I am having a small squabble at work with our admin regarding a colleague's laptop. The laptop is bordering on unusable. The admin tidied up some temp directories and defragged the HDD a few months back and that bought the laptop some time but things are back to normal (sloooow) service now.
Right from the start I pointed out that the laptop is several years old and on its' original Windows build (plus updates) and it would be advisable to back up the data and rebuild it from the recovery image.
My reasoning is based on an observation (backed up by others) that Windows degrades over time. I cite clutter in the system folder, the registry and temp directories as factors. Additionally this laptop has had a lot of software added and removed over that time.
Couple of specs, though my question is a bit broader than the specific machine:
- IBM Stinkpad R52 (I think)
- XP SP(2|3)
- 1 GB RAM
The thrust of my question is:
- can anyone confirm or refute the idea that Windows degrades over time ?
- if confirming, what factors contribute to the degradation ?
Best Answer
I'm writing this on a 3.5 years since install laptop, and to be brutally honest there is no slowdown. But I did blow away all of the manufacturer's junk and do a fresh Windows install, and I do exercise care in allowing (or not allowing) programs to add in their own shell extensions, services, auto-loaders and auto-updaters. It's by no means pristine though; it has been subject to quite a bit of "install programs/uninstall programs" abuse over the years, but there has really been no detrimental effect.
I think the whole "registry bloat slows your PC down" thing is largely a myth and possibly derived from the Windows 9x days or stoked by unscrupulous vendors selling registry "optimization" tools. The registry is a hierarchical database (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986), so performance impacts from a larger registry should be absolutely minimal as navigating to any given registry key is just a sequence of parent to child jumps.