Erm.. My computer always bogs down every once in a while.. What should i do?

[benjamine6]

I find myself Reinstalling Windows on every computer that i have owned well uncommonly, like every six months or so. At around the end of the six months, the computer gets completely sluggish and eventually freezes a lot. My specs are not that bad when you consider. I mean, I have an AMD Phenom II X3 Black Edition 75 Processor, 8 GB DDR3 Ram, a 1-terabyte hard drive, you name it. But the thing is: This has happened with EVERY SINGLE computer that i've ever owned. What should i do to keep the computer from eventually bogging? I don't install that much stuff, barely anything at all. But the computer still eventually bogs out after six months of each Windows Installation, I just want this to stop. Any recommendations to where i can stop the slowdown cycle madness? I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 this morning, since i'm not screwing with Windows 10 just yet, and... yeah. Any suggestions?

[JustGeorge]

Anything in common between all of them? Same AV or a particular piece of software? Run any malware scans? Can you open up the task manager and see if something is hogging the CPU, RAM or disk?

 

[farmeunit]

For one thing.  Look at getting an SSD for your primary drive.  Second, if you have a lot of large files that you download, look at Windows Defender and it scanning all the time.  Takes a huge toll on performance.  You can look in Task Manager and Resource Monitor to get a basic idea of what is going on.  Then move onto other tools.

[xendrome]

Stop downloading and installing a bunch of different crap programs, that's probably what is doing it.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Run ccLeaner once and awhile. An SSD would also help as posted.

[Hum]

Search out and Delete *.tmp files

 

Run CCleaner; delete stored up web pages, useless programs -- and do a Registry cleaning

 

Go to Task Manager or Start up programs -- disable unneeded programs

 

Delete any Toolbars you may have foolishly installed

 

Offload downloads to storage drives, that you may want to keep

 

Defrag your drive space after you clean off unneeded junk

 

Add more RAM, if a PC is less than 4 gigs -- check for compatible RAM for your model

[+Warwagon MVC]

First, know the kind of things which actually slow a computer down.

 

While temp files take up storage they generally don't slow a computer down. Unless you have 10% or less hard drive storage left. So yes, you can run CCleaner and delete temp files but I don't think that is going to speed you up much.

 

What slows a computer down are the following

 

Disc IO's (programs accessing (thrashing ... really going at it accessing the drive)  the hard drive)

CPU usage : Programs using up your CPU usage (example, if an Application is taking up 100% CPU at time)

Memory : If you have so little memory that it gets full and the hard drive has to start using virtual memory (the page file on the hard drive.... when that happens your computer goes to a crawl)

Buggy adware or just adware in general, which can use all of the following above, or if badly coded can crash or freeze you all together.

also bad drivers, but seeing how it happens on every computer you own, I don't think it's that.

[exotoxic]

46 minutes ago, Hum said:

delete stored up web pages

 

Stored (cached) pages are there to speed up page loading/save badwidth.

[Hum]

Just now, exotoxic said:

 

Stored (cached) pages are there to speed up page loading/save badwidth.

Old pages will build up over time -- clogging up the machine.

 

And if you have any sort of high-speed internet these days, you won't even notice the difference.

[+DonC Subscriber²]

One thing you can easily do is when it's bogged down is to check the HDD light and see if it's flickering or just on fully.

 

Of the built-in utilities, I'd recommend running "resmon" and try to see what it is that's doing it. You can get a view on CPU, disk IO, network IO and memory usage over time and get a clue what's doing it when it happens. It looks scary at first but it's a good first step when it's all gone slow.

[exotoxic]

12 minutes ago, Hum said:

Old pages will build up over time -- clogging up the machine.

 

IE is limited to 250MB by default.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

17 minutes ago, Hum said:

Old pages will build up over time -- clogging up the machine.

 

And if you have any sort of high-speed internet these days, you won't even notice the difference.

The amount that "builds up" isn't a whole lot.

 

And you don't know if he has fast ethernet, that's just an assessment.

[Hum]

7 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

The amount that "builds up" isn't a whole lot.

 

And you don't know if he has fast ethernet, that's just an assessment.

I just cleaned out over 750 megs of old stuff.

 

And those saved up web pages encourage a fragmented hard drive.

 

And I said, IF you have high-speed ... of course each person may have different equipment and services.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

1 hour ago, Hum said:

I just cleaned out over 750 megs of old stuff.

 

And those saved up web pages encourage a fragmented hard drive.

 

And I said, IF you have high-speed ... of course each person may have different equipment and services.

I don't think that 750MB would be a collection over 6 months. I think that would be more long term. And that really doesn't slow his computer down.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

What changes are made to the computer over time?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[cork1958]

18 hours ago, warwagon said:

First know the kind of things which actually slow a computer down.

 

While temp files take up storage they generally don't slow a computer down. Unless you have 10% or less hard drive storage left. So yes, you can run CCleaner and delete temp files but I don't think that is going to speed you up much.

 

What slows a computer down are the following

 

Disc IO's (programs accessing (thrashing ... really going at it accessing the drive)  the hard drive)

CPU usage : Programs using up your CPU usage (example, if an Application is taking up 100% cpu at time)

Memory : If you have so little memory that its getting full and the hard drive has to start using virtual memory (the page file on the hard drive.... when that happens your computer goes to a crawl)

Buggy adware or just adware in general, which can use all of the following above, or if badly coded can crash or freeze you all together.

also bad drivers, but seeing how it happens on every computer you own, I don't think it's that.

"Buggy adware or just adware in general, which can use all of the following above, or if badly coded can crash or freeze you all together"

 

I'd be willing to bet it's this, especially if you're only getting 6 months of use out of a fresh install of Windows.

 

With 8 gigs of memory, that is easily good enough to do anything you want, with or without a SSD hard drive.