Slow machines, and the tools to diagnose them.

Often as a computer gets older it seems to get slower. Some of this is simply perception (we get used to faster machines we work with), some of it is simply software requiring more over time from hardware ("what Grove giveth, Gates taketh away") and some is the reality that machines accumulate "cruft" that bogs the machine down.

Slowdowns occur for many reasons. Here is a list of the ones I see most often and some tools to diagnose or fix the problem. If you want a great bundle of utilities and more, get the “Sysinternals Suite” . Only the malware program isn't found within.

• The disk is heavily fragmented. Delete any temporary files and other cruft and run the disk defragmenter (right click the drive and choose “tools” tab and then “defragment” under XP. Defrag
• Your registry has become bloated. This happens due to software installs and removal cycles where the removal doesn’t actually clean up the registry. These can be defragmented, but not by all tools (as the file is in use), so PageDefrag is helpful here. PageDefrag
• You have many startup programs, most of which you don’t really need. The “MSCONFIG” (Start-Run->"MSCONFIG") or AutoRuns tools can be used to see what is being loaded. AutoRuns
• You have a specific startup program that is causing the slowdown. For example, perhaps you have an antivirus program or other utility that has been updated to a newer version that has higher system requirements. You can check via your Task Manager how much memory each program is using, or use ProcessExplorer and turn on “Private Bytes” which is more accurate. ProcessExplorer
• You have a specific program that is consuming lots of CPU time, or is talking to the disk a lot. (I had the latter problem with a backup utility that “woke up” every time I changed a file and scanned the entire disk for changes. This feature has since been disabled.) ProcessExplorer (above) is a great tool for this kind of research.
• You have malware that is stealing your cycles for its own use. I recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware as the most successful of the recent crop: It is free to use for scanning, a small fee for active operating in the background. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

There are other, more esoteric problems, but I have found that the vast majority of "slow" machines can be pepped up with one or more of these actions. Eventually old machines have to be retired or re-purposed though... I use an old 466 MHz machine as a text based remote access tool for firewalls and Unix machines. Windows was too slow, but Open BSD pepped it right up by running the stripped down window manager "ratpoison" .