Comments for What Slows Windows Down?

I agree about Norton. I just uninstalled this on a friend's machine and after cleaning out the registry, the machine ran like I had just installed a fresh copy of Windows. Unreal. I can't believe people still pay money for anything from Symantec - especially when there are free solutions out there that are twice as good.

Would love to see results of AVG - ditched Norton & McAfee due to the insane load times; replaced with AVG. Over time though, I am sure it has chewed up system resources that it shouldn't have, but would like to have some proof. Excellent post.

Thanks for the info in the review.
Sort of confirms what everyone already knows :)

You should give Norton 2007 as it has been redesigned to be quicker and much less resource intensive.
Would be very interesting to see if this is true.

Further tests of other AV products would be great as well.

cheers

Zach

Nice article... The bar graph is awesome!

I had system that was slowing down, and removing the spy/adware didn't help.

Norton System Works' WinDoctor does a good job cleaning up junk after uninstallations, and in speeding up Windows. With NSW2005, it can run as a standalone.

How about Vista?

Norton was the Main offender I was about to go Out a new PC because mine was so slow I uninstalled Norton and its OK again.... I am so fed up with that software and To think that I forked our £50 for them to screw up my puter.... like no virus ever has...

JC

Norton was the Main offender I was about to go Out a new PC because mine was so slow I uninstalled Norton and its OK again.... I am so fed up with that software and To think that I forked our £50 for them to screw up my puter.... like no virus ever has...

JC

Hey... guys? Does the fact that every Windows OS uses a damned registry to store the settings of ALL applications in it say anything to you? That's cause #1 in long term for Windows slowing down.
Use regcleaner or ccleaner to regularly clean your registry.
A well - behaved application uses a nice .ini file (or any other extension) in its installation directory (or user's home directory if we're talking linux).
#2 is fragmentation. Annoying, but if you're using Windows, you have to defragment partitions from time to time, especially if you have big ones.
This never happens in Linux. The file systems are better designed.

#3 is startup applications. Don't be lazy! Do this today: Start -> Run -> type msconfig -> select Startup tab -> deselect what you don't need.
You might have about half a dozen apps that just run in the background and eat up precious resources that you might need for developing or anything else.

No matter what operating system you are running, learn a bit about how to maintain it. It will help you a great deal in the long run. You don't have to be a geek like me to do this, honestly!

I`m amazed no one reported these major causes.

Are there any solutions to Norton slowing down the sytem or is it something we have to live with?