Does Win XP get old and tired?

[engrbill47]

Dear Forum Members:
I have what may be an arcane question. Does Win XP get slower in the boot-up phase over time? My operating system has been working for 3 plus years. I recently updated my drivers for my Nvidia 6800 series video card to the latest driver on the Nvidia home site. Before the installation, it to nine cycles of the dotted blue cursor to get to the Welcome screen. Now, after installation, it takes 19-20 cycles. What did I do, or what happened?
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[g-paw]

Windows accumulates a lot of garbage, .e.g., old files or registry entries over time. For instance when you delete a program there are always some files and registry entries that aren't needed and aren't deleted. Free programs like CCleaner and Eusing Free Registry Clearer will clean some of this stuff out and running them regularly helps. Also Defragging will help. After 3 plus years the best thing you could do is a clean install of Windows with a full format but you'll lose everything on the drive so you have to back up all your data.

 

[sdnerf]

For sure, run "msconfig" from the RUN dialog box. go to startup applications and look at all the crap in there, uncheck all the apps you dont need. g-paw is correct, nothing better than a format and clean install after a year or two.

 

[gomerpile]

format is not always the answer, cleaning out the prefetch, regular defrags of the entire pf, and file system, increase MFT size, and cluster size.
disable some services, create back ups of registry, use a registry monitor with restore features for install programs that have been uninstalled.
Create startup scripts and shut down scripts to remove dll and prefetch, temps, create bat file for memory CPU services.
all these things will prevent any system from slowness caused from clutter . Myself I have created a long list of reg tweaks in one file so it can be imported or merged.