can applications slow your p.c down?

Question

i asked a question a week ago about why my p.c had slowed down,i had checked for viruses and spyware,but they were clear
well ive just uninstalled steganos anti-spyware and my p.c,s performance has increased by at least 30%
can one program slow your pc down,as i wont be using it again,i stil have f-secure,spybot,ad-aware and sp2 so i have adequate security
has anyone else had programs which have affected their computer and if so,which ones?

Answer 1

The thing that determines your computer's speed is the amount of available resources as in CPU time, RAM and hard disk space.
Theoretically a 2 year old computer with no programs running will perform better than a brand new one that is bogged down by lots of running applications.

To increase available CPU time, try not to run too many CPU intensive programs at the same time eg games, dvd players - things that require a lot of graphic rendering.

To increase available RAM, you need to find out what is running. RAM is used in two ways - one is by running applications e.g. to read this, Internet Explorer is probably using around 21MB of RAM, possibly more if you have more than one window open. Essentially close any programs you aren't using anymore to increase available RAM.

Secondly, you may have an army of background applications. A quick glance at your system tray (next to where the clock is) to count the number of icons is a good indicator of this. For a PC four is usually a good number, for a laptop maybe six. Essentially the fewer the better. Here, Task Manager is your friend. Right click on an empty space in the task bar and select Task Manager from the menu or just press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring it up. Click on processes and look at the list. From task manager, you can end each running task individually. Microsoft software is very good at leaving residual resource eaters after being closed. End anything that you finished using - e.g. you closed Excel 10 minutes ago but it still is on the list - end it now. Also look for other strange items on the list e.g. qttask.exe is a curse from quicktime that does nothing except waste about 2MB of memory. End it and others like it. This is a classic place for malware to lurk as well.
If you have Spybot installed, in the advanced properties, you can check everything on your system startup and disable the ones that you don't need/shouldn't be there. Very useful tool.

Lastly hard disk space - if Windows runs a little short on memory, it copies things to a space on your hard disk called virtual memory. From control panel, system you can change how much virtual memory you have and where it is kept. Although not a patch on real memory, generally the larger the virtual memory, the faster the system runs. About twice the Windows recommended amount is best in my opinion. If you have more than one hard disk, having your applications on one disk and your virtual memory on another disk does improve performance.
Also, regular disk maintenance - from My computer, right click on any of your hard drives, select properites and then play with the tabs and you should find both scan disk and defrag. These should be run regularly to keep your hard disk nice and tidy - that way, file retrieval speeds are increased giving a faster machine.

Combining these three areas, you should be able to squeeze a small performance boost out of nearly any windows pc.

Answer 2

Basically any software application can slow your PC down. There's different variables that you have to consider. How old is your PC, how fast is your Processor, how much RAM do you have, what is your Windows Memory Cache set at, etc. It all comes down to optimization.

Another aspect is how much software you have running at the same time. This can really slow down your computer being that it's possible that too many programs are eating up memory, resources, and having to be processed through your Processor at the same time. MSCONFIG can help you eliminate the ones that start running when you log into your computer although it's not fool proof.

Answer 3

All progs will slow down your p.c as will viruses, malware & spyware and of course the amount of files you have on your p.c like music, photos etc
If your p.c takes a long time to start it's probably because you have a lot of applications that run on start-up, some of these you can safely turn off and just start them when you want to use them like your scanner,printer,webcam etc, you can disable some of these from starting each time you turn your computer on by going to START> RUN> MSCONFIG
Be careful what you disable tho as some of these progs will be what makes your p.c run

Answer 4

i have found that the more 'active' the program the more virtual memory it uses an dtherefore slows the rate at which your computer works. If playing on a game and listening to music my computer had long gaps between songs as the virtual memory wasn't enough to habitate both applications.

if found that the best thing to do is to upgrade your memory to atleast 1Gb, ours now goes like rocking horse muck!!
try eBay, should pick one up for a couple of quid

the programs that slow mine adown are the majority of the microsoft programs e.g. media and video player along with any security or game application

Answer 5

This is actually happening due to your RAM. The more applications runing in your PC,the more RAM space is being consumed. And the amount of RAM space free is very less , so the other applications are not getting more RAM when needed, so PC slows down. You will see that having 512 MB RAM or 1 GB RAM the speed doesnot vary. This is because there is always enough free space to work around.

Apps that drastically consumes RAM: (from my experience)
McAfee virus Scan
Nokia PC suite
Motorola Phone tools
Adobe Audition

Answer 6

I assuming you mean after logging on from Windows, if so do this:

Click on Start > Run
Type in : msconfig
Click on Startup
Uncheck the items that are there

These programs are loading on start up - You need to be careful what you remove the check marks for. Do not disable anything that has to do with your anti virus programs. I have mine all unchecked expect Anti-Virus and other security (Firewall). If you made a mistake you could always re-check them by going back to msconfig > Startup
I always do it

Answer 7

if you have a spyware problem, then you definetely need some professional help, fortunately companies like microsoft and symantec are aiding for free all computer users, since this spyware problem is actually doing so much harm to their business that most large companies like ibm and microsoft are teaming up to try to eradicate this problem.

I suggest you find a complete resource against spyware with free distributable programs, one such resource could be found here:

to completely protect yourself go to:

http://umgarticles.atspace.com/spyware.htm

give it a look.

Answer 8

check what is running as all programs that are will slow your pc
press "control+alt+del" to view all active programs
uninstall what you dont use
click "start"then "programs" then "startup" delete all there to speed up the pc
check system resources - be above 80% if poss
check hard disk - atleast 10% free space required for a fast pc

Answer 9

Any resident program can slow your performance down.

Antivirus programs, firewalls, even scanner programs that check your scanner for activity .... Some programs, like Word 2003, that didn't completely close out when you shut it down, continue to use system resources even when they are no longer running.

Answer 10

Yes 1 program cam slow you down, some programs like, spyware remover's , anti virus are continually monitoring so they keep accesing the CPU, i don't use any at all, i use my Xp firewall and my router double firewall, and never download any excutable file so i don't have any problems