Re: Progressive slowing - a chronic condition

From: RA (nomail_at_thisplace)
Date: 08/11/04 

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:36:45 -0500

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Clean out your temp files and IE cache.
Defrag the disk.

"Steve" <Steve@weirdstreet.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:cfd22b$id8$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Can anyone comment on or explain the following?
>
> 1. I bought a new 2.8 GHz laptop in January. Windows XP. Performance was
> never great, but I noticed perceptible slowing by about March.
>
> 2. Having experienced similar progressive slowing with my last computer, I
> felt suspicious and took a few rough timings... The time it took for menus
> to appear, for example.
>
> 3. Now, I've been using computers for around 15 years and have NEVER
before
> had to worry about how long it took for menus to appear!!!
>
> 4. I reappraised the situation this week. Here's what I found.
> a. In March, it took (near as I could estimate it) about half a second
for
> the Accessories submenu to reveal from the Start menu. (I chose this
because
> it's reasonably large and doesn't change.) I timed this immediately after
a
> boot up.
> b. It now takes more than a full second for the same submenu to reveal
> under the same circumstances.
> c. A music programme which ran beautifully back in January no longer runs
> without the sound completely breaking up and repeating. I'm no expert in
> this, but my guess is the problem is it's using virtual memory and the
> programme's having to wait for the disk to catch up. Whatever, it didn't
> have to do this under the same circumstances back in March.
> d. Even my word processor is slowing to a standstill. It can sometimes
take
> nearly a second for a single key to register.
>
> 5. My computer does NOT have a virus. That is, I have had a fully updated
> NAV installed and active from the start. So, if I do have a virus, it must
> be one that has escaped Symmantec's attention since January. I also use
> RegScrubXP to keep the registry trim, and manually trim down the prefetch
> directory.
>
> 6. It seems to me there are only two possibilities.
> a. There's something wrong with the computer hardware.
> b. There's something wrong with the operating system.
>
> 7. The fact that I noticed a similar effect with my last computer (Pentium
> 2, 333MHz running Windows 98) might suggest it isn't the computer, unless
> it's a problem with Intel chipsets generally. It seems more likely it is
> something to do with the operating systems.
> 8. Microsoft/Intel have been accused of bloating software to reduce
computer
> lifetimes.
> I don't know anything about this, and don't make any such accusation. But
> Whatever is going on here, it seems clear something somewhere's getting
> progressively clogged up.
> What?
> Either someone with too much power is doing something very cynical, or
> someone with too great a monopoly is producing substandard software.
>
>