I can feel a Format/Reinistall Imminent

[Zak33]

and I just wanna say......why?

Why does it get slow?

Why does it have to be like this?

Why cant a PC stay fast....like new.....for ever?

This system I have has been best by miles so far.....SCSI controller, and 3 SCSI drives...

1 10k Cheetah as XP boot disk......nothing else goes on it except drivers/windows updates etc. 1 exception.....3d mark goes in here too.

1 10k Atlas for Games and Gaming stuff, like Hyperlobby, plus any other stuff such as Demos

1 7k for all the rest......music, downloads, zipped and unzipped, film files, all Movie Maker stuff, storage of data etc etc

Each drive gets Defragged weekly...and it doesnt take long cos this system keeps it tidy.

BUT ,......its getting slower again

[directhex]

windows stores everything it can in the registry. the bigger the registry gets, the slower things go.

linux doesn't slow down over time, but it's not exactly child's play, and the choice of games is limited.

[Zak33]

but WHY must it strangle itself?

Imean......I'm cautious about installs and even WHERE they go....ask TiG ..cos when he wanted to install games on my PC I was in terror mode as I didnt do it myself

But it does my head in....I have over a GIG of back ups, excluding music cos I diont bother with that.

All the downloads, drivers, patches, important stuff, Moovie Maker files, Favourites, Funnies, etc etc

Drives me mad...and takes me NEARLY A WHOLE DAY to get her bacl to how I like her....disabling stuff, installing stuff, setting things, etc etc.

[directhex]

the MS-DOS system started simple back with DOS 1, then bloated, complex & unreliable by the time of DOS 7/Windows ME. It's the nature of large programming projects that the more you make things do, the more complex and messy things get, and by the end 99% of time is spent trying to make the millions of bugs & bad code cancel each other out.

Windows NT was started as a from-scratch rewrite of DOS/Windows, based on a much more mature platform. It was, simply put, miles better than DOS/Windows. However, I really feel the NT line has lived its course. We're up to NT 5.2 now (it started on 3.1), and with NT 6 (Longhorn) not due until 2006, you can't help but feel that they're due another clean start - address the big problems in Windows from the very beginning, and enable compatability with older programs through emulation, not by putting bad things back in

After all, there's NO excuse for a swollen registry. Back when we had .INI files for everything, PCs never started to degrade & slow down - and *NIX systems use Dot files accordingly

[JimLad]

Yeah it happens to everyone using windows unfortunately. Given 12 months the OS is horribly bloated, the only option is to format. You would think Microshaft would have sorted it really.

[Bungle]

havent microsoft redesigned the file system for long horn called winFS?

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030617/ has a good article

[directhex]

WinFS is a layer living on top of the current NTFS providing an SQL-like interface to the file system. The upshot is that files can have any number of extended attributes set - if you're used to having ID3 tags on your music, imaging being able to set all sorts of extended information such as Director, Cast, Script, whatever on a folder full of videos, then searching through them more or less instantly

it doesn't help the core problem with windows 4 & above, the registry.

[Jonny M]

What's the best registry cleaning software?

[headbrace]

I suppose this is par for the course when you use software like windows. I doubt Microsoft would would be willing to complete re-write windows from the ground up for the home market. Mac OS X is the first full new OS from Apple since OS 1, and even this is basically BSD with some major tweaks. Now if you look at how long it has taken for them to Migrate completely, and still emulation software and such is bundeld with it. I doubt Microsoft would be willing to do this, if only because of the installed user base.

On a different note, i was reformatting about once a week a couple of months ago cos myt machine just kept loosing where windows actually was, and corrupting files and such like. Still, my EPoX Mini-me system should arrive soon, and should put an end to all the conflicts

[directhex]

What's the best registry cleaning software?

format.com

I suppose this is par for the course when you use software like windows. I doubt Microsoft would would be willing to complete re-write windows from the ground up for the home market. Mac OS X is the first full new OS from Apple since OS 1, and even this is basically BSD with some major tweaks. Now if you look at how long it has taken for them to Migrate completely, and still emulation software and such is bundeld with it. I doubt Microsoft would be willing to do this, if only because of the installed user base.

they did this already about 10 years ago, with the release of windows nt 3.1 in 1993, a ground-up 32bit rewrite without any hint of ms-dos for modern hardware i.e. 386. windows xp is merely nt 5.1. me was the last version of msdos (dos 7.1, windows 4.2).

we're due for another rewrite, i really hope longhorn is the last we see of the windows nt codeline.

[Ravens Nest]

I use system mechanic, it is very good at cleaning the old junk out of the registry, it also has the ability to search for invalid shortcuts, temporary files and also has a defragmenter built in.

You can get it from here, and it has a 30 day trial
http://www.iolo.com/sm/
(Give this program a try before formating windows)

I normally delete any old games, programs i dont use anymore then go around the hard drive looking for files i dont use anymore, then run System mechanic and restart

The run the defragmenter.

Normally brings my PC speed back to an acceptable level, cant beat a fresh copy of windows though

[Richie]

Drives me mad...and takes me NEARLY A WHOLE DAY to get her bacl to how I like her....disabling stuff, installing stuff, setting things, etc etc.

Once you get it the way you want, Ghost it

[Blub2k]

Zak you need to check out Ghost with AI builder for your rebuilds, make it a ten minute job.

[directhex]

powerquest driveimage is a better product

or there's another one i forgot the name of

[Blub2k]

You mean Symantec Drive image right

resistance is futile

[Skii]

I've never actually tried to ghost my O/S

I heard there was an issue with ghosting Windows XP due to the licence keys etc..

probably tosh