Computer getting slow

Reziac said:

Just to be contrary... My WinXP Pro media machine routinely runs 24/7/365, well over a year without a restart, in fact was restarted exactly five times in 8 years, once to mess with the hardware and four times for power outages beyond the UPS's capacity. I think this is normal.

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You'd be amazed what restarting a computer can do.

People who don't do much with their computers (I mean like serious file-ass-kicking) can get away with marathons. My lil pal SilentBob likes a good reboot at least every few days. So refreshing!

Tirjasdyn said:

You'd be amazed what restarting a computer can do.

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What it really indicates is that either something is wrong, or you're running some crapware (unfortunately that includes many browsers, including the current Moz family; older ones aren't so bad) that leak memory or resources. Of course with the amount of memory in today's machines, and the myth that NT/XP never runs out of resources (run a dozen instances of Nero and watch it run out!) most coders can no longer be arsed to make the effort to avoid such waste. Just reboot!

Reziac said:

Of course with the amount of memory in today's machines, and the myth that NT/XP never runs out of resources (run a dozen instances of Nero and watch it run out!) most coders can no longer be arsed to make the effort to avoid such waste. Just reboot!

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Nero!!!!! gahhhhhh!!!! Yep. That'll do it!

Didn't know there was so much reboot hate. Guess I'm out of touch. Nothing wrong with a good reboot - in my book. Yep, it's in my book.

Haha... rebooting is against my religion ... and reinstalling is a mortal sin!

My primary techie mentor was a Netware maven, which possibly explains my attitude... reinforced by my original antique DOS-runnin' 286, which was rebooted just twice in the five years it was my primary machine (both times cuz the crappy MFM hard disk needed a fresh low-level format)... and it worked its poor little ass off. I still have it (wasn't retired for good til 2001, in fact).

Matera the Mad said:

People who don't do much with their computers (I mean like serious file-ass-kicking) can get away with marathons. My lil pal SilentBob likes a good reboot at least every few days. So refreshing!

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I remember in the late 90's reading "how stable Windows NT is" in that even a power user could "go days without rebooting." Unix people, whose machines usually went weeks between reboots, were laughing at that.

But it's true, if you "need to reboot" because the computer has "gotten slow" or RAM is filling up causing thrashing, or it's crashing, it's almost always caused by a fault in the operating system or application programs (usually memory leaks). These things didn't often happen on Unix because the OS and applications were written to higher standards, and with the idea that rebooting is downtime costing time and money, not "just something you have to live with."

benbradley said:

I remember in the late 90's reading "how stable Windows NT is" in that even a power user could "go days without rebooting." Unix people, whose machines usually went weeks between reboots, were laughing at that.

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And then there's the Netware dudes who thought a mere couple years of uptime was downright embarrassing...

I used to use a Unix workstation (for CAD). Very stable, but if someone did need to reboot they might as well go have a snack and a cup of coffee and then come back.

I think you need to install some antivirus software in order to scan your computer and to check whether it contains some sort of virus in it, which cause the computer to work slow then detect and delete it. There are a lot of off the shelf anti-virus software's available in the market. You could also get these via internet.

You need to go to a forum of PC experts for advice on how to fix your problem. Here's a brief summary.

A weekly reboot is not a bad idea, but there is more to be done. The problem might be a virus, but unlikely. Still, it's a good idea to have software which protects all the time and periodically runs a scan.

One frequent problem is unneeded background software. Check your startup list, delete items you don't need. Bring up the task manager, check the Processes column to sort them by memory use. This will give you clues as to which processes are memory hogs. Then search the net for the top few to see if they are really essential to the daily operation of your computer.

Luck.

That's true too. I just did a sweep on my mother's system the other day and took her from 90+ processes running at startup to about 50. Most of them were completely unnecessary automatic update checkers and services associated with the trialware bundled with the computer that she'll never use. I probably could have taken it down more, it wasn't my original goal though. I was just trying to figure out why a year old quad-core system was running like cold molasses. It's much better than it was, but still not there yet.

Removing old/outdated/unused software, running a cleanup and a defrag, then updating and running some antivirus and malware scans are usually the first things I'd think to do when something seems off or especially slow, personally.