I’ve been using Windows ever since it was an add-on to DOS so you could run excel.
Every single instance of Windows that I’ve used gets slower with use. Usually to the point of being unusable.
It’s not lack of disk space. The disks are usually only a few percent full. it’s not lack of CPU - I usually have pretty slick devices.
It’s not virus scanning - though I know that can totally screw a computer if incorrectly used.
It’s not the initial load of apps such as Office or the usual crap from the manufacturers. It’s not even the odd app loaded later.
I’ve heard plenty of so called reasons such as virus and malware but I can discount most of them.
It’s just age. After a period of time things get slower and slower.
I allow automatic updates from Microsoft so perhaps that’s got something to do with it? I know I’ve lost a couple of Vista systems due to updates that break and can’t be rolled back.
So getting back to base question. Has anyone done a definitive study on Windows slowdown and the causes - and of cures? By anyone I mean a serious industry professional rather than some forum.
(NB I am a serious industry professional and I’m really quite bewildered. I have no such problems on equivalent Linux systems - and I use both Windows and Linux a lot)
There are a variety of reasons it gets slower over time. Mostly it is due to various forms of clutter clogging things up.
In particular your browser (which is what people use most) keeps filling up its cache which is meant to help the browser run faster. Basically it stores web pages and if you visit again, instead of downloading the whole page it can see it has a local copy and only downloads things that have changed.
Over time though the cache becomes so full it takes the computer a long time to look through it all and the system slows down.
Add in cookies, deleted programs leaving behind crud and so on and your system slows down.
People should do occasional cleaning but most do not.
The easiest thing to do is download CCleaner (it’s free) and run it occasionally (once a month or so). It also has a registry cleaner that is worth running to clear out old registry entries. Note: Run the registry cleaner multiple times till it returns a clean scan.
Also, over time, your hard drive becomes fragmented. Instead of a data file being contiguous they get scattered over the disk. This means the hard drive heads have to take time to seek out the new locations and this slows things down. It can also mean your swap file (disk space Windows uses to act like RAM) can shrink since it needs contiguous space and with a highly fragmented drive that could make it too small (also why you should endeavor to never let your drive get more than 85% full).
Running a defrag program like Defraggler (it’s free) once every six months or so is worthwhile and sorts that out. Note: You do not need to do this on SSDs. Just hard drives.
Finally, over time, people add stuff to their PC and there can be all sorts of gets added in to the stratup routine of the PC. You can check what is running at startup with CCleaner mentioned above (under “Tools” or you can run MSConfig which comes with Windows). Disable everything that is not necessary. This does not remove the programs, just means they don’t try to start when you boot the PC and take up system resources unnecessarily.
With a little maintenance your PC can steam along at full speed for years.
Looking at the processes using the Russinovich Process Explorer Process Explorer - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn I see that the big memory hog is the system service nsi that sucks up most of memory in a few minutes. The cure is not obvious and the fault has been around for years
The point is not so much those specific problems but why Windows seems to be designed to allow bad stuff to happen and accumulate degraded performance. (P.S. I think disk fragmentation is mostly an artefact of DOS and early Windows days. It’s a very rare system that churns most of a Terabyte disk in any short (years) time.
In comparison my Linux systems don’t accumulate degraded performance despite me keeping them very up to date. On my mainstream systems - Centos and Debian I never ever get a problem
Is it possible–in theory, at least–by running these utilities and uninstalling software, to get a windows install more or less back to its original condition, (without reinstalling it)?
One reason that i can think of, is that the windows registry gets bloated. As more and more apps get installed onto windows, more and more configurations, and data is saved as the registry grows in size. It takes precious resources to read back a large registry, therefore windows slows down.
I’m not sure these are actual factual answers but rather informed guesses or parroting what others have told them. I doubt the registry causes any noticable slowdown as it’s pretty big when Windows is installed and even if it doubled in size due to other programs writing to it, it’s a pretty efficient way of storing information and I doubt the system takes much time at all to find a key in it.
If I had to guess, I think the bottleneck in computer speed is the conventional (and probably still, the SSD) storage device and over time, fragmentation of files really slows down the effective read speed of the drives therefore slowing down the user experience.
Apples/OSX performance also degrades over time as you use a system, install software, updates, etc. And just like in the Windows world, a clean reinstall of the OS revives the machine.
I’d like to know this too, I’m pretty good with computers but this confounds me. It is probably a variety of factors, not the least of which is installing a lot of programs over the years.
It’s the same for smartphones, things stay fast as long as you don’t actually install a lot of apps. So you can have a smartphone, just don’t use it for anything besides browsing, texting, and making phone calls.
PC/Server technician here. The registry grows quite a bit more than you think it does. There are thousands upon thousands of class entries that various pieces of software load. Some, especially those that update frequently (Java/Flash/Adobe Reader/etc) have new class entries every time. Windows updates, as well, produce a lot of registry entries. A lot of them are for rollback purposes, which is why they are not simply overwritten.
Fragmentation is not usually a big deal unless your drive is near capacity most of the time. Outdated drivers are a common cause of slowdown. Toolbars, add-ons, and other software that runs on startup (or runs as a service!) create drag on resources. Basically, it’s a large number of factors that all contribute a small percentage of drag and all add up over time.
CCleaner is a good tool to help keep things tuned up. But really, reinstalling Windows is not hard. Learn how to backup your important information, keep a list of software that you actually need, and do a clean install of Windows once a year. It’s good for you and good for your PC. Ninite.com is a great timesaving resource for reinstalling all the basic software you need in one step.
I am not clear what the OP means by “A Windows Install”. Installing that beast on a computer got slow because the code writers stopped worrying about ‘tight’ code. They also added all kinds of bells and whistles that most of us never need.
Starting up in the morning gets slower because of all the software that thinks you want it to be running in the background ready to go. Some of this can be really memory hungry too - I use Dragon dictation and that can really slow things down if you let it. Some software even overrides your wishes and reinstates itself into the startup menu after you relegate it to ‘start when needed’. Look hard at ‘msconfig’ and make sure that you know what each item is (Google it) and decide if you want it to run at startup or not.
It’s also a good idea to have a look at Task manager to see what’s using your computer’s power. I don’t do ‘clean’ installs, but I do use Ccleaner to go through all the software on my computer and delete anything I don’t need - decluttering.
I see no reason why complete Install #100 from a R/O disk to a virgin computer (hard drive completely formatted) would be a any slower than Install #1 on an identical computer with the identical source disk.
If your practical experience says otherwise, it’s most likely the factors suggested in this thread have accumulated – you aren’t writing a virgin Registry, you’re deleting old variables and creating new; similar action on hard drives where you’re deleting old files and writing new, possibly on a highly fragmented drive; and the eternal bugaboo, anti-virus routines.
The whole point of an install, if you can accept a destructive one, is to return everything to square one. If you are doing a non-destructive install, you are not benefiting from the concept.
I never noticed it over my usual 5 or so year period between major hardware renovations and reinstallation of whatever the flavor of Windows is at the time.
Then again, I do the maintenance mentioned upthread pretty religiously, so maybe that’s part of it.
I am very careful about what I install, what services are allowed to run, etc.
My computers don’t get slower with time.
And I’m horrid about installing OSes. I have never wiped and reinstalled an OS on my main computer since I bought the first one way back when. That was MS-DOS 3.3.
That’s right. I’ve gone: MS-DOS 3.3-> 5.0 -> 6.2 -> Windows 3.1 -> WfW 3.11 -> Window 95 -> 98 -> 98 SE -> XP -> Vista -> 7. (Vista lasting only a day as I migrated from XP to7.)
I’ve kept things clean, tidy, clearing out cruft, etc.
If your computer is getting slower it’s: hardware decay, malware or unnecessary software or other bloat. (E.g., right now TurboTax, for some unbelievable reason, has added an update service. Once I send in my taxes. That one is going bye-bye.)
Note that not running new stuff as fast as you like is not “your computer is getting slower”. I have no idea why people confuse the two.
MS DOS 3.3 is nearly 30 years old. I seriously doubt the hardware you had then is the hardware you are using now. So, you’ve had to move to new PCs and almost certainly new hard drives and dealt with out of date software.
Maybe you managed all that but I can say with certainty you made life a LOT harder on yourself doing it this way. Way easier to copy off your data, do a clean install and put your data back.
Seconded, same profession here. Its never just “one thing” also windows and many other programs do get a little chubbier as they upgrade. Extra features and security adjustments often take up extra space, even a few kb here and there add up when they are files that windows uses on a minute to minute basis.
But why in the world would I want to take my computer back to just the bare essentials? The most annoying thing about a new computer is not having everything set up right, and you’re adding in having to install all the drivers and Windows Updates. Just using a new computer takes a day or two to get it up to a usable state. Add an extra day at least for the extra stuff.
And then it takes a month or longer to start feeling like your computer again. And that’s even now that I transfer over my Firefox profile, rather than start new. At least the application I use the most is properly customized. But all other programs, I have to put things back the way they were. Slowly, because you’ve already been a day without a useful computer, so you just do the bare essentials.
What you are advocating is the equivalent of taking all the functional belongings out of your home every year, spending a few days moving back in what you absolutely need, then slowly building everything back up to where it’s your house again.
That strange feeling that you aren’t home when you move house–your advocating intentionally invoking that once a year. If my computer gets a little slower because of it? Fine. Spring cleaning is one thing, but starting over fresh is a whole different ballgame.
And I say that as someone who essentially had to do that for a while because a Windows Update completely hosed my machine. (The one with messed with the root certificates and made everything invalid. I didn’t have a taskbar.)
Unfortunately, operating systems haven’t been designed with that in mind. Luckily there are some solutions, that are not as widespread. Also it is good to see that the tendency is to save data to the cloud, ergo save data to use later as backups.
What i usually do, after a fresh install, and after installing and configuring everything to my liking, i make a bit by bit complete system backup. (not using the built in windows one, mind you) (macrium free) Then, if anything gets screwed up, or is in danger of corruption, viruses whatever, i can place back the backed up system in less than 10 minutes. I can not imagine anything more comfortable than that. Imo windows should have been designed like that by default. Instead, now with windows 8 you get the option to strip everything back to bare essentials, which is a “kind of” solution.