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How to keep a windows machine clean?

I can't decide between Win7 and Mac Os. I could work with both, however, I fear that Windows 7 will slow down just as any other windows. Is there anybody who has been running RC or beta for a long while and can confirm or refute this?

thanks eliott

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marked as duplicate by Diago Dec 11 '09 at 15:39

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It is just like any other Windows.

However, don't install rubbish etc... and it will be as good as the day you install it.

This is a true story -...

I went to a local shop that called me out to "do up" all their computers, they had 6 Windows machines and 2 Macs, they were saying that they are going to get all new Macs soon... I said why and like you they said "We have had the Windows PCs for about 4 years, they are slow and we hate them".

Long story short, Their Windows machines were being used by the staff in every break for internet, porn and other stuff - had advert bars, tons of useless programs (Smiley central...), about 5-6 different monitoring programs for digital cameras that they had at one point and never removed...Where as their Macs in the same 4 years ONLY had photoshop installed as they did not let staff use them in breaks.

I pointed this out to them, and said, if you treated the Windows machines in the same way, they would be just as good

This is just telling you the start of it.... but I hope it gets the point across - it is not just the operating system, it is how you use it.

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And I've certainly seen Macs slow down horribly due to people installing rubbish on them. – me_and Dec 11 '09 at 15:34
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+1 - people always forget this. If you add crud to a system it will slow down. So either reinstall every so often, clean up the crud (never a perfect solution though) or don't install crud in the first place. – ChrisF Dec 11 '09 at 15:35
@ChrisF - put very well! – William Hilsum Dec 11 '09 at 15:37
Not installing anything is not really a solution and the cccleaner and other applications simple fail to get the desired result. There are printer drivers, many usb stuff, utilities and work related applications. your suggestion does not work in real life. – Eliott Dec 11 '09 at 15:52
@Eliott: Work applications and drivers are fine.... Just stay the heck away of free utilities applications : toolbars, rubbish utilities, etc... You DO NOT NEED THOSE, and they are FREE for a reason. Don't blame CCCleaner. If you install a bunch of toolbars and rubish utilities on a Mac, you'll have the exact same slowdown, except it is called the spinning beachball syndrome ... – Andrew Moore Dec 11 '09 at 16:02
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Although I haven't been using Windows 7 for long, I do know that the main reasons for slowdown haven't been addressed : registry, disk fragmentation, multiplicity of context-menu handlers and more.

Therefore, although Windows 7 is reputedly more efficient on resource-using (improvements which I haven't seen in my limited experience), do not expect it to be very different from preceding versions.

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I can definitely confirm that it does slow down after a while. It became especially clear when I installed the RTM recently. It is speeding fast again!

But that RC1 when it was slowed down was still much faster then Vista after a clean install.

So I hope the RTM will do better.

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Treat it right, and it'll be fine. OS X doesn't really slow down in the same way due to having different ideologies behind running programs, but in the windows world, everything and it's dog wants it's own place in the registry, it's own start up program, so on.

Don't let them. Install portable programs where you can, but otherwise just take their stuff out of startup, using tools like Autoruns, or Windows Defender's startup tool, and your PC will stay as fast as when you got it.

Example: My current PC is 3 years old, now. Never reformatted. C2D@2.2Ghz and a reasonably slow HDD (It was cheap!), boot time is still 27 seconds (From POST to firefox loading), and she's still as fast as ever.

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up vote 0 down vote

it will rot like any other OS, the degree of OS rot, however, always depends on how it is being treated and looked after. having said that, there is a very simple cure:

DeepFreeze does exactly what it says on the tin: it will freeze the computer in its current state (locking it right down to the very last byte) and revert the computer to this state with every restart. be done with to "OS rot" once and for all.

DeepFreeze works for all Windows versions, desktop or server, x86 or x64.

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Windows Steady State works in a similar way. It's the only thing that helps keep me sane. I maintain student lounge computers at a small post secondary school. Students find ways to mess things up and then lose their changes with reboot, eventually they realize it's not worth the trouble and start using the machines for what they were intended. – menns Dec 11 '09 at 16:11
Windows Steady State is a 'legacy product', no support for Windows 7 (they ditched it, although it was present in some prereleases) or any 64-bit OS. – Molly7244 Dec 11 '09 at 17:06