Windows 7 suddenly got a bit slower?

I've been using Windows 7 since October and its blazing fast. suddenly, 3 days ago, windows 7 suddenly slowed down. Startup time took about 15 seconds more, internet explorer takes about 3-4 seconds more to load, and overall feels more sluggish. Why?

I know many of oyu are going to quote shut this service down, go into msconfig and take away startup items, just to quote, I have the same amount of services running now as when i first installed windows 7 and the same amount of startup items running now as when i first installed windows 7.
So don't tell me to shut down this thing and that thing because that's not what i'm trying to get at is why the sudden slow down?

 

Well the first obvious question is have you done anything new since then? Have you installed anything, added any new file and blah blah? Basically, have there been any changes within the immediate time frame of your noticed slowdown?

Second question is how often do you do maintenance? System slowdowns usually happen gradually but I've heard of cases where a clogged HDD will show slowdown signs form one day to another. So what type(and how often) of maintenance/cleanup do you do on your machine?

 

Try a malware/virus scan. A virus or malware can often make your system slow and some bad ones will make it slow to the point of unresponsive.

 

well, i regularly do defrags and disk cleanups and delete shadow copies about every week or so. ummm, i don't recall installing anything, i just watched 2 avi movies that's it.

that's the thing with my computers, it will run good then out of the blue it will slow down for no reason, happened to me on all the computers i've owned, except my windows 95 one.

oh yeah, forevermelody, are you a girl?

 

Are these avi's that you've personally made, or that you've gotten from warez? Media files can carry STD's, too. Just a thought. Or those great ones that when you try to play them tell you that you need a codec to play them? Those are great. The 'codec' always gets popped by AV, or browser warns about malware, etc. <sarcasm> Yeah, I was born yesterday. <\ sarcasm>

Warez are bad, m'kay...

 

Most of the time, when a system slows down considerably and suddenly, it's malware of some kind. Though I would make sure you don't have something you just installed messing up W7.

 

Like utorrent or bittorrent, and bitcomet. Both of those (slightly older like q month ago) caused issues for me. Not that I have ever used them, was just testing.

 

, i guess i'll try malwareing it again..

 

Try Super Antispyware and Malwarebytes my two favorites.

 

May I suggest Microsoft Security Essentials? I use it, it works great and has gotten solid reviews from several tech sites.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

 

avast 5 is way better... get that and it actually uses just as much RAM as MSE but does a way better job... and u get more features...

 

I don't know if you found the solution elsewhere but I was reading about a recent Win 7 update that caused a slow down. A user actually traced it to two service updates using system restore/rollback. I seem to rememberthe final consensus seemed to be that after a few 3 or so restarts the system would speed back up as windows gathered enough information.

Hope it helps

 

hmm... malware scan to no avail... still windows 7 slowed down a little bit (i'm really observant) suddenly... oh well

 

Has the power plan been changed to power saver? Is it overheating or anything strange?

 

Try malware bytes, and ad aware, Also Microsoft has a good security essentiaol kit, give that a try, I am actually sawitching from AVG to MS for a bit to see how I like it, but most lickly if your computer all of a sudden got slower, it is because you downloaded some sort of spyware.

 

Try Advanced SystemCare...excellent program. From there I might consider a Clean install...have you ever done this?

 

avoid advanced windowscare as windows has all you need, if you open the resource monitor do you see anything weird like high cpu usage and or high pagefaults or high i/o?or you could up a pic of it or generate a system health report and see what it says.

 

i give up. i guess a fresh install would do the trick

 

Time to upgrade to a Mac....Just kidd'in you could have a lot of bloatware slowing you down though.