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I'm doing the obvious things: defragmenting the HD, scrubbing the registry, compacting the registry, disabling unneeded programs that load during startup, turning off preloads on seldom used resources, running a firewall with anti-virus/anti-Trojan/anti-anything, periodic scanning for viruses/Trojans/anything, deleting browsing histories and associated files, deleting junk files, deleting temp files, and I do deep scans on my hard drives to check for errors and relocate sectors. I even periodically remove dust/lint from the heat sinks that might otherwise lead to the hardware self-throttling due to heat buildup.
Yes, all that helps, and yet, inevitably, over time, even doing all that, a PC seems to run gradually slower and slower until finally I cave in, reformat the drive, and re-install everything. Or, I re-install an image from when it was factory fresh. Then, it runs faster again, and slowly the cycle repeats. This seems to be generally true, regardless of which PC it is.
The two utilities I've been using have been "Tune-up Utilities" and "Ace Utilities." It's telling that each finds something that the other misses. i.e. neither one seems to be thorough. Maybe there's something better?
It's really quite annoying. My theory is that none of the tools are 100% effective, and so whatever types of things they miss tend to accumulate and grow and become burdensome over time, but that's just a guess. Or, maybe it's planned obsolescence: flaws in the OS that (deliberate or not) benefit Microsoft by subtly nudging you toward buying a newer, faster system (and a new copy of Windows for the fancy new hardware) by gradually increasing your dissatisfaction with what you have?
Either way, what else can be done to either prevent or delay the inevitable?
Yes, all that helps, and yet, inevitably, over time, even doing all that, a PC seems to run gradually slower and slower until finally I cave in, reformat the drive, and re-install everything. Or, I re-install an image from when it was factory fresh. Then, it runs faster again, and slowly the cycle repeats. This seems to be generally true, regardless of which PC it is.
The two utilities I've been using have been "Tune-up Utilities" and "Ace Utilities." It's telling that each finds something that the other misses. i.e. neither one seems to be thorough. Maybe there's something better?
It's really quite annoying. My theory is that none of the tools are 100% effective, and so whatever types of things they miss tend to accumulate and grow and become burdensome over time, but that's just a guess. Or, maybe it's planned obsolescence: flaws in the OS that (deliberate or not) benefit Microsoft by subtly nudging you toward buying a newer, faster system (and a new copy of Windows for the fancy new hardware) by gradually increasing your dissatisfaction with what you have?
Either way, what else can be done to either prevent or delay the inevitable?
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