problems that apply to any personal computer (Mac, PC), any OS (Operating System)
- nearly full filesystem. Got a lot of software installed? or do you have a lot of files? when you open up My Computer and list details for the C: drive, does it show pretty much 50% space left or less? you have a lot of files! you can defrag all you want, but it's probably not going to make a lot of difference. if you get to 15% free, defrag will refuse to work. when a filesystem is full or half full, files that are accessed are scattered around the filesystem, and that means it has to chase them randomly across the entire disk surface. HPFS and NTFS, which is usually the default filesystem type installed for Windows and MAC, store the MFT at the center of the disk, and start storing files from the center of the disk toward the outside. CD's and DVD's also store from the inside out. worst case, files to be accessed in sequence are on they are on the outside of the disk, and the next ones are on the inside of the disk - you end up with the disk head sweeping across the entire disk from place to place in order to get to files. that is really slow. remember what I said about storing from the center out? well the operating system files are stored in the center, and your user files are stored everywhere else. the more files, the longer the access time. the slower the computer. that's why when you install windows from scratch all over again everything's faster. it might not be necessarily spyware.
- not enough RAM. 3.1: get 32MB+, 98:get 128MB+, 2000:get 512MB+, xp:get 1GB+, vista:get 3GB+. actually, with Vista and possibly Windows 7, the size of memory doesn't matter beyond about 2GB. the rest is used up by the Superfetch service (which you can disable).
- Virtual Memory. Virtual Memory slows down the computer bwcause by definition it swaps chunks of fast memory to very slow disk. got crashes? programs ending all by themselves? increase Virtual Memory. This requires disk space. I like to use a fixed 4GB if possible. If you are low on disk space, adjust the size of VM accordingly or set the minimum to 1GB (2000/xp) and the maximum to be handled by the OS. But realize that having VM slows down the computer. If you can have 4GB RAM and turn off VM, do it, but there is a side effect - you will not be able to go into standby after upgrading past 1GB on XP (you can hibernate though using shift-H instead of using S for standby). On linux this is referred to as the swap partition. I do not know how you deal with this on the new MacOSX. Macs generally take less memory than their windows counterparts.
- Antivirus weekly scans! this will really bog down your computer. at least on windows systems it is generally very resource intensive and with the possible exception of Vista, hogs the entire machine.
- slow processor. technology advances. the technology you have will eventually be outmoded, but you can sure maximize its use. The only way to fix this is with either a processor upgrade (may not be that easy to do - can you still get the proc?) or a motherboard upgrade (usually necessitates upgrading the video card, power supply, memory, case, and motherboard) - costs at least $600 if you haven't upgraded in a long time. You might as well buy a new computer for the price of the parts.
- software bloat. Programs like Norton Antivirus get relatively huge and slow like a lumbering giant. Norton Internet Security is a good package to have, but Norton 360 includes a lot of things you don't necessarily need or use. More software installed=slower computer. the registry tends to get larger and larger even though programs get uninstalled (they don't uninstall completely). Norton and Mcafee are one of those that leave things behind, though they are good programs to have.
- need for defrag. computers slow down because the disk blocks that make up each file can get scattered across the disk instead of being sequential like they are supposed to be. This occurs because files (temporary and other) get deleted and created, and the method used by the Operating System to allocate and deallocate disk space can leave "holes" in files or can be forced to scatter them because a sequential block may not be available. nothing's perfect down here, folks.
- spyware. this is the last thing to check. Unless you are an expert with hijackthis, I suggest you try using a standard antivirus+antispyware package and do the most sensitive scan that you can. Don't worry about tracking cookies - those are not real spyware. real spyware usually gets installed on your computer and you don't want it there. One example is Viewpoint Manager/Viewpoint Toolbar/Viewpoint Media Player. Viewpoint Media Player is not currently detected my McAfee, but I discovered how to remove it. it takes some registry research to find the unwise ot installshield uninstaller string usually. with viewpoint Player, you run the installer program with the /u parameter from the command line (best from start|run with double quotes on the executeable path so the directories get removed). I digress. Spyware generally reports back over the internet to a server somewhere or downloads ads from a server somewhere and uses up precious internet bandwidth (speed). This is generally not something you want, because it can expose you to network attack by hackers (this is one of the reasons why a nice session with your firewall software or router and tcpview from microsoft would be good). some spyware may do damage to your computer (the term "spyware" has morphed to include this definition), such as rootkits. Even though Vista is supposed to be near-impervious to viruses and such, you will notice that it comes with Windows Defender. it still needs anti-spyware software. I do not recommend Windows Defender, because from the last time I heard, it could be disabled from a malicious web page. I suggest you get an Internet Security package (antivirus+antispyware+firewall) like Microsoft OneCare, Mcafee IS, Norton IS, or Kaspersky IS (2006 has a 16384 files/folder limitation - they now have 2009).
problems that apply to windows pc's
- XP auto-defrag. this process kicks in without a trace and without warning and starts defragging your drive. It does it when it needs to. Still, you will need to periodically defrag your drive. Your drive will not defrag if you don't have 15% free space (I learned this the hard way - I had to migrate/upgrade to a larger disk. there are programs for this). Once this process kicks in, your system availability takes a dive - it really slows down because any disk activity causes the whole computer to slow down - this is due to the way XP was written. Vista and Windows 7 do not have this problem. I can't remember, but I don't think 98's defrag is not automatic and you must do it (and scandskw) in safe mode or from the command-line in ms-dos-only mode or from your boot disk/disc. 3.1 does not have defrag because it is based on DOS and DOS doesn't have defrag.