Computer help forum: Why do all Window systems slow down over time?

The main issue "why Windows is getting slowed down", seems to be forgotten.
The discussion changed subject many a times. It taught me and many like me to manage a computer, relating to hardware and software issues that might slow down your computer.
But is there any thing that is wrong with the very "windows' itself?.This aspect seems to be forgotten.
There was no discussion anywhere that compared such problems with either Mac, OSx or the many Linux versions like Ubuntu or Red hat.

Because a computer is an electrical/mechanical device, it is going to slow down over time.
I have found that if I completely back up all my stuff, and format the hard drive, and re install windows, it still does not run as good as when the PC was new. It runs a bit better because I have removed all the bits and bytes of clinging data and the registry is fresh, but all the components are subject to constant heat and use, so they just will not have the same snappiness as a brand new component. Electrical traces, chips, RAM sticks, hard drives...none of these items are made to last, and run at top form, forever. It's the nature of the beast.

One discrete component that changes over time is a capacitor. They leak and lose their farads. They are used on the main board and in the power supply. I agree on HDDs going bad, some slow and some fast.
Do benchmarks monthly as well as "start up time" measurements.
My Dell 4600i was built around 1994. The original bios is dated 3/17/04. OS is XPProSP3. It's running with 3 GB Ram with 7 HDDs which includes 4 externals, a ROM and a DVD. My defrag runs always and I do run CCleaner, anti-virus checks, ad-aware checks and registry checks regularly. It's only a Pentium 4 but it's still humming after 9 years in use daily about 12 hours/day. What's a 77 year old retired EE to do with his time but "Run the PC".

What I said is true.
I don't care if you have worked with PC's for 80 years, electrical components do wear out.
I never said that was the only cause of this mans computer slow down, maybe it's not, I was just giving a possible solution, and maybe he could benefit from it.
But I don't see ANY benefit from immature, knee jerk reactions, like yours.
I have been working with and on personal computers for around 10 years myself, and I have seen the destructive power of heat, dust, etc on computers first hand.
Apparently you were offended somehow by what I said, that is very strange, you are taking my comments, highlighting them, and then attacking them. Very immature for a 10 year veteran of computer troubleshooting.
And by the way, hard drives are NOT the only thing that can wear out dude.

Based on 25 years of experience in component level repair, I agree with Rick's theory.
George N.

IMHO, it's the growth in complexity of the OS, applications, services, devices, etc. that most slows down any and all OS/system combinations over time. Every new version of any OS brings additional features, which results in additional complexity due to more things to manage. Patches usually add additional monitoring and checks. As applications take advantage of those new features, they become more complex and use more resources. New processes & services are introduced to improve the performance of some things use more resources, and end up slowing down other things. New browser extensions, new event monitors (live tiles, anyone?) add to the complexity. It's sort of Moore's law in reverse. In the same time that hardware capacity (all aspects of performance) doubles, software consumption of that hardware capacity expands 2.5 to 3 times. End-user expectations of the combined performance of hardware and software increases as well so that end-users expect more things to happen simultaneously and instantly.

So, for a given system, hardware performance is relatively fixed over time, while both software consumption and end-user expectation are unbounded.

Bob Meyer

Hi Robert - Your question is a very reasonable one and something I hear quite often among the computer owners I work with. My answer to most is an analogy to a system of highways. When a highway is new, it's been engineered to accommodate a certain amount of traffic and weight, and it feels smooth and pleasant to drive on. Over time, traffic increases, weather and weight take their toll, and eventually the road needs to be repaired or replaced.

Your computer is a lot like the highway. It needs to be maintained. There have been many posts on CNET regarding different software to keep your computer running smooth, but my advice is often the simple answer of backing up your data (which you should be doing anyway) and starting with a fresh installation of your operating system. It's sort of like resurfacing a highway. You keep all of the same hardware and simply clean out the junk that accumulates over time on any system. You'd be surprised how much stuff gets loaded on your system over time without you ever knowing its there.

Also like a highway, the more traffic you place on it, the slower the traffic can flow. So getting rid of the traffic that doesn't need to be there will keep you running faster. There are a few things that dictate how fast your computer is going to run. Let's name them.

1. Your CPU Speed. The faster your CPU runs the faster your programs and utilities run. If your CPU has 2 processors or 4 processors it can handle data that much faster. But remember that just because you have a quad-core processor doesn't mean you'll be 4 times the speed. The newer Intel Processors have 8 virtual processors running at once, but it's the speed of the processor that counts.

2. Bus Speed. By this I mean how many lanes do you have on your highway? This is determined by how many data paths your motherboard can stream simultaneously. Fortunately most motherboards are built to handle the maximum amount of traffic that the CPU can handle. The more expensive the board, the more data it can handle.

3. The amount of RAM and RAM Speed. More RAM means your motherboard has a greater ability to store and process data without having to access the Hard Drive. The faster the RAM the quicker the processing can occur. Having more RAM is sort of like using the Express Lane on the Highway.

4. Storage Device Speed. This is your Hard Drive of course. Conventional Hard Drives (SATA) spin between 5,400 RPM and 15,000 RPM (but not usually above 10,000). Your Hard Drive's speed will be determined by how long it takes to seek out and access data stored upon it. If it spins faster, it's likely to access data faster. On the other hand, by increasing the amount and speed of RAM, you reduce the load on your Hard Drive by decreasing the amount of Pagination (data stored on the hard drive in excess of what can be stored on the RAM chip). So more RAM means faster access time on your Hard Drive. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are becoming the preferred medium for hard drives as they have no moving parts and are much less likely to fail. They also access data almost instantly, greatly reducing the time to go fetch data and thereby speeding up your computer.

5. Graphics Processing Speed. Some computers have a Graphics Processor integrated onto the motherboard and others use a separate card for processing graphics. The faster your Graphics Processor can handle data, the faster your computer can run. Only a small number of laptops use separate graphics cards because they take up space and generate heat. That's one of the big reasons Gaming Laptops are so expensive. In any case, your system's ability to handle graphics will play a role in the overall speed of your system.

6. Finally, Your Internet Speed. If your computer seems to drag when you're logged on the the internet, it could be the result of your internet provider's connection speed. The faster your connection can download and upload data, the easier it makes it for your computer to respond to the data. There is a very large variety of connection speeds and pricing available from most internet providers. You can check your upload and download speed by using one of the many sites available to perform this task for you. Just Google "Check my Download Speed".

Of course, like the highway, time develops more rigorous loads to carry and new and improved materials become available to upgrade your system if it's your desire to make the most of it. The reason I mention all of the six speed items above is simply that your system will slow down when your highway has more and more traffic. The more data that has to be processed at any given time, the slower the highway is going to travel. When you first start your computer is like "Rush Hour". That's when the system has to handle the most traffic. Check for Updates. Make an internet connection, start up all of those start-up programs, and initiate dozens of processes in the background. So yes, the more instructions that need to be carried out, the slower the system will be, and the longer it will take to complete the start-up process.

Once all of the initial start-up routines are completed, there are still multiple processes running in the background. I have noticed that Toolbars are a BIG offender of slowing down systems. It's usually my advice to NEVER LOAD A TOOLBAR!!! They do very little when you aren't using them but can take up an enormous amount of resources in the background.

Your system hardware isn't slowing you down Robert, it's the data that your system is trying to handle that has increased. Broken shortcuts, fragmented files, unneeded files and processes running in the background, are all chewing up your resources. That's why I so strongly recommend that users back up their data frequently and do a fresh installation when things begin to drag too much. It would take you a year to identify every bit of data that's slowing your system down, but only a couple of hours to make a fresh installation of your system.

On that note, I'll plug the idea of upgrading to an SSD for your system. After doing a fresh installation of your operating system on the standard hard drive, clone it to a new SSD and you will see your computer run faster than it ever has in the past. By doing this you accomplish two things. First, you create a backup of the fresh install of the operating system on the old hard drive. Anytime you want to repeat that process you just backup data (which you should be doing anyhow) and clone the old hard drive back to the SSD. Second, you supercharge your system by eliminating the biggest bottleneck in any system, the Hard Drive. Check the Speed Index for the items I mentioned above and you should be able to get the most out of your system for many years to come.

try this lil handy trick I learned nearly a decade ago
Do a search for the folder content.ie5
this folder stores multiple folders (the longer the OS has been installed the lmore folders and files will be contained in this folder) all the pages you have ever visited will be there...
These folders are never cleaned by the default Microsft system tools
Remember to locate all instances of the folder Content.ie5
Make a shortcut for each instance of this folder by choosing one of it's subfolders left clicking and selecting create shortcut...
I have never been able to create a direct shortcut of content.ie5
Completely clean each subfolder by deleting all of it's content (you can do this safely with no harm to your operating system) DO NOT DELETE OR REMOVE/MOVE SUBFOLDERS
You will not be able to remove all the files unless you are totally offline...
Try it I have seen coputers over a year old with over 10,000 files in these folders

Kidding are you not? No antivirus!!?!?

You are one of those who refuses to vaccinate their kids, thereby invariably risking your kids and others esp. the immunosuppressed & ill, and responsible for the spread of the disease.

As responsible netizens, please use antivirus.

Also most users are normal PC operators, that is, they want to turn on their PC and get some work done. They don't want to have to get under the bonnet often, defrag this or that, registry cleaners.

Unfortunately all these preventative maintenance are necessary because Windows OSes are imperfect & inferior.

I use CCleaner every day at the end of the day. It cleans out unnecessary files that have a tendency to pile up. They are no longer necessary and best be gotten rid of. Everyone that tells me about having a slow computer is a candidate to use this program. It is free and you can download it over the internet. If you buy a new computer anytime soon, make sure to get an i7 processor and at least 8 gig of ram, and the computer should run pretty smoothly all the time. If you have a mechancial hard drive, you can install Smart Defrag and have your computer continually defragged. I have used it for several years, and it runs in the background, so you don't even know it is working, but you can check to see how much it has defragged for the past 7 days or so. I have had my Desktop comuter for over 2 years now and it runs just about as fast as the day that I installed. Also remember if you have lots of programs start up when windows starts, this could slow things down. Get the i7 and 8 gig of ram, and those things likely won't be a problem. I use another program called Advanced System Care and also Eusing Registry Cleaner once a month or so. I don't run them every day, but they tend to remove unnecessary files. All of the software that I have mentioned is free, so there is not reason not to use them.

I think there are 3 reasons why this happens:
1. Software changes
- You installed extra software which loads at startup and wastes time
- Existing software upgrades itself and the new version is slower (anti-virus programs, for example)
- The hard disk becomes fragmented or full
- Network drives are switched off
- The registry has items which no longer exist (references to network drives for example)
2. Hardware changes
- Extra hardware plugged in (eg. USB devices)
- Faulty hardware (eg hard disk)
- Overheating cpu due to fluff in the cooler
3. Expectations
- What you do on a daily basis, particularly on the web, becomes more data-intensive over time
- Everyone you know has newer hardware and theirs is faster so you think yours has got worse
- If this is your issue, the only answer is to keep your equipment up to date!

What to do about it-
These are my rules of thumb. Is isn't an exhaustive list but it's enough for most cases.
Fixes:
- Check that you have enough RAM to avoid having the hard disk churn continuously. I would recommend adding more if you have 1GB or less.
- Check that your hard disk is not full. Be concerned if you've less than about 8 GB free.
- Install Soluto and over time it will provide you with information about the software which is delaying startup.
- Consider changing to a different internet security program if you find that is the cause of your troubles
- use Soluto or Autoruns to turn off startup items that you don't want or need
- Delete any network drives that you have in explorer, which aren't physically present.
- Listen for highly repetitive clicking noises accompanying sluggishness & if present, suspect a faulty hard disk
- Unplug usb devices & see if anything changes. You might find that some devices perform better when plugged directly into the pc rather than via a hub.
- On a monthly basis, defrag your hard disk with the built in defrag utility or Defraggler (but NOT if you have a solid state disk, you'll just help to wear it out)
- Run a cleanup utility such as CCleaner regularly, for each user
- Check for fluff in the vents or the cooler and remove the worst of it with a vacuum cleaner (carefully!)

Some links:
Autoruns http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
CCleaner http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Defraggler http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
Soluto https://www.soluto.com/

There are many things that slow down Windows PCs over time. There are some that I haven't figured out what they are.

I have found that the most common cause of a slowdown is too much unnecessary cruft running at startup. A whole lot of programs are written by arrogant little geeks who presume that their little masterpiece will be the most essential thing you've got, so they run these little listening daemons that take up clock cycles. The truly excellent program WinAmp is an offender here with its "Agent," and other commonplace programs, even including the nearly wholly altruistic OpenOffice.org, do this. If you have Adobe CS it may even be running version control software that slows you down a lot. So does Apple stuff, like "Bonjour" that comes with iTunes.

You can use a startup program, like Microsoft's own Autoruns (obtainable for free at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx), or any of literally dozens of others, to pick and choose, but you have to be careful deactivating the entries it locates. It doesn't distinguish overtly between the necessary and unnecessary start-up programs, but you can usually make a pretty good guess from the location of the executable.

Another source of any slowdown is your anti-malware application. If you're running one that your ISP gave you for free it will almost always be a resource hog. McAfee and older (pre-2010) versions of Norton will slow down your PC significantly, as will many others. Newer Norton and a number of freeware programs like Avast, Avira and Panda are quite lightweight in the load they put on your system.

One of the worst things that slows down performance is adware/spyware. You should scan frequently with something like SpyBot Search and destroy or Ad-Aware, although these have now taken to running things resident in RAM that slow you down (but you can deactivate those features, and I advise it for most of them).

Obviously viruses can just destroy performance, among other things, but I assume you know this already.

Fragmentation of the data on the hard disk can also slow a computer down badly, but this doesn't usually become noticeable until the data becomes really BADLY fragmented. A simple defragging will handle this nicely; better defragmentation is available via various software, the best of which that I have found is Raxco PerfectDisk, , and you can download a fully functional trial version that will work for a month.

BUT NOTE, if your computer has a solid disk drive (SDD), you NEVER want to defrag it, but you probably wouldn't be complaining about a slowdown, either.

A lot of people swear by registry cleaners and registry defragmenters, but I have never noticed any material performance improvement by running those even on totally befouled Windows System registries. Maybe a LITTLE better boot-up speed, but that's it.

Lots of loaded fonts can slow down a PC's performance. You can remove the ones you never use.

I once had a computer speed up HUGELY by reflashing the BIOS with the most current version. The method of doing this differs from motherboard to motherboard, so you'll have to look to the manufacturer's website.

System file corruption, which is actually quite common, can also slow a computer WAY down. From a c:\ prompt, as the administrator, run the following command: sfc /scannow . Hopefully you either have your original Windows distribution disk or the .cab files were put somewhere on your hard drive and your system is configured properly to find them.

You can also be infected by a rootkit that converts your machine into a spam zombie. This of course will slow you down, and most anti-malware programs won't find it. There are numerous freeware anti-rootkit applications that you can get and run, but some legitimate anti-virus programs run as rootkits so beware of removing them.

But sometimes even trying (and fixing) all of these things doesn't do the trick. At this point, if you want to speed your machine back up, save all your data somewhere other than on your disk and do a wipe-and-reload of your operating system. I haven't had a machine yet that this didn't fix, but it's a REAL hassle. You not only have to restore your data, but reinstall and reconfigure all your applications, and sometimes updating your O/S to current takes nearly a whole day -- you have to run update over and over and over again.

So, in other words, there are so many things that can slow down a Windows system that there is no way I have hit on them all here, but at least these are some of the most common.

This is what I find that causes a lot of slowdowns, programs auto updates trying to be 1st in pecking order to check for updates. I disable auto updating if possible, but you have to remember to check for updates on your programs every few days, or allow check for updates while system is idle option if available.

Start your Windows task-manager at start up and watch which program is bogging your system down, I find Google and iTunes battling it out many times.

But the issues Flatworms mention are big culprits for many who do not maintain their systems. And the more a system insist on taking core of everything for you, the more headaches you will have.

"written by arrogant little geeks who presume that their little masterpiece will be the most essential thing you've got."

My friend, I couldn't have said it better. The amount of stuff being loaded at startup is a major problem for most people.

It is the End-Users un-awarenes of his responsibility, techical in-ability to keep his machine clean or defragment it, clear it of un-used or necessary programs, removed un-needed downloads, do not duplicate programs that are built in the Windows, understand why patches & fixes are necessary, to keep pace, with concurrent technology, that Updates are to fix, expand, change the Windows Operating, to meet secure safety, new technology, its an on going thing, that Adode & Java follow suite, as the Operating System is updated automatically, so is Adode, JAVA and others, that Microsoft & Vendors work hand in-hand to keep all working. Start Up programs are a major contributors to slowing a PC. If you have 10 start up programs selected, each requiring 2.5 seconds for start up, it will slow down your computer daily upon sign on, about 25 seconds, only open a program when needed. Do not stay Logged In to any program, when finished close it out always. Your don't need 3 or 4 Internet browsers all wanting to be your Default Internet Browser, all wanting to load at start up, some are even powered by the same Major Web-Engine chose one or two, Do not let the Operating system remember pass-words. It others word, constantly clear your PC of any un-used programs & don't download any program you don't need. Go to Control Panel & remove or un-install any program you don't need & defragment atleast every two weeks. Just a reminder PC's are not TV's, you must be pro-active in keep em clean.