OT: Speeding up a slow computer

[dogscoff]

That's what I feared Seems odd that a computer (or, more specifically, an operating system) would kinda 'decay' over time. I mean, it's just bits stored on a magnetic storage device, it shouldn't be *able* to decay!

Well, even if we disregard fragmentation, the crap cluttering up the registry, all the pointless bloat that wants to install itself and autostart, the malware and everything else, and not wanting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, bear in mind that if your OS worked flawlessly forever, you'd never want to buy the next one...

[Fyron]

Defragmentation is 99% useless. Disk read rates are so high these days that any effect of fragmentation in modern file systems is nullified. There are occasional uses for degramentation, such as a bizarre case of 90% fragmented drives, but for the most part, its a relic of a bygone age. Its especially useless to have a policy of defragmenting before installing new games or large programs...

Xrati:
Look at the total CPU Time for such processes; anything that has 0:00:05 CPU Time after 2 weeks of running (most such services) is not going to be bogging anything down, especially when its total memory usage is in the 100s of KBs. If you see unnecessary services that have significant amounts of CPU Time and/or Mem Usage, removing them can help (a little bit). I just think your time is better served cleaning the registry and such, than stopping services that use almost 0 resources in the big picture.

[Suicide Junkie]

Quality vs Quantity.

Look for the big hogs, and go from there

[Xrati]

It's the memory usage Fyron, not the CPU usage. If you have a program that you don't use tying up memory, then that will slow down the rest of the programs trying to use extra memory. A good case in point would be your explorer.exe program. When you boot up it runs at about 15 to 17k memory. As you continue on the file will build up to 30k. You can "end process" and then start it again with no problems, as long as you have nothing running on your computer. Once you do that it will drop down in size and start to build up again.

As far as defragging goes, I've read posts where people just lose files/programs on disks as over time, XP will write over files and programs. That's why they (HDD OEM's) suggest that you defrag every once in a while to allow the OS to rewrite/update the FAT. It's not about speed or optimization.

I just rebuilt my neighbors computer. He didn't have 'dust bunnies' he had 'dust elephants" in the unit. It is a great idea to use filters. Even just a thin piece of foam that will let air flow thru. My computer has an intake and exhaust fan on it. The intake face has to be wiped down about once a week or it just looks like s#%t, with all the dust clinging to the cover.

[Fyron]

Even if you lose 20-30 MBs of RAM to background services, that won't really affect performance noticeably outside of the most memory-constrained hardware builds. How many games do you run that grind to a halt just because you only have 600 MB free RAM to let them use instead of 630 MB? Having bits of memory in-use as opposed to empty does not slow down access to other bits of memory, unless you manage to fill up the physical RAM entirely and cause hdd thrashing..

Now certainly, ditching huge memory hogs like NAV can net performance gains. Closing off larger programs like Skype and Instant Messengers, web browsers, etc., before you run a game can free up a lot of memory. I just don't see much potential in axing ~1MB background apps, esp. when they are hardly ever run by the task scheduler and get paged to disk.

"As far as defragging goes, I've read posts where people just lose files/programs on disks as over time, XP will write over files and programs."

It's fairly safe to assume such posters had a gross misunderstanding about how their system worked. Its far more likely hdd clusters randomly became corrupted at a physical level than some nebulous claims of XP overwriting existing file segments due to marginal fragmentation..

"That's why they (HDD OEM's) suggest that you defrag every once in a while to allow the OS to rewrite/update the FAT."

They just do that to shift blame away from themselves for less than perfect hdd manufacturing.

It can't hurt to defragment once a year or so, but don't think its some sort of panacea for your system's woes.

[Xrati]

Well, then with this wealth of information, Renegade has enough suggestionsz to get some more juice out of that ole computer of his. AND we've debunked some myths!!!

It's still a personnel preference as to what 'floats your boat' on computer upkeep.