Files On Computer affecting speed?

[straysweeper]

I'm looking for weather or not having more or less files or programs would affect computer speed?

I'm familar with defragging for instance, but my friend is staying her computer is overloaded and runs faster without more programs on it.

[silicon toad2000]

More files and programs can slow down a computer.

As the hard drive fills up it will take longer to find the files it is looking for. Generally one a drive passes the half full point it will begin slowing down.
Most computers now come with rediculously large drives for most people so this is less of a problem than it used to be.

More programs can also mean more applications loaded on startup and more applications running in the background all the time if you are not careful about it.

Most programs these days will instal itself to start with the computer, or at least run an auto updater with startup. These can also sap a little of your bandwidth.

[straysweeper]

I've used msconfig to turn off a good portion of these, and nothing is in startup. Also, I have a 40 gig drive partitioned with 30/10. I also have my old hard drive put in it as well, my old computer seems fried. (just turns on as soon as i plug it in, but never completely comes on). Which is 80 gigs partitioned into 3.

Running XP.

[ixmatus]

It's less of an issue of 'how many files' you have on your system and more about:

a) what operating system are you using?
b) what programs/software are you running on it?

Windows is notorious for allowing every program under the sun to install itself into your system tray. While handy to have some programs automatically boot up and run in the background on your system tray - having more than 4-6 at any given time will bog down your boot up time and general operating system responsiveness will drop exponentially.

Also, if you are not literate enough to forgo installing that smiley face icon pack for you MSN messenger chat you will most likely end up with malware/rootkits/virus/spyware on your system (this goes for other software as well).

Browsing the internet without automatic Javascript disabling: allowing javascript is allowing anyone that can write it full access to your system. Look into FireFox + NoScript that will automatically block all javascript on any page you visit - you can select certain sites you trust to always be allowed and you can temporarily allow certain sites... Almost every page on the internet uses Javascript now and it is extremely malicious when in the hands of script kiddies and malicious users.

Only install the things you need to get done what you are using your computer for!!!!! Thunderbird for email, FireFox for web browsing, OpenOffice for text/spreadsheet editing, etc... (adjust for programmers/scientists/engineers/etc...). Stop installing those irrelevant and silly programs that are not directly related to what you use your computer for!

Use Spybot S&D to immunize your system and clean Spyware - it also has an excellent system tray editor (I use it religiously) to remove certain programs from loading into your system tray at boot.

Use Clamwin virus scanner for both email and general system scanning - opensource and powerful; doesn't dick around with your system like the proprietary software (McAffe and Norton, bleh!) do.

Defragmenting your system helps - but don't count on it to be *the* way to speed up your computer! Before you get into defragmenting, develop a *logical* directory structure for your documents, downloads, files, archives, etc - stop throwing everything on the desktop or My Documents - a cluttered desk is just as inefficient as a cluttered file structure - become disciplined and consistent with that FIRST before relying on defrag. When all of that is said and done then defrag - and it will actually mean something to your filesystem....

The above notes come from a professional computer programmer and longtime user (me) - the above will keep your system secure and fast for a long time to come.

[ragtag]

Teatimer.exe that comes with SpyBot seemed to slow my system down a lot, so I would recommend installing SpyBot without it.

What generally tends to slow computers down is malware and silly software. People install all kinds of stuff that runs in the background and just takes up resources (actually many computer makers do this too, and bundle their machines with tons of bloated software...I saved 350mb of RAM on my laptop by un-installing HP stuff that it came with). A clean install of WinXP runs pretty snappy. Don't know about Vista, but I heard you should have at least 2gig of RAM to get it to run smoothly.

[silicon toad2000]

If you want to do a bit of reading up on freeing up system resources, the blackviper website is always a good read.