Winrot

[hokypokynose]

Any of you experience this? Symptoms include:

General slowing down of computer
Growing numbers of 'blue screens of death'
Confusing 'Illegal Operations'
Frequent trips to the reset button
Devices that don't perform as well as when Windows was still young
Higher stress level

I think this phenomenon is more common to those with Win 98, Me, and XP home. To cure this ailment, try doing a Scan Disk, a Defragmentation, or even just a System Cleanup. These simple treatments can be found under Program Files, Accessories, System Tools. If problems persist, backup files, and reformat hard drive(just re-installing windoze w/o reformating puts all of the useless stuff back).

Sorry I bring this up, I know it's obvious to most of you, but I do observe alot of people complainin about Windoze doing weird stuff and think it is a huge problem. But they don't frequently perform maitenence on their machine. They don't even think that just a few hours or perhaps minutes and the machine suddenly runs quicker, and more robust with less problems. Everyone knows a car needs frequent care. And your PC is a machine as well. So of course it requires regular fixing.

 

[Eurythmic]

...Sort of.

Windows is a self-corrupting operating system. It's like a viral infection - over time, it will become slower and more unusable, and it will crash more often - and there's not a thing you can do about it. Scandisk, system-file-fixers, and defrags (which you should be doing often anyway) slow the problem down, but they won't fix it. They only thing that can fix a corrupted Windows installation is a hard drive reformat and a reinstall of Windows (or the OS of your choice).

The way to prolong the life of your Windows installation is to be careful of how much third-party software you install and uninstall. Just install what you need - 20 boost-this-tweak-that memory resident applications are useless (and they don't work, by the way).

Windows 95 was the worst. It corrupted quickly, and once you started seeing problems, it would only be a matter of time until you might not even be able to boot.

Win98 is a little better than that, and in my experience, Win98SE is a little worse than Win98 (in terms of how quickly it becomes corrupted).

NT4 was a little better than Win98.

I've only been using XP Professional for a couple of weeks, so I can't really comment. Judging from the way programs uninstall (very cleanly, from the look of it), I'm betting it's much improved.

And OEM computers with proprietary software, such as eMachines and old Gateways, become corrupted far more quickly than self-built systems with cleaner Windows installations.