hard drive is filled, the risk of errors increases as the head (writer/reader of platters) moves up and down the whole disk instead of just stick in a smaller inner portion.

It is an inherited inconvenience of mechanical hard drives.

All my my computers feel as good as when they were first formatted. Then again I don't go around clicking everything I see, and I know where to get what I want safely.

 

Ditto. Don't go installing Toolbars and lagwares and it should be as good with some occasional defrag but nowadays Windows does it on auto if you leave it idling for a while.
The reason for NTFS is Access Control and file security.
I have an IQ of limit of 1...divided by x goes towards zero

 

I do believe that patching does slow down the OS. My experience has been that I've taken a WinXP old Pentium 4 computer (that was pretty fast in it's time) and reinstalled WinXP and it ran like it did when it was new. Meaning it ran pretty good. Then after some Windows patching, it slowed. After fully patching, it's slow. Actually, I've done this to a couple of machines and notice the same thing.
Regardless, patching is still necessary.

I also believe that every new version of updates for various programs are more power hungry than the previous. You'd think that the new version would somehow be more efficient and therefore run faster, but this is not usually the case. All the Adobe stuff get slower and bigger. The browsers get bigger and bigger.
Oh well. That progress. Get a faster rig. Vicious cycle.

 

Pentium 4. You should stop right there. Old hardware=fail.
Anyways I have worked with dozens of Pentium 4 computers. NONE have had issues taking even Windows XP SP3. Only times we have had issues were related to low RAM (256mbs), perhaps you should check your systems to make sure they have 512mb or more, if not then it's likely something else that's making your system slow, not updates. Run diagnostics on your HDD's and run synthetics for your processor, memtest for your ram.

 

You know, I owned a P4 Prescott and experienced what a lot of people complained about, but the early P4 CPUs (Williamette, Northwood) were actually cool, stable CPUs that offered good performance.

 

This is how I earn extra cash, but this is the exact reason for slow Windows computers.

 

I'm starting to think he took an random online IQ test and scored a 180

Re: XP TOO SLOW - Microsoft Help | DSLReports Forums

note the 4th reply

Also, doesn't know the difference between a thread and a process. Threads have basically no computation cost in windows (threads exist within processes and share state, that's partially why they are cheap in windows, processes each have their own state). You also can't go into the task manager and see how many threads are currently running.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9008876

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I think it is merited, considering everything as a whole. Funny stuff.

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Last - I don't think you read the botnet information. 3.6 million PC's in the US are currently compromised by ONE malicious program and act as a bot net. There is a long list of other notable malicious programs. Some require running an executable file, others assert themselves without having to run an executable by exploiting holes in the operating system or common software (like microsoft office). Software updates often dead-stop the second (silent) variety.

 

Services, processes, start-up programs, registry issues, fragmentation, malware, updates.

In most cases, it's the user who slows down the computer, not Windows itself.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...crosoft-end-year-massive-security-update.html

... and I don't think you're smarter than Microsoft or have an IQ (a real one, I mean) bigger than the thousand' of software pro's, writing up codes to protect the OS every day. Period.

... and for god' sake, please stop this blatant meaningless bashing of windows and windows updates. You aren't doing ANY good to new users, home user's, family member' who aren't familiar with Windows, the OS and the intricacies behind keeping the OS running good, clean, neat and fine.

Updates are essential. Updates DO NOT slow down the computer (IMHO) unless the computer itself is slow for whatever reason's. Updates (again, IMHO) have only kept the system' I have worked on for the last decade and more, running fine and good.

In fact, just yesterday, I took out a 2 year old Acer laptop of one friend of mine, with Windows XP and updated it with all the latest (and there were at least 43 of those (critical), with a couple of additional optional updates), since it wasn't used for a couple of year' or so... and the laptop is only being better than it was before. Now, I am not saying it is being better because of the updates. I have cleaned the system, took out some old / unused program', tuned up the start up program list, checked with the services list, defrag'ed etc etc etc... But for sure, it didn't get bogged down because of the updates.

See you. Cheers.

 

I think the key culprits with slowdowns are programs that autorun - at least since Vista.
The OS itself stays pretty fast without any slowdowns - just the extras get worse.

Now why this happens I have no idea - especially as I am nowadays on a SSD.
On a HDD I'd think fragmentation might be to blame for that.

 

On a hard drive, slowed performance is caused when you travel farther out to the platter. Vista/Windows 7 do not require as much defragging as Windows XP that much is for sure. Actually they don't really require defragging at all.

Yes extra programs that auto start can halt down a system during start up, specially those running mechanical hard drives that move like pieces of turd when dealing with very small file sizes.

Depending on the SSD the small file read/writes can also be crap. That's why I would go Intel X25-M G2, or Sandforce (I am waiting for reliability reports before I jump on the SF wagon).

 

Read my Sig Intel X-25M 160GB

Soluto is nice in this respect by the way - it gives you a nice little list of what slows you down.
Adobe is overall a large hit... (But I need my Acrobat 9,4 preloaded... MikTeX doesn't work with Reader 10...)

 

And you noted your system getting slowed? I have an Intel X25-M 80GB G2, I run:
-Creative SB Entertainment
-MSN Live
-Dell DCP (Dell Control Point)
-Dell DCP Connections manager (network)
-Dell Touchpad
-I8kFAN (Fan control)
-Microsoft Security Essentials
-RAMDisk module (400mb)
-And of course Rightmark CPU Clock Utility

Other services include:
-Nvidia Drivers (a given)
-ALP's drivers
-Adobe Acrobat/Reader
-Google Update
-Safeconnect (College requirement)
-Other common services

As I added programs I did not see an alarming drop in performance. Of course boot times increased but that is to be expected.

 

It used to be quicker without a lot of software.
But I can name some of the culprits:
Adobe, Spyder 3, Everywhere...
According to Soluto I have 91 applications in my startup - a lot... maybe too many.... but they accumulated. It's OK at 1min 22s right now - ad it is pretty stable around that time - unless I add much more.

(I also have things like SQL and Visual Studio Installed - before all of that it used to be around 46s I think... according to soluto - a long time ago that is )

 

After starting the thread, I got busy and just now looked at the answers. An impressive array! I don't have the time to slug through them all now, but a quick scan suggests that it does seem that to keep Windows OS running fast takes a fair amount of technical expertise. I do run CCleaner and defrag the disc regularly, but the way, and that has not appreciably sped things up. Downloading software and unintentionally getting garbage is a likely culprit. Stopping that does not sound straight forward.

 

CCleaner and defrag' and such, keep the system clean and neat, for sure..

But I think slowing down is more due to the program', autorun' etc, like the others have mentioned previously.. you could try taking a look at the services list (blackviper' is a good place for that).. also like the discussion' in the previous couple of post's from Detlev and crimsoned, you could try turning off program' you wouldn't probably need at start up.. and then take it from there, looking at each program you have installed..

I have *only* the program' I need, I use regularly, is essential.. all the others, including those that look tempting at first sight, I just try to resist the temptation and leave them alone unless I see an absolute necessity to have them in the laptop..

Also keep backup' (like browser profile backup', emails, and so on) off the laptop and on an external hard disk.. that's what I do.. this *might* help a little bit in speeding up AV scans, defrag' etc.

 

In the past, CCleaner for me has shown items listed for startup that msconfig did not. Things like Adobe bs, Google Chrome's updaters and some touchpad & sound driver stuff. Disabling all of these has had no impact on anything for me.

If you're just talking boot times, under msconfig again, putting a check mark in the 'no GUI boot' box will knock off a few seconds. I've read that telling the computer to use all its cores can speed up boots, even though Windows should do this by default. I gave this a shot and my boot time immediately differed by 12 seconds (using Bootracer to track times) but after a few days it crept back up to mid 60's.

I reverted to letting the OS decide the number of cores to use at boot on its own, did a boot file defrag (first in ~3 weeks) and now I'm getting time to desktop in high 40's/low 50's.

Deleting all system restore points but your most recent can help, along with sometimes freeing up a few gigabytes. Not much else needs to be said really, lots of good advice in this thread to start with.

 

I was just checking out this "soluto" thing again (I have used it before, but uninstalled it).. It says, Soluto itself contribute' to around 8-9 seconds of boot time!!!!!

In any case, with ~55 services loading up at start, 6 items starting up through msconfig, I see an average boot time of ~30-40 seconds (system config in the signature) - Without Soluto.

With soluto, I see around ~55 seconds, averaged over 5 to 6 boot'.

Anyway..

 

My girlfriend decided to start backing up all of her music from CD's onto her mac... the thing has slowed to a crawl. It's 100% userbased.

 

Other than freeing up the disk space this will do absolutely NOTHING. There is no additional processing overhead at all.

Gary

 

Well while a restore point is being made there is some process usage, however it's minimal and rarely takes long enough to take use it as any kind of factor. So in the end the conclusion is the same as your post: does absolutely nothing other then free up disk space.

 

Agreed. But he was advocating clearing OLD retore points as a way to speed things back up.

Gary

 

Yes, if you're basically at full capacity for your drive, and especially for an ssd the extra space will help. Though less common nowadays with huge drive storage and speeds, I do this often for my mom and my brother who have nearly decade old 40gb hdd's.

 

Well, I still have not slugged though all of the 70+ responses, though I appreciate it and intend to look through them. I would note, though, that if there are so many different ways a Windows computer can slow down, that in itself is a problem. The system should be designed to make that harder to happen.

 

If every 3rd party program tries to ring home for non existent updates on boot up as a OS programmer what can you do?
If every user install useless programs and virus on their PC as a OS Programmer what can you do?
Ban their Applications?
Make the computer blow up in their faces?
Remove the startup list completely so the users will complain when the important applications that require start up don't start up?
When the ball is not in your court there is nothing you can do.

 

Well, if you want the very core of the problem, it's that windows is designed around laziness and compatibility. When your users are lazy, do you think they care if companies like adobe use lazy methods in implementing their lazy auto-software updates? Reg key and startup entries are the easy way to do things, so everyone uses and floods them. So that's why like others have said, just simply don't install too many programs.

Win7 has been MUCH better about its' upkeep compared to other versions, it will defrag/trim/update ect by itself pretty well. And as for why macs don't appear to suffer from slowdown (they actually do, all computers do, it's just not as noticeable), it is unix based and unix is generally more efficient.

 

I kind of have to agree. To be fair, Microsoft does implement many things in Windows to help keep the machine responsive. Defragmenting of the hard disk happens in the background for example.

 

maybe a fix for this would be to have window update able to accept 3rd party aplication to update by filling a form that would put them on the list of update to chek to X server to X ip but that could open vulnerability holes


as for virus/malware the best way to fix this would be have your on geek for a week wich will slap you at the back of your head every time you do something stupid withing a couple month virus for windows would be a dead end
in short there is no way to fix someone else stupidity