Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay?

colinneagle (2544914) writes The real question on my mind is whether Windows 10 will finally address a problem that has plagued pretty much every Windows OS since at least 95: the decay of the system over time. As you add and remove apps, as Windows writes more and more temporary and junk files, over time, a system just slows down. I'm sure many of you have had the experience of taking a five-year-old PC, wiping it clean, putting the exact same OS on as it had before, and the PC is reborn, running several times faster than it did before the wipe. It's the same hardware, same OS, but yet it's so fast. This slow degeneration is caused by daily use, apps, device drive congestion (one of the tell-tale signs of a device driver problem is a PC that takes forever to shut down) and also hardware failure. If a disk develops bad sectors, it has to work around them. Even if you try aggressively to maintain your system, eventually it will slow, and very few people aggressively maintain their system. So I wonder if Microsoft has found a solution to this. Windows 8 was supposed to have some good features for maintaining the OS and preventing slowdown. I wouldn't know; like most people, I avoided Windows 8 like the plague. It would be the most welcomed feature of Windows 10 if I never had to do another backup, disk wipe, and reinstall.

Comments

Here's the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop installing crApps, and start using *real* programs.

Re: Here's the solution

[xpax666]

The software you are using is garbage. Applications don't HAVE to store ANYTHING in the registry -- that's the vendor of your crappy games doing that. Also, each vendor supplies an uninstaller -- obviously yours aren't doing the job. I suggest you have a talk with the thick-headed developers who write your games. Or, just join the rest of us in 2014, get an SSD and don't worry about it.

Microsoft has solved this problem ages ago.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

None of the machines are expected to be run for more than three years. You are supposed to dutifully buy a brand new machine with the latest OS every three years. If you had done that and had given unto Microsoft what was Microsoft's, then you would not have this problem at all.

Re:OS Decay is largekly a myth.

[martiniturbide]

Hi.

It is not a myth. The OS decays. All the stuff you install and de-install, all the crappy drivers that you install on the OS makes the registry gets bigger, it makes Windows to under-perform and slows it down. No matter if you un-install all the extra things you don't use anymore, the OS will never get back to the original state. That is why a full reinstall will make it better.

But there is one thing that I noticed. For the first time ever on Windows 8.1 the "refresh" functionality of the OS worked very good. It took a long time but it recovered to a refreshed state.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real solution, buy a Mac.

It doesn't matter.

[NoMaster]

It doesn't matter whether Win10 finally addresses "OS decay" or not.

All that matters is that there's a succession of stories so they've got you talking about it - from website to website, day after day, one story after another.

Oh, and that you attack Mac users for being "sheep"...