After many years of reasonable performance our computer has significantly slowed-down. Removing cookies and other internet “build-up” using CC Cleaner, and the regular scan with Spybot to remove any adware or malware, has not made any difference. As I prefer not to reload Windows can you recommend a tool to optimise the performance of the computer?

It is good that you have been regularly scanning your computer for malware as these kind of rogue files can significantly slow down your computer. However, from your question, it seems that the computer has been generally running slowly in recent times. This is a common side-effect of having a Windows computer in operation for a long period of time. Over time there is a build-up of files on the computer as a result of the installation and removal of software, which can significantly reduce the performance of the computer. This is colloquially known as “bit rot” (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rot for more details). Many people have asked how unused or orphaned data (such as the remnants of old software which has subsequently been uninstalled) can affect the performance of a computer, since it is simply data which has been stored on the computer and may no longer be used. It is correct to say that unused data itself does not slow down the computer, but it is the effect of this unused data when the computer attempts to complete certain operations which is the problem. For example, when Windows is loading it needs to evaluate certain entries in the Windows registry to determine particular Windows settings. If there is a lot of build-up in the registry then the process of parsing and enumerating all the registry keys can significantly be slowed, resulting in performance hit. Unused data on the computer can result in other side-effects such as a greater degree of disk fragmentation (which makes it slower to access required files and data on the hard drive) and also slows down the ability to search for data on the drive (which may be required by some programs to locate particular pieces of data on the drive).

There are a plethora of utilities available on the internet which claim to boost performance of your computer. If you search for “speed up windows” in Google you will see a large list of results and also advertisements for utilities which appear to speed-up the computer. However, I would take all these utilities with great scepticism. While I have not used all such utilities, I have used a large number of these so-called optimization utilities. Results have varied from doing almost nothing through to causing a major system corruption, necessitating the need to reinstall Windows. Most of these utilities perform their operations by removing temporary files from the computer (which can safely be done any way using standard Windows utilities such as the Disk Cleanup utility) but then delve into the Windows registry and remove registry entries which the utility deems to be redundant and unnecessary. Unfortunately, on many occasions the utility is a bit too careless and removes registry entries which are actually needed, resulting in major system problems. Therefore, as a rule of thumb I never use any such system optimization utilities as in my experience they generally cause more harm than good, and given that you need to purchase most of these utilities it is not particularly cost-effective if they don’t perform the desired function.

Therefore, my recommendation is to backup all data that you wish to keep and then reinstall Windows from scratch. I understand that this is not your optimal course of action, but I recommend that this is the best solution to your problem. In fact, generally I recommend that users do a clean reinstallation of Windows every two years (at the maximum) so that the performance on their computer does not degrade to the point of being unusable. While this is a major operation there are ways to make it easier in the future, should you wish to regularly rebuild the computer. The best way to make this process more efficient in the future is to reinstall Windows and all the applications you wish to use on the computer (such as Office, etc.), then configure the machine as suits you, and take an image/snapshot of the computer at that time. This means next time you wish to reinstall Windows instead of having to reinstall Windows and all the applications, together with configuring the settings on the computer, you can just restore that image/snapshot on the computer. This will be much quicker than a manual reinstallation and will also be a lot easier for you. There are several programs which can complete this task, but one of the better programs is Acronis True Image Home (www.acronis.com.au/homecomputing/products/trueimage). This software costs $69.99 and is well worth the cost, as it can do both the disk based imaging together with general file backup.

You will notice that in the above procedure before taking the image/snapshot of the computer I suggested that you only install the operating system, any programs which you need, and also undertake general configuration of the computer. I have said to copy all your backed-up data into the computer. The reason is that if you copy the backed-up data and then take the image/snapshot that image/snapshot will contain all your data at that point in time. This is probably not desirable, as your data will be constantly changing. Therefore, I suggest that you keep your data off the image/snapshot and instead copy the data back after the image/snapshot has been restored onto the computer. You should also be able to use Acronis True Image for this purpose, as it can also complete file backup in addition to the image capability.

The final question which should be raised is where to store the image/snapshot of your computer, together with any backed-up data. It is unlikely that a CD or DVD will have the capacity to store the data, and spanning across multiple CDs and DVDs is very inconvenient and will be slow to restore. My suggestion would be to store all this data on an external USB hard drive and then back it up again onto a second USB drive. These USB drives are very cheap nowadays and are very fast, convenient and USB 2.0 support, together with the large drive capacity, allow a lot of data to be stored and retrieved quickly. While hard drives are not invincible (as they are subject to mechanical faults, as are all devices with moving parts) since the image/snapshot backups are not absolutely critical (in the sense that you can make these again if necessary) and the data backup presumably is just a backup copy in case the main computer fails, the trade-off between data security, convenience and price by using an external hard drive appears to be acceptable. That said, I would suggest that you make a secondary backup copy of all important data when you are restoring the computer using the image, as it would be unwise to rely on just one backup copy of the data (on your primary portable hard drive) in case that drive fails during the computer rebuild process (as Murphy’s law would dictate) after you have wiped all the data off your computer, but before you have restored the data from backup.