Microsoft Windows; why so slow after 6 months

Hi All,  It’s been awhile but, well you know business can be time consuming., but i digress.

This Blog I wanted to talk about MS windows and why it appears to slow down over time.  Well, unlike the MAC OS, when windows is installed there are thousands of files created on the hard drive. Now a lot of these files are referred to as DLL or dynamic link libraries. In layman’s terms what they are are small programs the perform a specific function. if you were to put them all in one file it would be way to big to handle.  Now, the purpose of this has some plus sides. For example when another software manufacturer creates  something ( we’ll use adobe acrobat as an example) what adobe will do is utilize the dll files that have been installed and sometimes even modify them by adding their own code to the file but leaving the rest in tact. This is a good idea, however after time these dll file can get corrupted and therefore your computer starts to slow down.

This is only one reason for the slowness. Another one is referred to as defragmentation.

This is a process where files are created and deleted every time you turn on your computer and use it. Now to grasp the concept, try this. Imagine your looking down on a large highway. All you see is cars and trucks of different colors. Now imagine each car that is the same color represents part of one file, well you’ll probably see, lets use blue, all over the place, in different lines, hard to keep track of all the different colors eh. Everything is fragmented all over the place.

Well this is what your hard drive looks like after a few months of use. There is however a fix. It’s called defragmentation. Microsoft has given this utility free as part of the Operating System. Thing is, How and when do you use it? What’s the Best way to use it.

Well, I suggest the following…

Since the “defrag” is actually moving bits and pieces of data from all over the place back into a contiguous set of files, you may want to do this when there is a reduced risk of power loss. The chance of not being able to reboot the pc if you loose power during a defrag is high, but once complete your computer should perform better.

Also I suggest that you reboot your system into safe mode to reduce the programs that are running in the background. If it’s running it doesn’t get defragged.

Oh yes, while you are running the defrag you should not use the computer as this will only add time and complexity to the already complex process of defraging.

You can find the defrag utility usually under system tools and it’s called “ Disk Defragmenter”

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks