Things that slow your computer down (at bootup and shutdown)

I saw this posted on a warez board (the source of the stats wasnt made clear in the post) and figured it was worth reposting.

Not suprised to see Norton there. Mine got to the point I could barely open one program. Sent it packing and went with AVG.
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Thanks for the Info abraxas. I'm also not very surprised to see Norton on top of this list. Your contributions are very helpful to the community Nice

very interesting. Thanks for sharing it. Even so I guess its better to be slowed down than wiped out by a virus attack.

interesting stuff. I was on AVG, am now on NOD 32, and haven't noticed a decrease in performance.

I only use trend micro, hides in the background and dosent slow anything down, but when I was on nortons I noticed the difference, wouldnt use it again, its sux big time and let so many things through.

Well I used to use Nortons 2003, I don't know about the newer 2006, but it ran great. I used it for a couple years and the only time it let something through was when I downloaded a program from a hacking website that Nortons saw so I turned off Nortons and redownloaded it. Then I realised how stupid I was when it really was a virus! But it was an easy one to get rid of in safe mode. I think also that Nortons 2006 defaults to check and scan every damn thing going on in your computer and it slows everything way down, but you can turn that off. I use Symantec now which is almost the same thing and it runs smoothly. I haven't had a virus yet since I've had it. Also I wonder what the source of this is because what does % system delay mean anyways? The start up time or how long a program takes to initiate? They have programs on there like winrar, winace and divx 6.3 that aren't running in the background all the time. At least not on my computer. And I don't see how codecs would cause system delays. % of CPU would be a more useful graph. Maybe this was sponsored by BitDefender v10!
Also for things that bog down computers, I'm surprised that Real Player is not even on there or AOL, just AOL IM. I hate those programs!!!!

This is the site for the story, the graph is on page 3:

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

Quote:

PS: grasatchi, you stated that "They have programs on there like winrar, winace and divx 6.3 that aren't running in the background all the time" however, given that many compression programs add a right-click context menu, that affects startup times since the OS must look for those objects in the context menu(s). You might be surprised at how many programs want start-up permissions, regardless whether or not those programs truly need to launch at start-up.

By the way, I use Symantec AntiVirus (Corporate) as well and it isnt nearly as boggy as regularly branded Symantec Norton AntiVirus.

Abraxas wrote:

That's interesting Abraxas, I find that the more software I install it is the shutdown time that becomes longer and longer. I was told that it's because XP Pro does a sort of scan every time it shuts down, but I don't know if that's the case.

Abraxas wrote:
OK that makes more sense! So basically this graph is useless as to what is actually slowing down your CPU while you are using it. Thanks for explaining that to me. And I'm not surprised any more as to how many unnecessary programs want to start up, after using horrible programs such as Real Player and AOL, which I'm even more amazed that those two didn't make that list because they always covertly add themselves and other sub programs to the start up list. Even if you manually take it off! Now I use a couple of different programs that will let me know if something is trying to change a start up or reg value. Also I use media player classic to play real player files and quicktime files now so I don't have the clutter of those obnoxious programs.

I actually use the Symantec AntiVirus (Corporate) too. I haven't tried too many other anti virus programs for very long to notice if anything is better, but this has been fine for me.


charango wrote:That could be the case because everytime you shut down it has to stop all your programs that are running, so the more you have running the longer it may take. Also windows xp does do a scan and after a while your registry gets cluttered if you have a bunch of installs and uninstalls

That's right, in fact a registry clean usually shortens the shutdown time considerably -- I even had the computer refuse to shut down during a certain period, which is when I started performing regular registry cleanings. I wonder how many people pay over the odds for services such as this, which can be easily performed on your own.

charango wrote:

Yep, it is worthwhile to clean out broken links in the registry and then compact the registry afterward. For anybody who might want to clean and compact their registry, you can snag a copy of Registry Mechanic that I uploaded. I`ve been using it for a few months and if nothing else, it removes all of the broken reg links that are created each time I try out a new app.

dead link

Read the ".nfo" file for instructions on how to 'register' the product so it wont time out in 30 days (you simply replace the exe with the included 'cracked' exe).

charango wrote:
I hate it when I'm in a hurry to leave and shut it down and 2 days later when I come home it still says "saving your settings"
And I used to use Reg Mechanic too. At first it worked good, but after a while it didn't do much.

grasatchi wrote:

Yes, I mean, it's one thing to be thorough in checking the settings, but this is ridiculous!! Have you tried Advanced registry doctor? Did the trick for me. Let me know if you need it.

charango wrote:
Well it only does that once in a great while, like the program that actually checks everything decided to freeze. I think this is fairly common with well used xp machine's. I play a bunch of video games that take up all my ram. I don't think I've tried Advanced Reg Dr before, but maybe I should. Thanks. But I also have been thinking of moving on to a new computer soon, maybe with vista. But I might wait until at least service pack 1 comes out.