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Ask Slashdot: Are Post-Install Windows Slowdowns Inevitable?
blackest_k writes: I recently reinstalled Windows 7 Home on a laptop. A factory restore (minus the shovelware), all the Windows updates, and it was reasonably snappy. Four weeks later it's running like a slug, and now 34 more updates to install. The system is clear of malware (there are very few additional programs other than chrome browser). It appears that Windows slows down Windows! Has anyone benchmarked Windows 7 as installed and then again as updated? Even better has anybody identified any Windows update that put the slug into sluggish?
Related: an anonymous reader asks: Our organization's PCs are growing ever slower, with direct hard-drive encryption in place, and with anti-malware scans running ever more frequently. The security team says that SSDs are the only solution, but the org won't approve SSD purchases. It seems most disk scanning could take place after hours and/or under a lower CPU priority, but the security team doesn't care about optimization, summarily blaming sluggishness on lack of SSDs. Are they blowing smoke?
The security team runs the scans during the daytime because that's when everybody's laptop is powered on and connected to the network. Too many people shut off their machines at night, or carry their laptops home, so the scans won't reliably run if they do them then.
There is probably some kind of creative, adaptive scheduling solution that could fix this, but their management software might not have that kind of support.
It's true that Linux has less disk overhead than Windows, but then again, Linux comes with all sorts of other problems which make the computer work worse than it does with Windows.
Ask Slashdot: Are Post-Install Windows Slowdowns Inevitable?
When patches and updates together end up being larger than the original [OEM] install, you can see why the slowdown is inevitable.
Sounds easy to see why. No?
For me, Linux, at least on the desktop, has had another problem entirely, namely that shit tends to break over time. Doesn't matter if its Ubuntu, Mint, SLES or some other distro, it almost invariably flakes out sooner or later. Usually sooner, The mouse pointer stops working, the screen dims, or the user interface just borks somehow. Happens more with Gnome, especially if you try to customize it any sort of way. Of course there is a solution. There is always a solution...
Define "worse." As someone who dual-boots Windows 7 Home and Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, I find Mint works much "better" in terms of responsiveness. It boots faster, shuts down faster, opens programs faster, runs quieter, etc. Sure, it requires more expertise, has less proprietary software options, and obtains the performance improvement, at least in part, by sacrificing certain bells and whistles, but I've gone from a 90-10 Windows-Linux time split to 10-90 as I've grown more comfortable with the latter.
Part of the issue is also that newer versions of windows want to move away from just being an OS, and toward being an entertainment venue all of its own.
That's MS marketing and the UI graphic designers faults though.
Fun little thing to do:
Take a weak kneed intel Atom board, and do some simple office use tests with it with various older versions of windows. Start with NT4, then use Win2k, the XP, then 7, then 8.1. See how the ability to do simple things degrades as the OS expects more and more hardware just to draw the damned UI.
Now, realize that the biggest selling point for new windows versions is NOT a new shiny UI-- but continued security updates. Now you will understand why corporations get bitchy. They have something that works, on the hardware they already have-- but are going to be forced to buy a whole new iteration of hardware, to get updated software that gets updates against security threats-- because otherwise MS does not get money.
If it werent for the lack of security updates, win2k would be ideal for nearly all corporate drone installations.
(Note, there are other useful features that were added with each version of windows, and I am not discounting that. What I am saying is that even with those kernel space and user space feature enhancements, they could have been rolled into service packs for the older products, and you would have had more responsive product overall. The need to reinvent the OS constantly drives the need to constantly make it look different, (to set it apart from its predecessor), which constantly increases the HW requirements. It is pathological.)
Not my experience. It used to be the case in Windows 98 but I haven't found my systems to be slowing ever since I bought an SSD. SSDs solved all of my problems and they're rediculously affordable.
I also have a cluster of windows machines performing raytracing and other extremely performance driven tasks--I can't tell the age of an install based on performance.
This is all just superstition at this point without numbers. Yes if you install a third party anti-virus solution and you have a bunch of auto-installers running in the background your computer will run "Slower" than it did without anything running in the background but that's not Windows' fault and that's true of every operating system regardless if it's *nix or Win*.
things like this have been said about windows for decades. It's never been true. I know because I've had operational business machines at each version of windows running for over ten years each.
These types of problems happen *and are henced resolved with brand new way-more-powerful hardware) when multiple components aren't spec'd together.
Any given component has many bins. You can get any cpu at six levels of l3 cache, for example. Drives can be 5'400, 7'200, etc.
The trick is not to get the most possible performance (which is akin to buying a new machine a few years later). The trick is to match the performances across the various components, so a single component doesn't become the bottleneck.
Especially because some components, when acting as the bottleneck, can create serious slow-downs. Often actually making something else SLOWER will make the over-all machine much faster.
An over-simplified example is that a slow hard drive can create disk-thrashing scenarios -- one of the worst slow-downs common across the board. But a slow cpu will remain slow and steady, and never wind up thrashing the disk.
Learn to balance the vital components of a system, and it'll stay consistent for a decade.
(this was written on my 8-year-old vista machine, still working, still business, still gaming, still full-speed)
The install of windows itself is easy. The problem, is that afterwards you have to install 45 utilities, that you have to download from 27 different sites, and each one tries to install its one adware, or ask for a 86 digits activation key. On Linux (pretty much any modern distribution) it winds down to taking note of two or three additional repositories and a list of packages, you can restore everything with on command line
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Wish I had mod points for that post. Run Process Explorer and TcpView to see what is going on.
Dear Slashdot, I am a self proclaimed computer expert. Windows seems slow to me. Give me reasons to install Linux even though I can barely operate Windows.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1. Your operating system is very old at nearly 7 years. Time flies bye and I laugh at the companies who are angry at the prospect of starting a WIndows 10 migration acting somehow that 7 just came out last year and is all so new etc.
You know what I find even funnier? The answers I get when I ask what the value prop of windows 10 is over windows 7.
Lets see...don't care as I'm not a programmer,don't care as I'm not a programmer,Ninite has LO...yeah why don't you try a little harder to just list "shit nobody but Linux users gives two shits about" huh? Maybe you should add GIMP and those googly eyes or the rotating cube desktop crap?
NEWS FLASH less than 1% of the planet is fricking programmers, hence why Linux user base is so low its listed as "other". If this really bugs you so much may I suggest you try thinking different? And to suggest Windows should come with a fricking IDE and compiler...BWA HA HA HA, why should MSFT load up the OS with crap that won't be used just to please the 1% of the world that is programmers? Get your boss to spend a buck or quit whining and find a better boss, LOL!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.