Slowing Down Windows
 

This guy Oli, tested a bunch of different software to see if it would slow windows and by how much. Measuring the time it takes to shut down, restart, auto log in, go to the desktop and start an application.

Norton was the biggest offender, followed by having 1,000 fonts.

What i don't understand is, if this is only affecting restart or has a similar effect on all(or any other) operations. :confused:

:confused:

:question:

I have 1000 fonts. I know it slows my boot time. I really do need to cut down.

It's only affecting startup time. The boot time doesn't say anything about regular operating time, so this gent has taken an enormous amount of time to compile a set of rather meaningless statistics.

Norton increases boot time because it does some sort of checking at boot time to make sure things are what it thinks they are.

The scary part is...
 

The interruption caused by having McAfee Antivirus is even worse.

This only measures boot time. McAfee, on average, saps 20 to 30 percent of your CPU when it's in normal (read: Scan Everything) mode. It also kills your I/O.
Norton, on the other hand, is much less nasty.

Considering that the only people I know with 1,000 fonts, personally, work in either the graphics or design industry, I don't see that as much of a slowdown :).

Of the two AV programs, I'll pick Norton as being the least nasty. This set of stats only shows startup. Give me 30 minutes of normal usage, and the results will be completely different.

Do you have a url for that Bruce?


Do you have a list of essential processes that windows should be running?
I have 41 processes running. Acronyms of which have no idea what they are.

My commit charge is high. I run one program and it runs a cpu usage of around 45 percent. That is toped out.

Before I install more memory what IS slowing down windows??

besides the antivirus that is...

Go to http://www.sysinternals.com , click on Utilities->Processes & Threads, click on Process Explorer, download it, run it. This shows what's running better than your average Windows Task Manager, and you may be able to identify which things are valid just from its Description and Company Name columns.

:)Thank you!

There's one other sysinternals utility
 

Autoruns (www.sysinternals.com) also shows you what starts up when Windows starts, and lets you disable items.

This is a godsend for certain types of adware/scumware.

Mitch