What Really Slows Windows Down

The follow up experiment testing more software with improved benchmarks. If you want to know what applications are slowing down your machine, check out this post.

The Contenders

I've tried to repeat as few tests as possible so that I could put my time into doing new things that people wanted benchmarking... If I've still missed something off, contact me and I'll see about adding it either to this list, or the next one like it. I'll say now (and probably again later): this took a lot of time.

Anti-virus Suites

I concentrated on these last time as they were the worst offenders, but some missed the chance to have a go and therefore I'm giving these lucky packages a chance to show how slow they can really make your computer crawl.

1. Norton InternetSecurity 2007
2. Norton InternetSecurity 2006
3. ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite
4. Nod32 version2.5
5. Microsoft Windows Live OneCare
6. avast! 4.7 Home

Anti-virus

The classic systems that ran the world before security became silly. Some have added features like mail-scanning, but nothing fancy like a firewall.

1. McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8
2. Norton Antivirus 2002 (OEM)
3. AVG 7.1 Free
4. Panda Antivirus 2007
5. Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006

Anti-Spyware & Firewalls

These are standalone applications specifically for one job. Only... Erm... Two can survive. You should note that Ad-Aware does not run all the time like most anti-malware applications (unless you purchase it) and therefore it was only functioning as a post-active system. Prevention is the best policy.

1. WebRoot Spy Sweeper
2. Windows Defender
3. Lavasoft Ad-Aware
4. ZoneAlarm 6.5 Free

Office

There's been a lot of emphasis over Foxit PDF Reader over the last couple of days. It's time to see how they compare here.

1. Acrobat Reader 7.0.8
2. Foxit PDF Reader 2

Browsers

I didn't count browsers significantly large enough to affect the system, so they were left out of the last test. I've included them in this on demand.

1. Firefox 1.5.0.7
2. Opera 9.01
3. Internet Explorer 7 RC1
4. Maxthon 1.5.6 (on IE6)

Media

I covered some codecs last time and they generally performed well. This time I've covering some of the players that you might use with them

1. iTunes 7 (including QuickTime)
2. WinAmp 5.24 Full
3. RealPlayer 10.5
4. Windows Media Player 10
5. Windows Media Player 11
6. VLC Player 0.8.5
7. ZoomPlayer 4.5.1

Messengers

There were also a lot of messenger utilities in the last roundup but it turns out you can never have enough messengers so here are a few more by popular demand.

1. mIRC
2. Miranda IM 10.5
3. Skype 2.5.0.141
4. XChat 2.6.7a

CD, DVD & Virtual Drive Applications

Here's anything to do with burning, cloning, imaging and mounting "removable media".

1. Nero7 Premium Reloaded v.7.5.1.1 (everything they do including SmartStart)
2. CDBurnerXP Pro 3.0.116 (including .NET Framework v1.1)
3. Alcohol 1.9.5.4327
4. Daemon Tools 4.0.3

Other Things

Here are the things that I decided I couldn't be bothered to add extra things to bulk out a group were unique enough to stay on their own.

1. Black Viper's Services Tweaks
2. Adding 5000 images into the My Photos section of My Documents

Pages

1. Introduction
2. The New Benchmarks
3. Norton Internet Security 2007
4. The Contenders
5. Results and Conclusions

Written by Oli on Friday, 22 September 2006. Tagged with benchmarks, windows, other. Read 182531 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

1 to 10 of 91 < 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 8 9 10 >

#1 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

Glad to see that Norton straightened themselves out a little bit; however, that boot time is still way too high for me to worry about purchasing a copy of their software. I'll stick to "being careful."

Quote

Michael Chase Anonymous User

#2 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

In reference to your forthcoming article, i've found the best way to speed windows up, is to un-install xp, install 98, and play the random delete file game from back when I only had a 800mb had drive and had to squeeze windows and half-life both on it! Delete files until something breaks, when it breaks, you know for the next install you cant delete that file.. ive had it around 20ish MB before :)...

Sorry, thats completely irrelevant, but I miss the good old days! Excellent article as always sir, your results proved the rough idea I had in my head of how the security products performed. I have to speed up a lot of Norton PC's for private customers when im freelancing. Ive recently gotten rid of Mcafee Enterprise 8 and replaced it with Avast much to my happyness! For speeding up windows, as well as the service tweaks, ive found TweakNow Powerpack2006 to be relatively useful, makes enough of a difference to notice, including boot times.

Cheers dude!

Quote

skirky or eQuaZ0r Anonymous User

#3 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

Really great job on the "what slows windows" down. I've been recently trying to find on my own system what is causing large slow bootup times. I'm thinking that Google Desktop Sidebar / Search may be something interesting to check. ...and if you decide to check out antivirus suites, be sure to take a look at F-secure/Kasperky, recently rated as the "best" detecting antivirus and antispyware suite in its Internet Security offerings.

Quote

Rattanjeet Anonymous User

#4 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

I would like to see yoru review the free Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic. http://www.free-av.com/

Quote

bob jones Anonymous User

#5 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

Glad my computer doesn't need any of that crappy antivirus, spyware garbage...

its a Mac, and sweet as a nut.

Why do you guys put up with all that sh*t?

Quote

Jon T Anonymous User

#6 — Author comment /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

@Jon

I don't put up with any of that shit... I still use windows, I just use Common Sense as my AV.

QuoteSiteProfile

Oli Numero Uno

#7 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

My opinion with watching Norton Internet Security over the last couple of years is that it is getting more and more bloated every release. Every release what they seem to be doing, is adding new features (which is fine by itself), but they add one or two more (new) background services in doing so every time, I am not sure how many services Norton Internet security runs on now, but it must be at least over 6 or 8 or even more, which is ridiculous really.

What I am experiencing in the real world is that a lot of people only have 256Mb of RAM and Norton Internet Security 2006 requires so much RAM that these PC's have no more physical RAM left over (even when no programs are running) and start using the swap file constantly and the PC comes to a crawl, taking Nortons off and using the XP2 firewall + AVG free edition uses much less RAM, runs less processes and the machines become much faster. Norton Internet Security 2006 appears to require at least 512Mb of RAM to prevent the swap file from being used constantly, which is far too much RAM used.

In my mind, what needs to happen with Norton Internet Security, is they need to combine a lot of the tasks into only a few services (i.e. optimize), instead of heaps of separate services/background tasks like it is now, I am sure a lot of RAM can be saved by optimizing sections of the code too. I have looked at PC's with only 256Mb of RAM running Norton Internet Security 2006, and Norton's is actually using MORE ram that Windows XP itself, which is getting ridiculous really, in my mind, Windows XP SP2 firewall + AVG free edition + Firefox to prevent spyware that comes through ActiveX holes is more than enough and doesn't require half as much RAM, but then again I primarily run Ubuntu myself.

Quote

Rob Anonymous User

#8 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

Great Article, Was wondering if you could also run some tests on P2P apps, Emule/utorrent and some other media players like PowerDvd,WinDvd,Media Player Classic.

Also some other suggestions on software would be imgburn/dvddecrypter/photoshop/Kaspersky AV/Kerio Firewall/sygate/outpost

also to test it would be cool if a test was conducted which was ran before and after a defrag? That would be aswome

Quote

CrisCr0ss Anonymous User

#9 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

You should not do performance tests in a virtual machine. Main reason is the condition of the host machine at the given moment. You know that that VM is just another application on the system that shares cpu and IO with the main system. True performance tests are done on a real machine where all tests are run on the same restored each time image.
There is one more thing that you should have mentioned in your tests. Do all security suites have a boot time driver that starts scanning when no user mode application has started? I doubt - namely, McAfee and Microsoft both scan in user mode meaning their boot time performance degradation in theory should be 0% but it is not. Norton's driver starts at the system time which means it scans during the boot file IO intensive process. This protects the machine for worms such as FunLove that infect just when the network drivers are up and functioning among other things. I think you should set all software to have the same options and then only run your tests.
Cheers,
Mike

Quote

Mike Anonymous User

#10 /* 2 years, 10 months ago */

why NAV 2002 and the rest of the progs are new?

Quote

meofcourse Anonymous User

1 to 10 of 91 < 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 8 9 10 >

Don't just sit there like a lemon! Reply!

Got something to say? Now's the time to share it with the author and everybody else that reads this posting! Lemons need not apply.

Name (required)

E-mail (required but not displayed)

Send me an email when somebody replies

Message