All about Bitrot...

[ahhaa]

There's a discussion going on sites elsewhere that should be of interest here-
one typical comment from the OP:

When I first installed Vista, it booted quickly and I was able to fire up apps and start working. Several things occurred in the past year to slow that process down.

First, I've installed and uninstalled a crapload of stuff. Although Vista is better than XP at managing all the registry hives, things have grown. Right now, my \windows\system32\config folder is 501 megabytes—roughly twice as large as when I first installed the OS. My NTUSER.DAT file is now 7.6MB, as opposed to 768KB (yes, that's a "K") with a clean install of Vista. So my NTUSER.DAT registry hive has increased 10x.

more at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2338673,00.asp
and http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3325

The basic subject is that PCs really do slow down over time, and the real reasons why, like programs that startup twice. (One no-no is installing & even uninstalling beta and trial software.)

Did you make a disc image when your machine was lean and mean?
Will Windows 7 fix these problems or is it just another Death Star?

[Krispy Kritter]

Every version of Windows that has used the registry has suffered from this problem...it isn't likely to change anytime soon. Simply learning how to perform a little cleanup on a consistent basis will offset much of the slowness. Users just need to be educated and stop blaming the OS for everything they do.

[Seeker47]

Every version of Windows that has used the registry has suffered from this problem...it isn't likely to change anytime soon. Simply learning how to perform a little cleanup on a consistent basis will offset much of the slowness. Users just need to be educated and stop blaming the OS for everything they do.

I have a feeling that Crap Cleaner, although I use it regularly, does not get out nearly enough of the dead wood. But, it has been pretty safe and reliable in my usage of it. I suppose it is a difficult balancing act with a utility like that, as between safety and over-aggressiveness that might damage something important.