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My 1.5 year old Toshiba Net Book running Windows 7 is slowing down. Will running clean-up utilities or re-installing Windows be more effective for reviving its performance?
Tommy
Posted 2012-02-09T02:07:57.363
Reputation: 599
What is more effective for reviving performance - cleanup utilities or reinstalling the OS?
Answers
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A reinstall will assure a "clean slate" while a utility can help only to a limited extent.
Utilities generally are somewhat limited in what they clean up to avoid breaking applications or worse. They can be a good start, but a reinstall will usually be better
Dave M
Posted 2012-02-09T02:07:57.363
Reputation: 12 811
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The only way to keep good performances with a PC is to perform maintenance on regular basis such as:
Checking S.M.A.R.T. data of your HD and if the result is "good": then Running CHKDSK
Suggested tools: Piriform Speccy or SpeedFan (there's an online s.m.a.r.t. tool)
Suppress unused softwares and UNutilities
Run Windows disk cleaner or BleachBit or Ccleaner (but avoid Registry "cleanup")
Defragment the volumes of the HD :Suggested tools: Windows defrag or Piriform Defraggler or Auslogic Defragmenter or Ms TechNet Sysinternals contig
Update Windows and applications: Suggested tool: Secunia Software inspector
You may also check for PC temperatures and clean dust accumulated in the box...
Finally take a look at MS FixIt Center: Fix Windows system performance problems on slow Windows computers
http://support.microsoft.com/mats/slow_windows_performance/en-us
Hope this help. Let us know. :)
climenole
Posted 2012-02-09T02:07:57.363
Reputation: 3 180
Also keeping the startup clean, keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage and handle hoggers. – Bibhas – 2012-02-09T03:39:16.190
climenole, this is great info. I will need to start doign these things after I reinstall =) Why "avoid Registry cleanup"? I appreciate it. – Tommy – 2012-02-09T21:48:12.257
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"Registry cleaners" don't help appreciably, and can hurt by breaking needed connections. If you're going to re-install, it's a non-issue anyway.
I'll add that even a fresh install needs to be defragmented. When everything else is finished (win-updates, etc), run a good defrag program. I use MyDefrag.
Trim your startups. I like Autoruns from Sysinternals.
outofsequence
Posted 2012-02-09T02:07:57.363
Reputation: 11
Just to confirm, clean slate means takes care of all memory de-fragmenting? – Tommy – 2012-02-09T21:50:16.763
1@Tommy, memory is implicitly defragmented every time you shut down or reboot... – Brian – 2012-02-14T18:17:35.963