All language subtitles for Why do Computers get Slower with Age Top 5 fixes YOU can do!

Hey, I'm Dave, welcome to my shop! I'm
Dave Plummer, a retired operating systems

engineer from Microsoft going back
to the MS-DOS and Windows 95 days.

I worked on pretty much every operating system
at Microsoft from MS-DOS through Sever 2003,

and today I'm going to explain not only why it is
that your computer slows down as it ages, but also

the Top 5 things that you can do to fix it right
now.
I figure there are two scenarios that bring

you to this point. Either you're contending
with some ancient piece of iron yourself,

or to deploy into some secondary capacity in
your home lab. The other, perhaps more likely

possibility is that you've taken mercy upon one
of your relatives who is using an older computer

where the performance can best be measured on
a geological timescale. But is there actually

anything you can do about it? The answer is yes,
there are actually several things that can and

should be done, and we'll cover them all today!

a ciumulative process that happens over time, and
it's at least mostly reversible. That means you

can usually correct a lot of the slowdown problems
with the Top 5 Tips I'll share with you today.

Now you might think that I would only have
the latest and greatest hardware for myself,

and that vendors and manufacturers constantly
shower me with the best of the best.

And if my main desktop is in fact a Mac Ultra
Studio connected to a Threadripper rocking 128

gigs of RAM, you might find it hard to muster
any sympathy for me whatsoever. And that's fine.

But don't worry about me. Think of the children.
Specifically, think of MY children!

That's because our house is equipped with what is
known as The Craft Room. It's almost like a tiny

classroom in that each kid has a little locker
and then a desk area reserved at the big counter.

The whole area is overlooked by mom's desk,
and perhaps one of the best decisions we ever

made was to make this room the central point
of most all family activity in the house.

We did this by putting each kid's computer
down here instead of in their room.

This also allowed us the ability to at least
keep an eye on what the kids are spending most

of their time on, though of course they all have
iPads and phone as well, so it's not exclusive.

When I initially built out this space with
computers for the kids, I knew I didn't want

a bunch of PC boxes sitting up on top. I
really wanted the elegance, uniformity,

and simplicity of the iMac hardware, but I was
a loyal Microsoft employee, so.... As a result,

I wound up buying iMacs, wiping them, and
then using Bootcamp to install the latest

and greatest version of Windows onto the Apple
hardware. To me, it was the best of both worlds!

But there is one fatal flaw with the iMac, being
that when the computer ages, you've still got a

big investment in the display, which is still
perfectly fine, after all. No one is going to

throw away a perfectly fine 27" 4K or 5K monitor,
but other than RAM you're very much locked into

the iPad's CPU and other hardware. As a result, I
think a lot of people, myself included, persist in

using iMacs with base hardware specs that we'd
otherwise haul off to PC Recycle if not for the

expensive display. And so, I've become a bit of an
expert at extending the life of older machines.

Before we can fix any of it, though, we first need
to understand why the computer slows down with

age.
Now clearly, the hardware's not actually
getting any slower, as components to not slow down

with age, and unlike the unbridled raw speed you
experience while that new-computer smell is still

fresh, the slowdown that's been happening
since is probably not just in your head.

Just to get it out of the way, because
it's
Something that CAN happen, however,

which would be clogged vents, fans, or heat syncs
that wind up causing premature thermal throttling.

That's about the only real way I can imagine
hardware performance varying with age. Software,

though, is a completely different story. But why?

and in particular the alternating or rotating
installation and removal of games and software, is

that they cause the amount of code that the system
has to execute to grow and bloat and that strains

the resources of the machine in a way it did not
when it was new. And the real problem is that

sometimes, if you double the load on PC it might
become 4 times slower, as it's not always linear.

For example, if you need 16G on a machine that
has only 8G, it must instead use extremely slow,

disc-based virtual memory instead, and that is
orders of magnitude slower than direct memory

access. And conversely that is why sometimes
a small change can have a big impact on perf.

#1 - Removing Unused Applications and Games
It
seems simple, because it is: go into the control

panel and remove any applications that you're not
using. You should also be judicious about what

you install on your machine if it's not something
you want to become part of your permanent toolset;

consider evaluating games and utilities in a VM
if possible. Not all game systems are created

equally - perhaps it's entirely fine to check out
and remove and reinstall dozens of games with a

system like Steam but its less so if those games
are also partying all over the system registry.

Speaking of which, the registry is one
reason why it's important to use the

uninstaller for an application. If written
correctly, and that's anything but a given,

the uninstaller will remove not only the files
and folders that it created during the original

installation but also things like fonts and
entries in the system registry database.

Uninstalling a large and complex application
can clean out a large swath of registry debris.

There are programs that claim to be able to do
registry repair and cleaning after the fact but

doing it well and safely is not trivial. Better
to use the application's proper uninstaller.

One thing you may not have considered is that
if you have a computer that's 8 years old,

you're likely not still running all 8-year-old
software on it. Odds are you've upgraded your

software along the way and that those newer
versions have grown in size and resource demands.

So, in that sense, your computer hasn't really
gotten any slower, you're just asking something

different of it, and the performance that results
is terrible.
There are other perceptual changes

that also might come about, such as perhaps you
get the new iPhone that responds quite promptly.

If you then go to use a desktop application and
it responds more slowly than your phone does,

it will feel even slower by comparison, even if
nothing has actually changed on the computer.

But let's say you've ruled out simple perceptual
changes, and that your computer really is getting

slower. What can you do about it?
Well, the first
thing might seem so minor that you overlook it,

but it's actually very important: you always
keep your computer up to date with the latest

operating system and application patches and
updates. Certainly, operating systems can and

do grow significantly from one major version
to next, but my experience was been that they'd

actually get faster within minor versions along
the way. For example, Win95 OSR2 was faster than

the original Windows 95. At the same tasks, XP
was faster than NT4 which was faster than 3.51

which was faster than 3.5 which had already been a
big improvement over 3.1. How can that be?
Well,

I can't prove it, but what I saw from inside the
industry was that we'd add features on the major

version increments and then fix bugs and improve
performance for the minor version increments.

And it just makes sense - new operating systems
are sold on new features. As a result, first

you get the features, then we make them fast.
But you can't always do both from the outset.

This is also true of drivers, particularly
graphics drivers. They are constantly evolving

and being tweaked. And since many drivers
are unified across a wide array of hardware,

perhaps your 1070GTX will pick up a feature
or some perf in the release of the new Nvidia

drivers even years later. The same can be
true for new releases of things like DirectX.

And because the release dates of operating
systems, drivers, SDKs, and updates are staggered,

the best thing you can do is to just keep
everything up to date with the latest versions of

stable platforms.
After that, however, we can
start to get more proactive and actually undo

some of the performance degradation. One of
the first things we need to check is to see

what programs are starting automatically
with Windows. Everything that runs during

startup will by definition slow your startup
down, and those things that continue running

after startup will become a permanent
part of the base load of the machine.

One of the most important statistics about Windows
is the total working set. That is the sum total of

all the memory that the operating sytems and
application have asked for at any one time.

Of course that total may exceed the amount of
physical memory you have, and as noted earlier,

once pushed to start using virtual memory to
make up for the shortfall, performance craters.

Adding RAM to your system, if possible, would
be one solution.
For an even easier solution,

just say hello to my little friend, Task Manager.
I wrote the original Task Manager because I was

curious about these kinds of statistics on my
own machine and how to tweak and optimize it.

And one of the key features of Task Manager is
its ability to manage the list of programs that

are started automatically with Windows when
the desktop starts. Switch to the Startup tab

of Task Manager to access and modify the list.

entry without removing it entirely. That allows
you test that every still works properly when

you've turned off a startup application. But what
can you turn off? Generally, I'd suggest turning

off only those things that you're certain you
know what they do and that you do not need them.

Perhaps there are larger programs like Skype
that are starting in the background each time.

If you never need to receive calls, or don't
use Skype at all, go ahead and turn it off.

If you're unsure, I suggest that you don't turn
it off. If you must, turn off one thing at a time,

reboot and test for any problems. Don't delete
the entries entirely, just disable their checkbox.

By the way, if you're on some seriously older
software like Windows 7, this feature wasn't

in Task Manager yet so you'll need to use a
program supplied with Windows called msconfig

to do much the same thing.
Next, we have hard
disk problems. A number of the things I'll talk

about in this section only apply to magnetic media
and not SSDs, but some things, like bloated and

abandoned temporary files, seemingly never change.
Let's go through the list.
Mechanical drives

suffer from file fragmentation over time, which
means one file is forced to be scattered around

the hard drive, so the heads have to jump and move
around even to read a single linear file, because

there just wasn't enough room to store that file
linearly on disk. In the old days you'd fix this

with a defrag, though it's much less important
with NTFS than it was with the FAT filesystems.

I've heard some folks, including other well-known
YouTube creators, make the claim that as computers

age they're forced to grow the hard drive
storage into areas where the actual media on

the platter has a lower angular velocity in terms
of rotational speed. They argue that the speed of

the media under the drive head is going to be much
faster at the outer edges than the inner tracks,

and that this results in slower disk transfers.

that almost all magnetic computer media uses
what's known as constant angular velocity.

Regardless of where the heads are, the platter is
always rotating at the same speed. The heads still

read and write bits at the same timing as before,
and so the bits don't actually come in any faster:

instead, they are spread further apart. That's why
hard disk geometry is quoted in bytes per sector,

sectors per track, and heads per track. The
sectors per track number stays constant in most

conventional media. Modern drives effectively use
a monolithic block count and index and abstract

the real geometry away from you, but I could not
locate any drives with variable geometry offhand.

If you know of any, please let me know in the
comments!
It's also pretty common for disk

formats to store the directory and file allocation
information in the middle of the disk. If the

outside edge of the media were significantly
faster, it's a safe bet that that's where the

filesystem authors would have stored their most
important info, but it's just not the case.

Now, it's worth noting that sectors per track was
actually variable in some floppy disc formats,

like the Apple II and Commodore, where they
pack additional sectors into the outer tracks.

Next we have the simple tasks of temporary
files and junk that can clutter up your machine,

an that brings us to an essential program for
your system maintenance is named WinDirStat.

It's an open-source GPL app that scans your
system to build a map of how every byte on

your disk is used. Files are grouped by location
and colored by type so with a little practice

you should be able to spot both single large files
and large groups of small files. Either should be

investigated to determine if it's something you
can remove.
Don't delete anything you're not sure

about, and don't delete anything until you're
certain you've got a working system backup.

Some things, like simply emptying the recycle
bin, are pretty low risk but don't just start

nuking large files that you're not familiar with!

there very well might a file hiberfile.sys, and it
takes up gigabytes of space, but don't delete it.

Now, like me, you might say "But I've never used
hibernate in my life and don't plan to start!".

If that's the case, you should use the power cfg
/hibernate option to disable the feature, which

will in turn remote the file. Let's take a quick
look: mine is 27 gigabytes in size. That's huge!

But if I run powercfg and turn hibernate off, it's
gone and I get the 27 gigabytes of space back.

That alone could be worth the price of
admission to this video, so you're welcome!

The other big one is pagefile.sys, and it's pretty
much required. However, if you have more than one

drive, you can move it to a different drive, and
it's something I would recommend doing if you have

a drive that's faster than your boot volume or if
you're pressed for space on that boot volume.
The

only problem is that they've seriously buried the
setting! It's not available in the new settings

UI and keeps getting pushed further and further
into the murky depths of the old UI. To get there,

we start at System. Next we select Advances
System Settings. Oh, but were' not even close.

We next go to the Advanced tab and click on
the button in the Performance Settings section.

From there we click on the Advanced tab yet
again, then virtual memory, and finally,

we select change.
Now as I said you need to have
a paging file but where it lives is up to you.

If you wish to move yours to another drive here, I
suggest that you create a system-managed pagefile

on the desired drive and then remove the
original system-managed one on the boot drive.

It won't take effect until
you restart the system.

Your next step, and don't assume it's not
important, is scanning for viruses and malware.

It's not so much that the virus itself actually
consumes very much in terms of resources, but

malicious code might very well install software
that harvests your PC resources to become a

spambot or crypto-mining zombie, either
of which will definitely slow things down.

Your most precious PC resources like RAM and CPU
will be used for nefarious purposes and therefore

not available for your own use!
There are tons
of antivirus programs out there, but I'm going

to put a stick in the ground here and say that all
you really need is Microsoft Defender. They've got

their top people on it, and I know that for a fact
because the guy that runs dev for it used to work

for me, and he's really good. I trust them with
my security, and you likely should as well. After

all, the Defender team is not selling anything
and they're trying to bolster the security image

of Windows. It's a win/win when your interests are
that closely aligned and no money changes hands!

It's worth your time to check two things on
your disk: run a chkdsk to scan for errors.

You CAN supply the /F option to ask it to
automatically fix anything it finds wrong,

but I prefer to do a separate scan pass
first so I know what my options are.

You can also run the system file scanner, sfc
/scannow, which will test, validate, and repair

any system files that may have been replaced
by unofficial, and potentially buggy or slow,

third party replacements.
With your system fully
updated, cleaned of junk files and malware, fully

tuned and optimized for disk space, your system
is about as fast as it can be. Your much more

drastic alternative is to clean-format the machine
and reinstall Windows, but that's a significant

investment of your time. In some rare cases of
a machine where the software installations or

configurations have been damaged extensively, it
might still be your best option and last resort!

If along the way you found today's episode to be
any combination of entertaining or informative,

I'd be honored if you'd consider leaving
a like and subscribing to my channel.

If you have any interest in matters
related to Autism, Asperger's, or ASD,

please check out my book on Amazon, Secrets
of the Autistic Millionaire. It's got nothing

to do with money and everything to do with
living a successful life on the spectrum.

It's everything I know now that I wish I'd
known back then.
Remember I'm mostly in this

for the subs and likes, so please be sure
to leave me one of each before you go today.

In the meantime, and in between time, I hope to
see you next time, right here in Dave's Garage.