I consider myself to be among the top 1% of computer users in terms of skill. I worked for a decade in the tech industry and spent three years at Microsoft. I was part of the Windows 98 team and the Windows 2000 team – I know how to use Windows. And yet, despite my knowledge, I’m afflicted with the same problem everyone else is regarding the gradual degradation of a Windows install.
Two years ago, I got a brand new laptop when I started law school. It’s a Decent Dell Core2 Duo. It came with an 80GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. I immediately upgraded it to 3GB (the max you can use with 32-bit Windows) and a 200GB 7,200 RPM hard drive. I then proceeded to do clean installs of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and the other goodies I use on a regular basis. It ran like a champ for about 18 months.
Then, it started getting slow. Bootups took longer, and the hard drive would just churn away for no discernable reason. I rebuilt the drive index, reduced my number of offline files, and defragged the hell out of my system, yet it still ran slowly. It wasn’t spyware/crapware or a virus. I haven’t had any computer virus since 1999 or 2000. I’m very careful in my surfing habits: I only go to sites I trust. If I’m going somewhere I don’t trust, I use a Virtual PC and do it all in there. (Using a VPC for surfing and peer-to-peer stuff has saved me a ton of headaches.) But just for the hell of it, I ran a full virus and spyware scan and got nothing.
So I finally threw in the towel and did a complete format & reinstall. And what do you know – it runs blazing fast again!
I wonder if Microsoft will ever manage to solve the problem of gradual degradation that has haunted Windows since Windows 95. I truly hope so, because this is completely ridiculous that I – someone who could write a book about PC best practices – has his computer slow down and become flakey. I’m the equivalent of the guy who religiously gets his oil changed every 3,000 miles, yet has the engine fail at 50,000 miles. If I’m having this much trouble, I can imagine how bad it must be for users who don’t have my background. No wonder so many people bash Windows.
It seems my only solution is to plan on doing a format and reinstall every 18 months or so. Don’t bother suggesting a Mac to me. It won’t work for me because the applications I use the most won’t run on a Mac. Unless I install Windows on it, which (a) defeats the purpose, and (b) forces me to spend 30% more for a Mac than a comparable Dell.
It wasn’t much fun to piss away most of my weekend reinstalling everything and migrating my data onto a new install. I truly hope Microsoft fixes this issue in Windows 7. It’s downright unacceptable.

Recent Comments