Does Windows rot over time?

[Trypt]

Since my last post (two posts above) raving about the stability of VistaU64, I have upgraded to Win7U64, and its the same story, stable as a rock, no need to restart at all, but I do it anyway when ordered to by Windows Update, but this happens about once every 2-3 weeks.

I also keep track of my memory usage daily. To give you some idea, here is my memory percentage usage, and virtual memory usage every day for the last 9 days, with no restart, at 4pm every day:

Day00 - 1410 20%
Day01 - 1460 30%
Day02 - 1600 29%
Day03 - 1710 30%
Day04 - 1538 30%
Day05 - 1572 31%
Day06 - 1715 34%
Day07 - 1684 37%
Day08 - 1730 32%

First number is virtual memory usage, the percentage is usage of real memory (I have 3GB installed at the moment).

Win7 manages memory so well that even after weeks, there is no difference in how much is used for background operation etc. Incredible, considering a decade of crappy Win95-Millenium (which I never used, thankfullly).

I have found that since Win2000 stability has been a non-issue, although I must say, 2000 and XP still don't hold a candle to Vista and 7 as far as stability is concerned.

 

[Dapman02]

I have found that since Win2000 stability has been a non-issue, although I must say, 2000 and XP still don't hold a candle to Vista and 7 as far as stability is concerned.

It's kind of funny to hear from friends when there like "7 must not be stable, you bsod all the time" than I have to explain that I'm testing my overclock.

 

[pik4chu]

windows only dies when you screw with it too much...

I get glitches now and then with my desktops (mainly just with my work machine running XP but its because I abuse the hell out of it) but I rarely have issues with my Vista one at home (and its rarely even a Vista problem) and my server which is running 2003 R2 has been up for months without even the need for a reboot and that was only because I turned it off to move it. The server itself has been in its current state without problems for close to 2 years now.

So no, Windows doesn't just rot over time all by itself.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

Windows does rot over time with average daily use.

However, if you properly maintain the system (tune-ups like you would do with a car), the 'rot' is much slower, if ever occuring at all.

 

[johnz]

I wonder how many of the people here with Windows issues have them because of overclocking. Running things too fast can cause corruption, and quirky behavior. I never push my overclocks to the edge, and I also don't get performance degradation over time.

 

[4GHZ_or_bust]

Very old thread, originally started in 2005 and still an issue even today.

When I installed Windows Vista a year ago, it used to run nice with few restarts but a few months ago it was getting flaky. Sometimes it would claim I have no USB 2.0 system when I insert memory card or USB drives, once in a while mouse would go dead unless I replugged USB cable, etc. Files do degrade over time and there will come a time when corrupted file(s) can cause Windows performance issue.

Standard hard drives were never designed with parity checking and error correcting. Best we got is the CRC error but even Windows often don't check its own driver and files for corruption and can cause issues.

Add to that installing and uninstalling programs can make a mess of registry and bogs down the system.

Keeping Windows OS running almost non stop for a year with occasional hardware changes and apps changes can be a bane for some of us.

I'm hoping Windows 7 (as described above) is better overall with handling of old files and frequent install/uninstalls.

Macintosh OTOH seems to be better overall. I still have a Mac Centris 610, vintage 1993 and last reinstalled 1993. Still runs to this day. I've never had Windows 98 last that long at all, my best for Windows without reinstall or repair is about 3 years. Mac OS (pre OSX) didn't use registry like Windows so it was much easier to remove outdated files and apps and fix/replace corrupted files.

 

[darkcow]

Window 7 is incredible at keeping lean and speedy. My Atom 280 on my netbook is still running Windows RC like a champ. I have updated the drivers a few times and I still have the same # of processes on boot up the entire time. No slowdowns ever and still great battery life.

 

[Trypt]

Isn't there some way to replace the registry system? Its ridiculous that there are a million entries in there, anything can go wrong, and of course things get left behind and it just gets bloated. Sure, cpus today are so fast that they can read through that np, but still.

And whatever happened to all that talk about a new file managing system for windows at the time Vista came out, but was later abandoned? Apparently it wasn't going to use filenames or extensions or something?

 

[Enablingwolf]

The heretical database in Windows (registry.) Makes it much easier to tap into certain features of the OS. One option would be to use symbolic links and flat file configurations. The drawback of that way, is it becomes cumbersome to manage more than one type of software groups at once. Or link a dynamic library easily.
You would still have to have some type of software package management. The registry in Windows ties everything together in one spot. Handled right, it is very powerful Just many software devs choose to leave in some entries or do not remove everything they put in. For the simple concept of if you reinstall, your settings or what they want in terms of managing their product is left behind.

File system and file managing is not the same. The WinFS has been attempted many times over the last decade. Each time it was scrapped. NTFS, or New Technology File System is very mature and predates Fat32 actually. The 6.1 NTFS kernel is getting close to how WinFS should of been. Not exact, but close. IIRC, it would of still had to have a Registry of some sort to handle the metadata even for extension-less files. the concept behind WinFS is very simplistically - boiled down to it works like MP3 tags of a sort. The metadata holds the information for the transaction of the data.
Now think of how fast th OS would be, but super complex... Imagine if Indexing and Prefetch were primary parts of the File system.

 

[dgb303]

The primary reasons why Windows is "less secure" than we would all prefer goes as following:

1) Windows holds the largest market share, therefore any malicious attacks are going to programed to attack THIS OS.

2) Windows prefers to make money, so they leave the OS open to configurations - in turn reducing the difficulty of the OS - which reduces calls to Microsoft Help Center.

3 Most people i.e. 99% of Windows users do not know how to properly use, and secure their computers - for this the lack of security cannot be helped. The OS can only be so secure.

Personally I've never had a huge problem with Windows security. If you know your computer, your OS, and how to use a computer in a secure manner your really won't have a huge amount of issues. With that being said, again, a OS can only be so secure - windows has made HUGE strides since the more "primitive times." If any other OS was as prevalent as Windows, there would undoubtedly be just as many problems, if not more.

 

[killem2]

With the exception of Windows ME, i love windows.

 

[kbtat2]

I've had the same install of my XP for almost three years and it's still going strong. This is also the first time I have ever had an install last without problems. The main difference between this install and previous ones is the amount of overclocking I have done. I remained relatively modest on this build compared to others.

 

[ChaosInMind]

It is very simple. Your degrading performance is due to mild fragmentation and mechanical hard drive design characteristics. The more files you add to your mechanical disk the lower your real world throughput. Defragging can solve part of the problem to an extent, but the truth is the more you install and download onto your boot partition the worse your performance will be.

RAID0 and short stroking can help reduce the problem, but your best bet is to only keep essential functions and files on your primary drive and offload everything else to a completely separate drive. Keep your primary drive at about 70% free space and the system will fly.

 

[braq]

Hi,
There's really not much info to work with here. The network collisions (orange LEDs) are probably a symptom of the connection dropping, not a cause.
Look in the event log at the events immediately prior to the stop, and post again with the errror numbers of the events.

 

[ChinStrap]

Keep your primary drive at about 70% free space and the system will fly.

I was under the assumption that “keeping free space” on a HDD was kinda like cheap-man’s short stroking. You were trying to keep everything at the beginning of the drive.

If you really short-stroke or use functionality like Intel’s Matrix, keeping free space was kind of a null point. Right?

 

[Sierra Sin]

I have always used windows. I have a 5 year old (XP on a shuttle ...my first PC that actually wasnt a hand me down, have a Dell XPS 630i with vista now) computer that has degraded, but it took 5 years. it will slow down, its inevitable. but you can look after it there are many factors that cause OS's to degrade.

tbh i think the hard drive is about to failt ont he shuttle...dah well means i get to build a new PC, just to note the shuttle is for music/video and stuff... as well....its a shuttle though it was used for ALOT of other stuff.

browsing habbits? well...it survived mine still does, it hasnt degarded to much but if i dont do "housework" it becomes a lil sluggish.

i dont think there is one definitive thing that makes it FUBAR though.

 

[jgv115]

Just format once a year. You'll get no problems

 

[Trypt]

tbh i think the hard drive is about to failt ont he shuttle...dah well means i get to build a new PC, just to note the shuttle is for music/video and stuff... as well....its a shuttle though it was used for ALOT of other stuff.

An HDD upgrade/replacement should cost you under $100, and you'll no doubt increase the storage by 10 fold. If that is the only problem. Besides, if you only use the computer for music, video and browsing, just re-install windows when you upgrade the HDD and it'll be as good as new. No need to rebuild anything.

I run an XP server on my second computer, I haven't even looked at the screen for over 6 months, it's on 24/7, and I only use it as a network server to access my files, or to backup files. It has worked flawlessly or over 6 months now, with no input from me whatsoever, like I said, I haven't even connected a monitor to that computer for over 6 months.

That being said, stability wise, Win7 is amazing. I have run it now for about 10 months, and restarted the computer about 4-5 times since then, so about 2 months go by between restarts, and no problems, no slowdowns, no nothing. And this is the main system, used for gaming, but also 24/7 transfers (10GB a day average), and other programs.

 

[wingman99]

I think windows has gotten better.

 

[wagex]

i ran the same win7 install for about 3 years through 4 motherboards and a few video cards, and never had an issue with it, xp was bad though every 6 months or so had to reinstall