Performance Check: How 200 New Programs Slow Down Your PC

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January 27th, 2010 written by Christoph in Windows Insights

It’s a proven fact: The more programs you install on your computer, the slower it will eventually become. Let’s revisit this almost two decade-old position in 2010 and see if it still holds true for today’s machines and the modern operating system Windows 7.

More programs equals less performance?

What most users are unaware of: Installing too many programs can result in problems and a massive decline in performance and stability. And it is not their fault—how should they know? Windows by itself does not do a really good job of telling users to get rid of programs they rarely use and that may cause issues. It is mostly long after the fact that people start asking themselves, “Why is my PC so slow?” or yell out, “My Windows crashes all the time!”

So what’s the cause behind all this? The more programs you download from the Web or install from a DVD, the more services, background processes, files, startup items, and registry entries will be created. Some software products even install new drivers, for example virtual DVD drives. This obviously puts more and more of a strain on your machine, because it needs to assign a certain amount of resources to the newly installed programs, and this, in return, reduces performance.

The question is: Is this drop in performance noticeable? We’ll find out in this exclusive real-life test run!

Our testing method

The “Clean PC”: To test the theory, we measured the performance of a computer with only a minimum set of programs installed. We call it the “Clean PC”.

As you can see, we have Office 2010 Beta, Google Earth, TuneUp Utilities, Windows Live Essentials, Media Player Classic, Microsoft Security Essentials, Age of Empires III: Asian Dynasties, Sony Media Go and PhotoImpact X3 installed. All the drivers are up to date and all Windows 7 updates have been installed.

The “Junk PC”: Then we installed exactly 200 software products that are widely used. We selected these 200 based on the most used programs on Wakoopa (a software usage tracker), the top downloads at Downloads.com, from various “Top 10 Programs you need” lists and from our personal experience with what our readers use most often. It is an even mixture of very popular and huge software suites—such as Pinnacle Studio 14 or Nero 9 Full—and useful freeware applications such as Skype, WinZip and Opera. We even selected some utter junk (for example, Screensavers) that we very often find on typical PCs used by kids. A full list of products we used is available for download here. We call this the “Junk PC”.

Selecting, downloading, cataloging, and especially installing these applications took literally more than two days and over 50 restarts. There was tremendous click-work and lots of waiting involved, believe us. Also, a lot of free and even commercial programs come with additional software such as toolbars. So when we speak of 200 additional programs, in reality it might come close to 250 due to tons of toolbars and advertising programs that came with the programs. We ran each of these programs at least once, to ensure that they were properly set up and working.

The machine we used was an ultra-thin laptop (a MacBook Air running Windows 7 via BootCamp) with a 1.86 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo L9400 processor, 2 Gigabyte of main memory, a GeForce 9400M graphics chipset and a 120 Gigabyte serial ATA hard drive.

The question is: Is there performance degradation? And if so, how much are we talking here? Do all the additional files, registry entries, background processes, and startup items of those 200 programs slow down the computer noticeably? Let’s find out!

And here they are… the results

So after almost going crazy from installing literally 200 applications, the fun part starts. Do a plethora of applications affect performance in any way? Here’s what we gathered:

Boot-up performance

The time it takes the machine once the power switch has been pressed to finally loading the last automatically running program on the startup list.

Windows 7 took over 5 ½ minutes longer to finally boot up

After the installation marathon, we basically restarted the computer at least 40 times and used the machine over a three day period to ensure that Windows 7 had optimized the startup process as best as it could. But still, it needed over 7 minutes to fully boot up and load up all the startup programs. Although the desktop was visible after about 2–3 minutes, due to the massive load it was impossible to use the machine.
Note: On a couple of boot up attempts, the machine simply froze a couple of seconds after the desktop displayed.

Shutdown performance

The time it takes from clicking the “Shut down” button to actual power down.

During shutdown, Windows 7 simply froze up

Apparently, some of the new services and background processes caused Windows 7 to freeze during shutdown. We waited literally more than 20 minutes, but nothing happened. In only one of about a dozen shutdown attempts did the machine actually power down correctly—and that took exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Virus scan performance

We used Microsoft Security Essentials to test how long it takes to scan 1.5 GByte worth of RAR archives.

It took MSE nearly twice as long to complete the virus scan after the 200 programs had been installed on the machine.

Application performance

Here we measure the performance of selected applications. We start by measuring the time it takes for Outlook 2010 Beta to load and display the first e-mail. We move over and start Google Chrome with 8 tabs. We did not measure how long it took to actually display the Web sites, as that depends entirely on the Internet connection.
In the last run, we tested how long it took our test computer to fire up Windows Media Player and start playing a 1080p Full HD video file.

No surprise here, Outlook took almost twice as long to start up—same with the Google browser. We’ve also waited twice as long until the Full HD video clip started playing in Windows Media Player. This is absolutely intolerable. It felt like we were using Windows 7 on a 10 year old machine and not from a laptop bought in 2009.

Processor, graphics, and memory performance

We compress three video files (each about 350 MByte in size) to a single ZIP file, which took a significant amount of time—even before we “ruined” our machine with the massive amount of programs we put on this little machine. After that, it took almost 45 seconds longer—probably due to the massive load put on the CPU and the hard disk.

The video file wouldn’t even play smoothly for more than a couple of seconds. On one test run, Windows Media Player simply froze up on us.

Photo editing performance

Using PhotoImpact X3, we took a 30 MByte TIF graphic and applied the “Enhance” filter that is supposed to enhance colors and picture quality. We measured the exact time needed for the filter to take effect on the image.

Surprise, this rather GPU-intense task took only 3 seconds longer on the junked up configuration. Not a drastic performance reduction that we experienced in basically every other benchmark we ran.

Cinebench R10 performance

Cinebench is a leading benchmark for 3D animation performance based on the very popular CINEMA 4D animation software. The benchmark generates a score that represents the performance of a computer and that can be used to compare performances between different configurations. The higher the numbers, the better the performance of the PC.

It was no surprise either, that rendering the 3D animation took noticeably longer on the Junk PC configuration. This resulted in a significantly lower score on each test run of Cinebench R10.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat performance

A benchmark based on the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat released in Q4 2009.

Stalker suffered a great deal. The already pretty low-frame rate went down to an absolute unbearable 1–3 frames per second, depending on the scene and details on screen. It seems that games with massive textures and details suffer the most from a junked up computer.

PC Mark Vantage performance

PC Mark Vantage is a set of benchmark tools designed to test the speed of the CPU, and read/write speeds of the memory and hard disks. It also tests the machine by automatically performing tasks such as playing multiple video files, editing photos, or filling up WordPad with dozens of pages of text. At the end of the test, the benchmark calculates a score that is used to determine the performance of a computer. The higher the score, the faster your machine performs. We used the “default run” here.

It was shocking to see the total PC Mark Vantage score go down from 2624 to 1092 due to the massive amount of programs installed. We were, however, surprised that both the HDD test, the music and the gaming test were not affected that much from all this new background activity going on.

Overall performance and stability from the user perspective

Benchmarks test in pure numbers. What we test in this last “benchmark” is the performance from our point of view: The overall responsiveness when launching and switching between programs and Windows or when clicking on menus.
After the 200 programs were installed, you had to wait a few seconds until any window opened. It took about 25 seconds until the “Computer” and the “Control Panel” windows opened. Some programs did not even launch anymore or caused the computer to lock up. It took a few seconds until even the smallest context menus showed after a right-click. Granted, the system we used is not the most powerful high-end machine, but it is not out of date by any means. Still, everything seemed to run as slow as molasses.

Conclusion: massive performance hit! Advice: limit what you install

We expected a noticeable drop in performance before we started this experiment, but certainly not over 200% in some benchmarks. By installing that many programs, we simply ruined our machine to the point where it was absolutely no fun at all to work with it. Starting with the boot process: It was incredibly slow and after the logon over two dozen advertising windows, pop-up balloons, and program logos appeared, before we could click on anything. Even a couple of error messages showed up.

The performance of the poor machine became horrid, as it took over 30 seconds to start Windows Explorer even after the machine fully booted. Opening even a very lightweight application like Excel 2010 took almost a minute. It was simply embarrassingly slow.

We suggest a couple of rules

  • Before you install any piece of software, think long and hard if you actually need it or plan to use it regularly. If you just need it once, remember to uninstall it.
  • Go through the list of all your installed programs and decide if you still need all of these programs. Check out the TuneUp Blog Diary: Removing Unused Programs on My Mom’s Windows PC post.
  • To further clean up your system, read the How To: Disable Unnecessary Features in Windows Vista and 7 post.
  • Be sure that only the most necessary startup applications are loaded automatically when you turn your PC on. Read our post How to Reduce Windows Startup Time post for more information.
  • Install new software within a virtual machine. That’s a simulated PC with an operating system! You can basically wreak havoc in this environment and test all kinds of programs without affecting your own PC. Try out free solutions from Sun or Microsoft. Note: You need a Windows XP CD, Vista DVD, or Windows 7 DVD and an additional license to install the virtual operating system.

Stick to our advice and watch out which and how many programs you install on your machine. Yes, this test was an experiment, but we have actually seen many computers in the last couple of months that have been messed up like that. In an upcoming blog post, we will show you the best way to handle even these chaotic machines without actually having to reinstall them. Stay tuned!

Written by Christoph Laumann and Sandro Villinger

Read the next part of our 200 programs experiment – Can the original performance be restored by removing all of these unnecessary applications?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 and is filed under Windows Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site, login to existing account, or register a new acount.

44 Responses to “Performance Check: How 200 New Programs Slow Down Your PC”

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  1. Bob says:
    January 27, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    I would be very interested to know whether the performance on the Junk PC returned to anything approching normal after removing those 200 apps.

    I suspect not, and that old aphorism of having to reinstall Windows to restore performance is still true.

    Reply
  2. Rick says:
    February 2, 2010 at 9:54 pm

    Alexandra,

    This testing was excellent and proves that the more we install, the more we fall… I may do a “web clip” from my blog pointing to this article. This is great!

    Rick

    Reply
    • Alexandra says:
      February 3, 2010 at 12:22 pm

      Hi Rick,

      Thanks for your comment. Great, that you liked the article. Now we are very curious to see your webclip, so please feel free to give us a hint, once it it published.

      Best,
      Alexandra

  3. Drew says:
    March 26, 2010 at 2:55 am

    I guess I don’t understand the method. To just pick 200 programs and not
    pay any attention to what they are betrays a fundamental ignorance of
    how computers work on a very basic level. Programs are not self-contained
    packages of code that run totally independant of each other. They share
    drivers, resources with each other and with the system . To the
    extent that the functionality of the 200 programs overlap (a) and they load
    some parts of themselves in memory for speed of access (b), a+b =
    computer no work right. This is OK, because most people don’t need five
    different image editing programs, or video player programs, or whatever.

    Reply
    • Christoph says:
      March 26, 2010 at 12:54 pm

      Hey Drew, actually, we didn’t just pick random programs – you’re right, that would defeat the purpose. We paid very close attention to which programs we installed before we performed the benchmarks. We looked at what comes preinstalled with retail PCs and Notebooks, we looked at various Top 10 Downloads on popular sites such as Downloads.com, we looked at what folks around us use (family, co-workers) and we looked at what we use ourselves. Across the board, we feel we have picked a good mixture of popular commercial and freeware programs.

      But yes, there are – in some cases –programs that fit in the same category. For example, we picked two backup programs and a couple of media players. There are a couple of reasons why: A) PCs come pre-installed with programs, users never start the programs, never uninstall them and download/install their own. B) What if you NEED two programs of the same kind. For example, I use Windows Media Player all the time, but when a video file just won’t play I try it with Media Player Classic. If that doesn’t work, I try DivX Player – and boom it works! That’s why we choose several programs of a kind, because sometimes you’re FORCED to do so unfortunately.

      To answer your questions about resources and overlap: Yes, these programs share resources (RAM, CPU, hard disk cycles etc.), but that’s exactly the point of our experiment. Show how much of an impact that has! I agree that 200 programs is a lot, but I personally have seen this situation on a couple of computers around me. We choose this “extreme” example to showcase our point.

      Please feel free to comment again – I am happy to talk about our experiment as a lot of work went into it!! Feedback is always welcome,

      Best,
      Christoph

  4. Ben says:
    April 14, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    I have installed 194 programs on my pc, and my computer is still very fast with just 2GB of ram. (Vista) I use TuneUp Utilities, Ccleaner, and CleanMem to keep my pc fast. On average, my memory usage is about 800MB out of 2GB ram.
    Of course, You don’t install all the programs at one time:) Also, you could have used a program like Ninite, which packages all the programs in to one installer. So, what I’m saying is that you can still have a fast pc with many programs.

    Ben

    Reply
  5. Harmen Cuya says:
    July 15, 2010 at 9:13 am

    I agree with the blog, because programs that will be add are lessening the memory of the computer. It will result to less performance of the system. By the way thanks for sharing info.

    Reply
  6. Carsey says:
    September 13, 2010 at 1:38 am

    Hey there, This information was SO very useful, i did these simple steps and my computer is running better then ever !! it only took approx 10 mins to do and although my BRAND new computer crashed afterwards it was well worth it,( i thought it crashed but it was just restarting ( not a computer person ).

    Thanks !!

    Reply
    • Nigel says:
      September 13, 2010 at 1:42 am

      Nice work carsey. But you must have missed the message that your computer needed to reboot for these actions to take place. Some computers dont but the Newer ones do tell you. I suggest getting Computers for dummies.

    • Sandro Villinger says:
      September 13, 2010 at 10:34 am

      Carsey, just to get you right – you performed the steps from “We suggest a couple of rules”?
      But your computer is running ok now, right?

      Best, Sandro

  7. Josie says:
    September 13, 2010 at 2:49 am

    lol @ carsey U NOOB !

    Reply
  8. Helen says:
    September 24, 2010 at 4:55 am

    Too much program will surely consume your resources. And that means when you need a certain program to run, it no longer have the enough resources that can slow down the computer.

    Reply
  9. PC Software says:
    September 13, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    Really It’s a good work. I’m glad to read this article and all those comments. Simply I got more information from you. Thank you so much for sharing.

    Reply
  10. Mike says:
    December 22, 2011 at 5:57 pm

    With all that installing disk fragmentation would have been a considerable factor in performance degradation. I understand that most common users probably never defrag their drives, and so your test is quite representative of many users out there. But I’d still be interested to know how the junk PC performed after installation of 200 apps AND after a disk defrag.

    Maybe that can be the 3rd installment in this series? ;-)

    Reply
  11. Moeed Alam says:
    December 27, 2011 at 1:51 pm

    Greetings and salutations fellows! I have been researching on Windows XP Professional Edition operating system from many perspectives from its developers to its users and have not been able to have a rough gauge on its limitations about its figures and numbers according to its maximum value supporting protocols. My question is that “Does Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 3 on a P4 2.4 GHz 4 GB RAM with 80 GB PATA HDD {windows installed on PATA Drive} and 2 TB SATA HDD has any limitations on the number of an average of 200 MB softwares or programs that can be installed on the system before it starts to overload or slow down. I know it depends on a lot of factors but I need someone to humor me in a hypothetical situation; just wanted to know how many programs i can install because i use a lot of programs, is there a limit to the number of programs? my desktop is slowing down so i need to know whether it depends on the size of the windows folder or the registry entries. My windows folder is 12 GB and there are no errors or viruses; i have done all of the maintenance and optimization services, but my torrent has suddenly started malfunctioning by giving a definite or absolute memory leak with the hard disk slinging and thrashing. I have Bitdefender Antivirus Pro 2011 installed as well and it is working fine and did not slow down the system before plus i have removed all secondary non-essential programs that run at start up and in windows services. I have also scanned the system using 6 different kinds of antivirus softwares with spywares, firewalls, malwarebytes, removal tools and been monitoring the system using process explorer and hijack this, but there is no understanding why the system would slow down, when there are only 40 processes running instead of the usual 90 processes that i used to run before when the system never slowed down. My system has 240 programs installed in it and it was working fine until the torrent started overloading the system; if i pause the torrent the system goes back to a normal state, so my question in technical terms would be: “Does the installing of 240 programs result in the overload of the registry?” The reason i am asking this question is that there is no other possibility as i have fully scanned and tuned the system getting rid of all the garbage and there are no extra processes running except the system processes, so if there is an experienced person out there, you’re help would be greatly acknowledged, thank you very much and farewell. :D

    Reply
  12. Moeed Alam says:
    December 27, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    I would have to say that your research is quite impressive. A question in my mind that would ultimately had to develop was in regards with the feasibility of the spectrum of the research and the system’s power which means if the 200 softwares were installed then how many programs were running in the task manager and if the processes were somehow removed from the start up and windows services by msconfig and further adjustment was done using administrative tools or even if only basic or essential windows system programs and processes were assigned to run would it really nullify the impact of the 200 software installation? Technically there is a justifiable theory as i have done the same research and was practically using my system in an impressive synchronization with optimal performance even though i had installed 240 softwares and that too in a P4 until that glitch with the utorrent happened, so one hypothetical statement would be that nothing should go wrong as the softwares are not using any system resources or facilities as they’re programs are blocked but another hypothetical statement should be that after all the initiation of all the optimization protocols there is one thing that cannot be cleaned even using a registry cleaner and that is the registry itself as long as the softwares remained installed so there is no other alternative except the uninstallation of the softwares. My question would then be is there an alternative of blocking the softwares usage of the system’s resources and keeping it working in an optimal technique? and is there a way of optimizing the registry effectively so that it does not overload and slow down the system without uninstalling the softwares as we already know that registry entries are not possible to get removed by a registry optimizer if the program is installed unless we do it manaully but that would destroy the program and render it unfit for usage wouldn’t it?

    Reply
  13. Moeed Alam says:
    December 27, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    Would giving it more RAM solve the problem or any other hardware upgrade.

    Reply
  14. Moeed Alam says:
    December 27, 2011 at 4:48 pm

    What about the integration of software upgrades and programs that make the system run faster?

    Reply
  15. Sandro Villinger says:
    December 28, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    Hi Moeed,

    first of all: this has to be one of the the most dedicated comment on this blog to date and I appreciate this. You’ve put a lot of thoughts into your questions and theories and we’ve also put a lot of energy into this, so I salute you for that.

    But let’s get into your questions and theories one by one:

    1. Software limitations: There is no actual limitations (either set by the hardware or software). So Windows does not have a set limit (e.g. 1024 applications is the maximum). The registry itself will also not increase massively with hundreds of programs installed; say for example your registry is 60 MB in size. If you install a program, it might just grow by about a couple of KB. However, there are applications that might have a bug and increase the registry size massively (however, that’s quite rare).

    2. Security Solutions: As we’ve proven in other blog posts, security solutions have the tendency to slow things down a bit – and even more so if you use several security suites at a time (which you seem to be doing from what I read). How about you try to temporarily get rid of ALL the security solutions; try to start your torrent application (I know you’re offline but the torrent client should start its memory leak anyways, right?). Does it happen again? If not, install your security suite and see if it happens.

    3. When Windows performs slow and there is no program causing any issues, you might be looking at DRIVER problems. Actually, this is a highly likely scenario. Windows Task Manager does not convey driver memory leaks or excessive resource utilization. What I would do in your case is simple: go through device manager – step by step – and update your chipset driver (e.g. Intel, AMD, nVidia etc.), your graphics, your sound chip, your Wi-Fi, your LAN….anything that’s updateable. That will take you a couple of hours of figuring out where to find the drivers, but I honestly have a feeling that this will solve your problems.

    4. Processes running in Task-Manager: I wish I had shown the number of processes before/after installing these processes. But it was somewhere around the 140-160 area AFTER installing and around the 50-60 area BEFORE installing these programs.

    5. Restoring performance? We showed in subsequent parts how performance was increased and what effect our optimization steps had: http://blog.tune-up.com/windows-insights/performance-check-how-200-new-programs-slow-down-your-pc-part-2/ and http://blog.tune-up.com/windows-insights/windows-insights/performance-check-how-200-new-programs-slow-down-your-pc-part-3/. Uninstalling or just disabling these processes, wouldn’t nullify the impact, because there is a lot more going on that just startup processes and services. Think Scheduled Tasks, Fragmentation, registry errors (that may cause performance issues) etc. It’s only if you really clean up is that you get close to original performance.

    6. Using software WITHOUT impact: You see, internally at TuneUp we have asked ourselves the EXACT question you had. In short, is there a way to run software without its impact. This is why we came up with TuneUp Program Deactivator, which is part of our 2011 and 2012 version of TuneUp Utilities. It temporarily turns off processes, services and scheduled tasks of programs you don’t need at the moment. When you launch them, it re-enables them. You close them, it closes them down again. I have written a massive whitepaper for TuneUp that shows this impact: http://download.tuneup.de/company/press/en/tuneup_utilities_2012_whitepaper.pdf (see page 5).

    7. Hardware Upgrade? Well, if ALL the steps I suggested won’t help, another 2 or 4 Gigs of memory may improve performance a bit. But it certainly wouldn’t stop the memory leak – the process would just grow to whatever new size of RAM you have (which would be a shame).

    Let’s see if I could help you :) Let me know.

    Best,
    Sandro Villinger
    Editor in Chief, TuneUp Blog

    Reply
  16. Moeed Alam says:
    January 4, 2012 at 1:16 am

    First i want to address the performance and stability issues as follows:
    1. Weird pauses during file copy Issue
    2. “Documents” and “Program Files” garbage
    3. Remaining Start Menu folders
    4. Weird noises during audio playback
    5. Orphaned startup programs
    6. Huge temporary files (4 GB Temporary Files using CCleaner Analysis after only 6 days)
    7. Boot-up performance: 6 minutes 24 seconds
    8. Shutdown performance: Freezing Mode Dead Lock
    9. Virus scan performance: Freezing Mode Dead Lock
    10. Application performance: Media Player Classic takes 2 minutes 12 seconds
    11. Processor, graphics, and memory performance: Twice the normal time on average for loading normal resolution videos but 4 times for HD with breakage and stuck ups
    12. Photo editing performance: 48 seconds

    Now addressing my optimization methodology technique:
    1. Defragmentation
    2. Disk Cleanup
    3. Disk Optimizer
    4. Virus Scanning
    5. Registry Scanning and Clean Up {Scanned Items: 6421426, Problems: 2468}
    6. Registry Defragmentation And Optimization
    7. CCleaner
    8. Performance And Maintenance Utilities
    9. Bugs And Errors Fixing Tools
    10. System Monitoring And Analyzing Equipment Softwares
    11. MalwareBytes AntiMalware
    12. Program And Task Management Optimization

    Summary
    I have followed your link and recognized the page instantly as i have read it before when i was doing my research and believe me i have done all of the solutions and the steps plus adding a lot of other methods and techniques as well. As far as your possible causes are concerned, allow me to give you my updated response or feedback which is:

    1. My start up programs only load basic services as i have blocked all the programs that automatically run at start up, so that issue was already done.
    2. Insufficient RAM; less probability.
    3. Bad Fragmentation; not likely.
    4. Only one antivirus program has always been running. {I just installed 6 different kinds of antivirus softwares for testing and experimentation and i used to install them one at a time and now all of them are uninstalled except one which is bitdefender antivirus pro 2011}
    5. HDD Space is not an issue as i have still got 600 GB of free space out of my 2 terabyte SATA HDD and the virtual memory paging file size storage allocation protocols is also managed by the system and is plenty.
    6. Slow internet speed again is not an issue as i have a 50 MBPS VDSL Broadband Service.
    7. There are no hardware or software conflicts.
    8. Windows is fully updated and automatic updates are fully enabled.
    9. Processor temperature is nominal but sometimes it overheats while the rest of the hardware temperature is fine. {Testing was done by using “Speed Fan”.}
    10. Memory is not an issue as the software and hardware has been upgraded to the maximal supported RAM on the motherboard and the system which is 4 GB.
    11. Last but not the least the only thing i haven’t tried yet is the manual update of my system drivers although my windows programs and system drivers are technically fully updated but i still need to test my statement.

    Finally I would like to thank you once again for your initiative and absolutely and definitely I would keep you informed of my results and update you further as i do my research experimentation. Farewell. :D

    Reply
  17. Moeed Alam says:
    January 4, 2012 at 2:03 am

    P.S. Another thing I would like to mention is the behavior of the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser. It was ablt to open 90 tabs with absolutely no problems of overloading but then i upgraded it with a lot of add-ons and it started to slow sown, so initially i thought it maybe due to the reason of the add-ons so i started using mozilla firefox only when i needed to benefit myself from the add-ons. For speedy browsing i then started using google chrome and made sure that i don’t put in any extra extensions so that it does not overload or get slowed down and it obviously worked as it was running in a very good optimal fashion but then the whole system started to slow down impacting it’s performance as well. Now the browser which was also able to open 90 tabs without any problems is not able to go beyond 10 as it overloads the RAM initiating a BSOD error which is=> “page_fault_in_non_paged_area” as before. My registry’s size is 104268 KB after analysis by “Registry Clean Expert” and i have defragged and optimized it for better performance reducing it’s size and synchronizing it’s sectors but still the problem remains. :D

    Reply
  18. Moeed Alam says:
    January 4, 2012 at 2:15 am

    I also wanted to mention that almost all my programs are installed in the secondary hard disk partition which is the 2 terabyte SATA HDD but the operating system is installed in the primary hard disk partition which is the 80 gigabyte PATA HDD as this was the only way my system was able to have a good functionality although a few people may object to my approach of an unorthodox methodology or technique of building or designing a system. :D There is also maybe a probability of a possibility that “Bitdefender Antivirus Pro 2011″ maybe conflicting with utorrent but what if i deactivate it using “Tune Up Program Deactivator”? for testing purposes only; is it going to work? :D

    Reply
  19. Moeed Alam says:
    January 4, 2012 at 2:20 am

    What was the size of your registry entries {number of scanned items} in your research experimentation and the number of total programs in your service modules? :D

    Reply
  20. Moeed Alam says:
    January 4, 2012 at 3:11 am

    I just wanted you to know that I have just updated all of the drivers but there is still no difference. :D

    Reply
    • Sandro Villinger says:
      January 5, 2012 at 3:49 pm

      Hi Moeed, having carefully read all your performance and stability issues, my 15 year experience with PCs tells me one thing: It is highly likely that this is no longer an issue of software:

      Weird pauses during file copy, memory-related blue screens, high temperature, weird delays, MASSIVELY long boot up, weird noises during audio playback…it just paints a very clear picture. My (remote) diagnosis is, that you’re dealing with some form of hardware issue. The hardware you’re using is quite old and is not known for being very efficient – in fact, the Pentium IV ranks among the worst processors in history since it produced a lot of heat while not being particularly fast at the same time; it wasn’t a power-efficient processor and the performance/energy ratio was horrible. Now if memory serves me right, I bought my first P4 between 2003 and 2005, which would make your PC roughly 6 to 9 years old. And that means that a thermally unfriendly CPU ran for 6 to 9 years on your motherboard, which takes its toll on hardware. It may be a lot of hardware components that suffered from exposure, such as the CPUs internal L1/L2/L3 cache. You may also be dealing with defective RAM modules or problems with your motherboard.

      At this point, all our investigation into these issues will likely not help. You have done basically ALL you could ever do. I suggest not to invest any more time in finding the issue and solving it – because you won’t. Even if I had the PC here in my office for a couple of days, I don’t think I would find the issue.

      Now here is my first advice: Start clean! That’s right. Perform a fresh install of Windows XP SP3 and install ONLY the programs you absolutely need on it. Observe your system for a couple of days or weeks. If these symptoms keep occuring right out of the gate, then you have no choice other than to buy a new PC (even a 200-300$ desktop would be x-times more efficient and faster than your current rig) or suffer from the low performance due to a hardware defect.

  21. Jim says:
    April 9, 2012 at 1:36 am

    I respectfully challenge you with the assertion that your methodology – and especially conclusions – are seriously and fundamentally flawed.

    The source of performance issues was almost certainly *not* the number of applications installed.

    Instead, your performance issues were almost certainly caused by the additional RAM and CPU cycles consumed by additional services and/or task tray [or other background] applets. That is an *indirect* (and not immutable) consequence of the choice of particular applications installed, and quite a different distinction from the total *number* of applications installed. You could have chosen to disable the unnecessary third-party system-wide services and per-user background processes (while still allowing the applications to work as designed). This would not only be the responsible thing to do, but is unfortunately a necessity for virtually all Windows users.

    Too many services and background apps, along with not having enough RAM to handle them, was almost certainly the source of your observed performance problems. You really needed to post more data, such as page faults and privileged I/O – to get an honest or at least more complete picture of how much low-memory pressure played a part. I would wager that low-memory pressure (and resultant pagefile thrashing) was the single biggest performance issue.

    Stuttering video, if not caused by a hardware problem or faulty drivers, is almost certainly caused the system being tied up with pagefile thrashing.

    I personally have over six *thousand* applications installed on all my Windows PCs and VMs. (Yes you read that right – thousands.) More specifically, I have 6,800 .EXE files on my system drive [not counting the Windows directory of course]. I have 24,000 registerd DLL files (again not including anything under the Windows folder – which constitutes another 20,000). And hundreds of script files (.CMD, bash [Cygwin], BeanShell, Ch, etc.).

    (Granted, not each of those 6,800 EXEs constitutes a single user-installed application, but unfortunately I can’t begin to count each discreet application; most of them are not registered with an uninstaller. Suffice it to say, it is far and away above 200!)

    All one needs to do (as I do) – in fact what any Windows user *must* do because Windows itself is notoriously poor in helping – is to be vigilant about disabling unnecessary third-party application-related system-wide services, per-user task tray applets, other user background applications, and also disable or uninstall junk third-party browser toolbars. It does not matter if Grandma just has MS-Office installed (and also Java, Flash, Flex, Silverlight, Quicktime, etc. for the browser), or 200 applications, or 6,800.

    As all power-users with friends and family know, most Windows systems are littered with third-party services, unimportant user process, and spyware-ish browser toolbars, plugins, addons, and extensions (many invisible without their knowledge). For example: I ditch the Java updater, Google updater, and all of the myriad “quick-launch” programs whose sole purpose is to keep its application code cached in RAM for seemingly “fast” app launches (an unforgivable sin of application design if you ask me). I disable all non-essential browser plugins that most people don’t even know are there (I’m not talking about the more obvious extensions [Chrome] or Add-ons [Firefox]. Dig deeper!) I even reduce the number of unnecessary (for me) “Windows-proper” services allowed to run, and disable many tasks in the Task Schedule (which ballooned in number with Vista and Win7). The only task tray applets and other user-session background executables I allow to run are utilities I use every day (e.g. Launchy).

    Performance issues are also generally not related to the number of files on a system (boot drive or otherwise). NTFS is quite capable of handing a mind-boggling number of files without hesitation. (I should know; I have ~20 TB of data, including approx 2.6 million photo files.)

    Furthermore, I try to have enough RAM – as much as any given machine is capable of accepting, as a general rule. I keep an eye on pagefile-related stats. The only time I run low on memory is when I run one or two VMs, and then attempt to do heavy-duty photo and/or video and/or audio lifting with 64-bit applications (E.g. Photoshop x64 can easily consume all available RAM, esp with the complex custom Actions I run).

    Everyday stability and performance are critical issues for me, as I spend days on end with aforementioned resource-intensive photo, video, and audio editing. My systems are rock-stable, lean (in terms of latent memory and CPU usage, and total thread count), and very fast.

    My second highest priority, in terms of having a fast and stable system, is having good drivers for my hardware. (And only using hardware with a reputation for having good drivers.) If a driver update proves buggy, I backtrack.

    These simple steps – (keeping services/task tray applets/scheduled tasks to a minimum, having enough RAM, and using good drivers), are enough to keep your system happy regardless of the number of applications installed. And unless you disable it, Windows 7 does regular disk defragmentation – so that is usually no longer a concern. (I disable mine though, as I manually defrag when *I* have time, not when my system decides to – usually kicking off at the worst possible moment.)

    The only thing I do “above and beyond” maintenance-wise, is run CCleaner regularly – but that’s more for basic security than performance. I rarely run a “registry cleaner”, as that almost always makes a mess of the system. I only do that as the almost last resort if something goes terribly, terribly wrong and I know it’s registry-related (with the very last resort being a reinstall); fortunately that is exceedingly rare.

    Hope this helps. I’d be happy to send you a list of all the executable files I have on my system.

    As for my hardware specs:

    1) Macbook Pro Core i5 with 8gb RAM running Win7 64-bit (natively not VM…I don’t use Mac OS X).

    2) Custom Core2 Duo with 8gb RAM running Vista 64-bit.

    3) Custom 8-core Xeon server with 16GB RAM running Solaris 11, hosting a “permanent” WinXP Pro VM provisioned with 3.5 GB RAM;

    4) Custom Pentium 4 with 2GB running Ubuntu and sometimes Windows XP.

    5) Custom Pentium 3 with 512MB running Ubuntu and sometimes Windows XP.

    Reply
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