Comments for What Really Slows Windows Down

Oli, if dont want to lose your reputation, delete the virus.gr link. their results are unreliable, its all over the net. if want reliable virus tests, link to www.av-comparatives.org

Have you ever tried a study on that slowdown over time windows gets?

At my last office we had a few machines that were used for testing. No internet connectivity. Nothing was installed on them but our own software. Despite registry cleaning apps, and defragging, the machines were noticeably slower after 6 months or so. The only cure was restore from a previously saved image, or reformat and reinstall. Now these weren't the most robust machines so ANY slowdown is much more noticeable. Still, what could be happening to cause such behavior?

nothing new in windows world (same with me). if you solve this, you´ve probably also solved the meaning of live. :-)

Same here, but I don't have to put up with Mac's proprietary hardware...I use GNU/Linux...free as in freedom...free as in free beer!

Yeah very nice article.

For cleaning garbage off your hard drive, and more importantly registry entries for startup items, download CCleaner for a good secure or standard file deletion. It will also scan for invalid registry entries as well. (P.S. do not regularly delete the Windows prefetch data, it can slow the pc when it has to remake that data) the standard deletion options are very good and have proven safe for every pc I have run it on.

Ok, back to that startup stuff. Ccleaner has an easy to use tool, that can delete the startup registry entries themselves, like those pesky ones that respawn no matter how times disabled in msconfig, and in my experience, will be permanently gone.

Also, there are numerous windows services that are only needed for strict and acute usages for business mainly. I disabled over half of my automatically-run services or set them to manual, and that has given me a largely noticeable boost in performance and even startup times. Just check whether services you have no clue what they're doing on your machine, are critical or not for your own personal configuration.

Its amazing how many useless and CPU eating applications windows has running in the background.

For another good AV try AVG Free, which does a very good job without the glitz and the snazz. I don't get long bootup times with this AV. Been using AVG for last 2 years and liked it much more than Norton or McAfee

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

the way to speed up windows and this is easy to do , goto high rise building , open window , drop pc with offending system outta the window - hey presto windows goooooos real fassssssst !!

Tee heee heee!!!

hey buddy. seems like u had a very good work here.The benchmarks tests they really help a lot.thanks:)
ps:i was wondering why u did'nt put the Kaspersky Antivirus which is a famous and succesfull program too.
and another program that may be added is Spybot S&d 1.4
keep up the good work .....

It's been a long time since you ran the tests, but I just found your site...
I was wondering if you could also include Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security in your tests