Why do computers slow down as they get older?

iceman7311

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Why has my computer slowed down as it has gotton older ? i still have the same number of programs that run at startup but yet logging on times and logging out times have slowed dramatly.
 
It could be a lot of different things. without explaining them all I'll tally up a little list.

1) fragmented Hard Drive.- Its always good to Defrag your HD to speed up disk preformance. the one built into XP is good but " a third party software I recommend "Perfect Disk" from Raxco. or "Diskeeper" from Excecutive software.

2) garbage files - "temp files, cookies, all kinds of junk files that may be clogging up preformance during startup. or even web browsing. A really Great program for cleaning your rig of these unwanted files is Ccleaner "Crap Cleaner"

3) old drivers - its always good to keep up to date with the latest drivers for your video card, sound card or any other device that the manufacturer releases to mantain its preformance.

4) Spyware - always bad to have this crap on your PC. get a good Anti-spyware program like Adaware se or Spybot S&D

5) Viruses and or Trojans- Always will slow down a computer and cause all kind of problems. using a good anti-virus program will keep you safe. I recomend AVG free simply because its free and does a good job.

6) Hardware does get old.- Like a car. or any other machine, after time of running so many years. hardware will finnaly start giving out. example "RAM", Hard drive" or even the processor can give out....this stuff happens so be prepaired for this to happen....

7) and finally...Sometimes, its good to start from scratch. meaning reformatting the hard drive a re installing a fresh copy of windows XP. Some may se this a being drastic but from being in the business of computers for over 13 years it does help...
 
about the defragging y do u recomend other programs over the windows one
in other word what do they do better?
 
iceman7311 said:
about the defragging y do u recomend other programs over the windows one
in other word what do they do better?

Well, the built in one with XP is actually the original diskeeper by executive software which Microsoft obtained for XP. that works fine. Just the other ones i mentioned like perfectdisk which i use is much more efficent and faster in its defrag process and had more options depending on the type of setup you have meaning "Servers" and or a RAID configuration. try the windows defrag first and see if that works out for you. but again it is much slower than the others.

as far as spyware what do u think of the microsoft anti spyware bets?

I forgot to mention the Microsoft version. I have to say its prob' the third on my list of good anti-spyware.. give it a try

and what do u think of norton speed disk?

I never used speed disk from norton. I could'nt give you an honest answer. I somewhat bias toward "symantec products" so maybe someone who knows of its value can answer that better than I could. Again for a disk defrg software
I like perfect disk.

-----next time you could just edit your original post instead of reposting extra messages. easier for the mods... :)
 
The car analogy is half right. All machines need maintenance. Cars need oil, water, grease. In the case of your computer it needs software and hardware clean up. The slowing down part is from lack of software housekeeping. You need to do the following monthly:

1) Junk removal - windows Disk Cleanup removes old temp files etc.
2) Spyware/adaware removers - Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware (run them all).
3) Defrag - Norton, Perfectdisk or the Windows defrager.
4) Virus scan - should be down weekly with a virus blocker up all the time. AVG Kapersky, windows or anything you can get inlcluding running different free online scanners occasionally.
5) You need to purge your registry once every 6 months. More if you screw around with a lot of junk installs. This is crucial because your registry gets scanned for instructions every time you do something. I like Registry Mechanic.


In general hardware does not slow down. It works until it starts generating errors. After that you will be lucky to get a backup performed before it crashes for good.

1) Dusting with canned air is about all you can do for the hardware. Blow out the power supply too. It gets even dustier than the rest. Every 3 months at most.
2) The thermal paste on your CPU dries out over time. If you see the CPU temp going up and the case temperature is not then you need to pull the CPU, clean it and the heatsink with isopropyl alcohol and put down fresh thermal paste.
 
also new programs take up more processer usage than before so if you are adding NEW apps to the system then they will slow down the older tech

also for boot up timing. c:/windows/prefech

i have noticed when there are a lot of files in there i just kill them all then reboot running my web browser and media player and email app as teh first things when i boot up then reboot agian and its all good.

that just one thing we do at work now and it seems to help since i found it out.

and yes i would also recomend reg mechanic
 
LeeJend said:
5) You need to purge your registry once every 6 months. More if you screw around with a lot of junk installs. This is crucial because your registry gets scanned for instructions every time you do something. I like Registry Mechanic.

Is there a program built into windows that can do this?
 
Dont use norton speeddisk is all I'll say on that one after having it erase a parttion table ;p

Disk keeper and perfect disk are probably the only viable defrag options open to you.

Executive software wrote the original defragementation API for the NT kernel if documents i've read on the internet are correct.
 
One of the most important and most obvious reason that you guys probably haven't thought about is that we all add new software on top of the original OS, or even a newer OS on an older system. Think about it, nearly all the newer software you buy and install require that much more processing power compared to the original ones that you were using when you first purchased your machine.

And, as mentioned above - junk builds up in the registry, HD, files becoming fragmented etc etc....
 
canadian_divx said:
also new programs take up more processer usage than before so if you are adding NEW apps to the system then they will slow down the older tech

^ ming she has it taken care of




thank u all i have brought my pc back up to speed :)

***also for boot up timing. c:/windows/prefetch***
 
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LeeJend said:
In general hardware does not slow down. It works until it starts generating errors. After that you will be lucky to get a backup performed before it crashes for good.

There is an exception to this, which perhaps one should be aware of, and that's where provisions for some sort of error correction is built into the computer. This could be provided by the software, or the hardware itself. In this case, a fatal error could be about to occur, but the computer instead of crashing, self corrects, or recovers.

If a NIC for instance starts to go bad, the TCP protocol (which has an error correction mechanism built in) will simply request that the sending computer resend the data. This would (for the user) tend to slow the download time (due to the number of resends), albeit the download would complete. When it gets bad enough, the resend might be of no further use. It might also be a good idea to replace when one starts seeing this (even with the above mentioned) as in part failing NICs can start becomming rather chatty...

ECC memory is another such example. If a single bit is corrupted, ECC comes in by checking them. Essentially, if I know the 5th bit is bad (lets say) and all the others are good, given there are only 2 possibilities, it must be the other. Hence it just changes the bit. If there is a multi-bit error, then ECC on the memory will detect it, but fails on correcting it. Now all said, if a bit goes bad, it's onl a matter of time before the bits surrounding it on the memory module might go bad, as the whole thing starts degrading.

Of course error handling/correction in all cases is introducing another operation, but for the user it does allow them to continue with whatever they were doing for the time being.
 
I really don't think purging the registry is going to speed an xp operating system

and I think you'll cause some problems you won't even attribute the registry cleaning

also, I don't see this slow down that everyone is talking about, ,my computers are definately faster 6 months into an install then on a reformat, and when I buy a new box, even though they typically dwarf my old box as far as specs, it will take some time before it runs as fast as my older computer

I think most of all it's what's been mentioned already, installing more sophisticated and updated programs
 
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