Windows maintenance regime?

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gnfb

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Topic # 130953 3-Oct-2013 16:10

I can change tires plugs oil spark plugs figure out when the battery is dead clean up the terminals etc But when the car has trouble starting or runs badly I take it to a garage.
Just as with windows run ccleaner and a defrag program and a regedit program

But when the computer starts to have issues starts running slowly and taking for ever to do a command

I don't take it to a service tech why? The $50 an hour ones don't know anymore than i can find out by wasting time scanning Google to solve an issue.
I can do that
The guys that do no what they are doing well they just pick a number form the air it seems and I cant justify paying that.

So finished rambling on (i'm getting old deal with it!)

Do you have a wonder program that keeps allthings going without the chance of wiping out important stuff or doesn't come up with a question like
"Do you want to delete the phasmagoricalspecialistic .fn files or keep them" of which you have no idea what its talking about.

Do you have a windows weekly maintenance regime?

I would be interested in knowingX

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Reply # 907259 3-Oct-2013 16:13

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To be honest my regular maintenance is "Don't install crapware". I really can't see there's much of anything else that needs to be done regularly. ccleaner to clean out temp files etc is OK, but not such an issue these days with size of drives etc. Regcleaners are, for the most part, more bad than good, and defrag will just shorten the life of an SSD with zero benefit.

nathan

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Reply # 907287 3-Oct-2013 16:43

What operating system?

gnfb

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Reply # 907291 3-Oct-2013 16:55

nathan: What operating system?

Windows 7 No problem with the mac!

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michaelmurfy

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Reply # 907292 3-Oct-2013 16:58

I use something magical, it's called Linux.

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nathan

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Reply # 907293 3-Oct-2013 16:58

Could you briefly describe some of the slow downs that occur?

TwoSeven

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Reply # 907300 3-Oct-2013 17:19

I am the same as above, I don't install just he apps I always use, don't install crapware or recommendedbyotherpeople-ware and I pretty much never do anything to keep it maintained.

I used to use the excellent backup program in windows 7 but that was replaced in windows 8 by one that is completely useless.

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Reply # 907350 3-Oct-2013 18:23

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Inphinity: To be honest my regular maintenance is "Don't install crapware".

This pretty much sums it up. Also, "registry cleaners" and "speed optimizer" (not to be confused with disk defragmentation) seem to do more harm than good.

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Reply # 907352 3-Oct-2013 18:24

I keep a virtual machine with a snapshot in a known good state to install my "might be crapware" software into. Once Ive finished playing round I just revert to the snapshot and everything is back to normal. Pretty much do everything inside virtual machines now...my actual host OS stays very clean.

[Amstrad CPC 6128: 128k Memory: 3 inch floppy drive: Colour Screen]

nathan

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Reply # 907381 3-Oct-2013 18:39

You can even do something similar on your host by installing your Windows OS into a BootVHD the putting in a differencing VHD disk

great for public facing terminals etc too like the SteadyState download for Windows XP does

gnfb

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Reply # 907427 3-Oct-2013 19:55

So in essence what you doyens of the industry are saying is keep your machine vanilla, experiment elsewhere,then you don't have to worry about any "maintenance software" ?
Which of course makes perfect sense. I was talking to a fastway owner driver once about her toyota that had done over 800,000 clicks. She said "drive it steady rotate the tyres and change the fluids regular" Similar advice.

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OldGeek

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Reply # 907477 3-Oct-2013 21:23

gnfb:
Do you have a wonder program that keeps allthings going without the chance of wiping out important stuff or doesn't come up with a question like
"Do you want to delete the phasmagoricalspecialistic .fn files or keep them" of which you have no idea what its talking about.

Do you have a windows weekly maintenance regime?

I would be interested in knowingX

Here's a different angle:

I run Norton Internet Security for protection against viruses, phishing sites etc. I use Tune-Up do regular maintenance (check/clean/defrag registry, remove broken shortcuts etc.) and Perfectdisk to defrag weekly along with Minitool Partition Wizard (a Partition Magic lookalike). The upshot of this is protection and maintenance are automated and all the tools used come from suppliers that have been around a while. While my supplier of choice can be debated, I would strongly suggest you look for automated solutions from reputable suppliers as I did.

Hammerer

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Reply # 907512 3-Oct-2013 22:26

A major reason why people maintain their systems is so that performance doesn't suffer. Many performance slow-downs arise from lack of two important resources:

Memory. If you don't have enough memory/RAM then you are more likely to be paging memory contents to disk.
Disk space. If you don't have enough disk space then you are more likely to have fragmented files ie the entire file is not in a contiguous block on your disk.

So if you are on a resource constrained system then the benefits of regular maintenance are more obvious because it frees up badly needed resources:

remove software that you don't use e.g most or all the rubbish that is preinstalled on a new computer
remove startup software that you don't need to run all the time e.g. Adobe Reader and QuickTime had preloaders, Google and Java update programs
remove Registry monitoring software e.g. some downloaders and some software stuff that claims to improve performance but it can be as simple as not having network icon in the system tray because it used and may still require monitoring the Registry
remove Registry entries that are no longer needed or never were e.g. clean up after incomplete uninstalls.
etc

Windows XP SP3 used to run in 64MB RAM but very slowly and startup was minutes. A minimum of 128MB was recommended by Microsoft but in practice 256MB should be the minimum and use and there will be significant performance benefits up to 768MB. Similar multiples probably apply to Windows 7 and 8 to get a smoothly operating system.

Years ago, I looked at the issue of registry cleaners for a tech website. Here's some test results showing the effect of maintenance upon the Windows Registry performance. It is not a measure of the complete system performance but it indicates that maintenance does make a difference. I also have other stats showing a similar impact on startup and shutdown times.

Table 1 - Registry performance improvements with enough physical memory. Windows XP 768 MB
Optimize the registry hive files using NTREGOPT ->none
Clean the registry with CCleaner -> 0.2%
Clean the system, including the registry, with CCleaner -> 1.1%
Clean the registry with several cleaners -> 1.3%
Temporarily stop unneeded services -> 3.3%
Turn off real-time anti-virus -> 4.7%
Uninstall worst application -> 37%
Uninstall three worst applications -> 57%

When the system had only 256MB of memory the impact on Windows Registry performance was equivalent to doubling memory to 512MB. That's why maintenance can make such a big difference for many people.
Table 2 - Registry performance improvements with constrained physical memory Windows XP 256 MB
Install enough physical memory, 512 MB or more -> 21%
Clean the system, including the registry, with CCleaner -> 23%

[Edited to tidy up table]

Hammerer

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Reply # 907522 3-Oct-2013 22:39

I found the equivalent test results for startup (to desktop) with 256MB and 768MB RAM. All figures in seconds:
Baseline XP install                 38           30
20 popular apps installed      240          63
70 popular apps installed     370        167
After CCleaner cleaning     169        163
After app + extras uninstall    34          34

When all apps and extras (including unneeded Windows features) are uninstalled both systems have sufficient headroom so the amount of RAM didn't make much difference.

[Edit to tidy up table]

TwoSeven

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Reply # 907840 4-Oct-2013 12:36

There are a couple of points to add to that. 64bit systems use a mostly completely different memory model so that one is no longer constrained to 2GB user space. Also, you can get SSDs which pretty much make boot time irrelevant. :)

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Reply # 909917 8-Oct-2013 15:04

My opinion

Stop fiddling. Dont install regcleaners, booters, magic fairy dust
Norton anything is one of the worst offenders for slowdowns/issues, so avoid that like the plague
CCleaner is OK, but dont run the registry option .

Even defrag, on modern PC's, is almost a waste of time. Its really not necessary. Its 2013, not 2005.
You want speed, install a SSD.
:-)

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