Author Topic: What slows Windows down? See for yourself.... (Read 32,838 times)

KenR · « **on:** September 11, 2006, 09:43 PM »

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Results and Conclusions

So between the last page and what's about to come, there has been hours of gruelling testing going on. Believe me when I say that 8 hours of watching a virtual machine restart is not my idea of fun, but I think the results justify the means.

http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/other/what_slows_windows_down/3

from www.lifehacker.com

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #1 on:** September 11, 2006, 10:48 PM »

LOL - another shot in the arm for Norton

Quite surprised by VMWare though.

f0dder · « **Reply #2 on:** September 12, 2006, 06:32 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on September 11, 2006, 10:48 PM

LOL - another shot in the arm for Norton

Quite surprised by VMWare though.

vmware runs a bunch of stuff on system startup, like the license service, NAT service, and some mount stuff...

mitzevo · « **Reply #3 on:** September 12, 2006, 07:15 AM »

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If you can avoid them, don't install an antivirus program (especially not Norton). That's not perfect advice for everyone, but if you've got an oodle of web-smarts, you should be able to spot what's bad and what's ok.

better to be safe than sorry. this is a universal fact.. haha, even experts make mistakes.. so I take this as stupid advice.

f0dder · « **Reply #4 on:** September 12, 2006, 07:17 AM »

Quote from: mitzevo on September 12, 2006, 07:15 AM

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If you can avoid them, don't install an antivirus program (especially not Norton). That's not perfect advice for everyone, but if you've got an oodle of web-smarts, you should be able to spot what's bad and what's ok.

better to be safe than sorry. this is a universal fact.. haha, even experts make mistakes.. so I take this as stupid advice.

Especially since a trojan dropper could hide in an ad banner - either because the ad service doesn't check, or because an affiliate was hacked. And those sneaky bastards constantly find new ways of fooling ad blockers...

app103 · « **Reply #5 on:** September 12, 2006, 07:25 AM »

With the exception of a few of these, none of the stuff in that list is on my P1...mostly for the very reason of it slowing the PC down much more than it already naturally is....to the point of being unusable.

Kaspersky is a good example. After installing that (my dad made me do it to test it for him) startup time was long enough for me to go cook dinner and eat it and clean up. And the system was so slow I could barely do what I had to do to disable it and uninstall it.

And a few things on that list like to add themselves (or parts of themselves) to startup when they don't need to be running in the background at all times...and they need to be neutered to stop that, or the combination will bring any system to a crawl. (ex: Quicktime & various messaging clients)

I do run some older, much lighter versions of some of the things on that list on that PC, though.

And I pretty much treat the newer faster pc the same way.

app103 · « **Reply #6 on:** September 12, 2006, 07:26 AM »

Quote from: mitzevo on September 12, 2006, 07:15 AM

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If you can avoid them, don't install an antivirus program (especially not Norton). That's not perfect advice for everyone, but if you've got an oodle of web-smarts, you should be able to spot what's bad and what's ok.

better to be safe than sorry. this is a universal fact.. haha, even experts make mistakes.. so I take this as stupid advice.

The best antivirus is common sense...upgrades available daily. But you should always have layered security, just in case one part fails for some reason.

Which is my reason for having AVG installed...in case my common sense fails.

mitzevo · « **Reply #7 on:** September 12, 2006, 07:29 AM »

If I had a P1/P2 box I would use nix on it for sure, and stick to oss.

edit: Best security is commen sense? upgrades available every day?

yeah what if the updates have been comprimised.. (thinking in radical phases here

)

app103 · « **Reply #8 on:** September 12, 2006, 08:11 AM »

Quote from: mitzevo on September 12, 2006, 07:29 AM

If I had a P1/P2 box I would use nix on it for sure, and stick to oss.

It's a proprietary piece of NEC9820 crap that is incapable of running anything but win9x due to the fact that there are no drivers available for some of the hardware in it for any other OS.

And replacing the hardware is more money & trouble than it's worth. For example, there is no other motherboard that will fit that case except the one that is already in it. The PCI slots in it do not work...they have never worked...they are just for show. Even the RAM it uses is proprietary!

But it serves it's purpose as backup, storage, and a bit of 9x testing....and helped me keep my sanity when my P3 died and I couldn't afford to repair/replace it.

And since it currently can have no more than 10 hours per month of internet access, it's good for getting things done without distractions of chat, games, or browsing web pages.

Quote from: mitzevo on September 12, 2006, 07:29 AM

edit: Best security is commen sense? upgrades available every day? yeah what if the updates have been comprimised.. (thinking in radical phases here )

That would be a failure...in which case the secondary antivirus (AVG) would take over.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #9 on:** September 12, 2006, 09:27 AM »

Quote from: f0dder on September 12, 2006, 06:32 AM

vmware runs a bunch of stuff on system startup, like the license service, NAT service, and some mount stuff...

Yes I know - I have VMWare workstation installed and a heck of a lot of stuff is running constantly even when you aren't using VMWare at all. Trouble is it is not at all obvious how to disable a lot of it (like networking stuff) without screwing up the installation or the rest of my system. It would be nice if you could just set serices etc. to manual and only start them when you need them. Anyone any ideas?

However I still like VMWare better than MS Virtual PC (which is now free) - but that doesn't seem to load anything at startup. Maybe I'll give MS VPC another go.

The other thing in that list that is annoying are IM clients - I dropped Miranda a while back because everytime I upgraded it forgot all my contacts and settings (which was a right royal PITA) but now I have ICQ, MSN and Yahoo loading at startup which really clobbers things. Anyone know of any other light multi-IM clients that are a bit more user friendly than Miranda?

f0dder · « **Reply #10 on:** September 12, 2006, 09:30 AM »

Hm, might be worth a try setting the vmware services to manual - you can always set them back to whatever again if it doesn't work. A bit silly that it's not loaded on-demand anyway.

VirtualPC is okay, but somewhat slower than vmware... at least last time I played with it.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** September 12, 2006, 10:29 AM »

this is my one real gripe with vmware (noted in my review).

Terry · « **Reply #12 on:** September 16, 2006, 08:33 PM »

No surprise for Norton, it looks like a malware slowing down the machine

Surprise to see that Java runtime < .Net runtime.
Anyway, time to clean up some fonts

wr975 · « **Reply #13 on:** September 16, 2006, 10:31 PM »

I wonder if the test results have much meaning. As an example, I don't get why an installation of WinRar should slow down the boot time of a system. It adds no processes or auto start entry.

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Yes I know - I have VMWare workstation installed and a heck of a lot of stuff is running constantly even when you aren't using VMWare at all. Trouble is it is not at all obvious how to disable a lot of it (like networking stuff) without screwing up the installation or the rest of my system. It would be nice if you could just set serices etc. to manual and only start them when you need them. Anyone any ideas?

I rarely need VMware, so I stopped all VMware services + set them to manually and start VMware using following AHK script. I've no idea if I get any performance gain, but I feel better.

Code

services = Authorization Service,DHCP Service,NAT Service,Virtual Mount Manager Extended

Loop, parse, services, `,
	runwait, net start "VMware %A_LoopField%",,hide

runwait,C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\VMWARE~1\vmware.exe

Loop, parse, services, `,
	runwait, net stop "VMware %A_LoopField%",,hide

f0dder · « **Reply #14 on:** September 16, 2006, 10:35 PM »

wr975: WinRAR installs an explorer context menu extension, that could account for something.

Does VMWare fail if you don't start services set to manual?

wr975 · « **Reply #15 on:** September 16, 2006, 10:49 PM »

Shell extension is true, but that's just some few more registry entries to read, not an own process. This can't be measurable. (At least, I think so.)

I've no problems with VMware. Starting a VMware with processes closed, like doube-clicking a vmx file instead of using the script, is of course not the best idea.

f0dder · « **Reply #16 on:** September 16, 2006, 11:19 PM »

Quote from: wr975 on September 16, 2006, 10:49 PM

Shell extension is true, but that's just some few more registry entries to read, not an own process. This can't be measurable. (At least, I think so.)

Registry entries to read, DLLs to load...

Josh · « **Reply #17 on:** September 16, 2006, 11:22 PM »

You know what I hate is how every app and its mother feels it has to be loaded at startup to provide "quicker access". This causes many problems on most of the systems I've troubleshot. I am sorry, but a paint program doesnt need a tray icon or a startup program to provide me quicker access to it.

Deozaan · « **Reply #18 on:** September 17, 2006, 11:19 PM »

I don't understand why Adobe Acrobat thinks it needs to constantly run a service. I tend to avoid PDF files as often as possible just because Acrobat in itself is a big hassle.

Why don't programs just run services when I open them and then close those services when I close them?

I can kind of understand things like Printer services (though they cause a lot of bloat and take forever to load on startup) to recognize buttons being pressed on the printer, I guess. But why does VMWare load so much stuff if I only use it once a month? I don't think the VMnat, VMnetdhcp, vmount2, and the vmware-authd ALL need to be running when the program isn't even running.

I'm not even sure what half of these processes are that are running. Of my 50 processes running right now (and I've ended some of them already) I don't know what about 30 of them do and I don't what program they're for.

WHY??!

kimmchii · « **Reply #19 on:** September 17, 2006, 11:49 PM »

Quote from: Deozaan on September 17, 2006, 11:19 PM

I don't understand why Adobe Acrobat thinks it needs to constantly run a service. I tend to avoid PDF files as often as possible just because Acrobat in itself is a big hassle.

Why don't programs just run services when I open them and then close those services when I close them?

I can kind of understand things like Printer services (though they cause a lot of bloat and take forever to load on startup) to recognize buttons being pressed on the printer, I guess. But why does VMWare load so much stuff if I only use it once a month? I don't think the VMnat, VMnetdhcp, vmount2, and the vmware-authd ALL need to be running when the program isn't even running.

I'm not even sure what half of these processes are that are running. Of my 50 processes running right now (and I've ended some of them already) I don't know what about 30 of them do and I don't what program they're for.

1. use Foxit Reader instead of Adobe Acrobat. Foxit is single exe, no installation needed.

2. use Microsoft Virtual PC, no running services.

3. Create Batch File to Start or End Window Services

use net start/stop to control programs that run in the background.

dk70 · « **Reply #20 on:** September 18, 2006, 01:14 AM »

Dont be slave to defaults, tweak away. Adobe Acrobat is easy http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanh/archive/2004/12/22/330288.aspx He refer to PDF Speedup at http://www.acropdf.com/ I use this program to speed it up http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/software/index.php?type=supported&id=7F7290B5 Same thing. This can be done manually as well. Foxit is ok but not really Acrobat. If you read a lot of pdf-files many will prefer the big one. Noticeable difference before and after.

They also make an "enterprise" lighter version of Reader. Dont know much about it except that they dont announce it loudly. Try google but it wont be faster than a tweaked normal version.

app103 · « **Reply #21 on:** September 23, 2006, 10:10 PM »

Part 2 just published:

http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/other/what_really_slows_windows_down/1

He included much more in this one.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #22 on:** December 28, 2006, 10:52 AM »

What about this...

[attach]

Nxqd3051990 · « **Reply #23 on:** June 30, 2007, 08:53 AM »

Very nice find
Thanks so much, great forum
nXqd