Why do computers slow down as they get older?

[Steevo]

Most people will never notice on things like networking and other operations, excepth where a drive has a CRC error and winders starts forcing a slowdown of access to and from the drive-s.

In general it is just a more demanding program. Half life two was good on my 9600XT, but it would barely run some segments of GTA:SA, my computer wasn't slowing it was the game.

 

[jimi_81]

about the defragging y do u recomend other programs over the windows one
in other word what do they do better?

PerfectDisk

 

[napalmnthemorning]

Defrag- Perfect disk works great but I don't think it defrags automatically as needed while you work on other projects, like Diskeeper does. The problem I've encountered with Diskeeper's "set it and forget" option is it likes to defrag at the worst times, like when I'm burning software.! Ouch.
Antivirus- Avast and AVG are really good. I use Avast home.
Antispyware-Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, and I also use XoftSpy. Just be careful what you remove as they sometimes can be overly sensitive and pickup components that help some of your programs run.
Symantec- Got rid of their anti-virus several years ago. System hog as we all know from experience and trying to uninstall their junk ranks right up their with AOL. I do use Norton Systemworks 2005 for their "one button checkup" program.

 

[kcnychief]

I haven't really read over this thread, but I remember seeing the title. While reading something else this morning, I thought you guys might be interested in this....

With Vista, the new client version of Windows due next year, Microsoft is addressing what's become a sad truth for most people: PCs run more slowly over time.
Vista will automatically de-fragment hard disks, make better use of memory to more quickly load programs, and include a new performance control panel that will identify performance bottlenecks, according to the company.

Full article

 

[1badtech]

The hard drive is usually the culprit as it gets fragmented over time. Here are a couple of articles about it.

http://downloads.wugnet.com/whitepapers/WeakLinkGettingWeakerROIofDefrag.pdf
http://www.microsoft.com/AtWork/getstarted/speed.mspx/

 

[Perris Calderon]

the usual culprit is more sophisticated programs

 

[denver]

The hard drive is usually the culprit as it gets fragmented over time. Here are a couple of articles about it.

http://downloads.wugnet.com/whitepapers/WeakLinkGettingWeakerROIofDefrag.pdf
http://www.microsoft.com/AtWork/getstarted/speed.mspx/

Thats an interesting link. Also here's a link on HDD maintenance
http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/HDDMaint_Defrag.htm

 

[1badtech]

Thats an interesting link. Also here's a link on HDD maintenance
http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/HDDMaint_Defrag.htm

That's a great link. Gives you a detailed instruction and some very useful links.