What Slows Windows Down?
Page 3: Results and Conclusions
The first of two studies carried out in September 2006 showing what types of software and more interestingly which versions of those types make Windows XP slow down.
Results and Conclusions
So between the last page and what's about to come, there has been hours of gruelling testing going on. Believe me when I say that 8 hours of watching a virtual machine restart is not my idea of fun, but I think the results justify the means.
If you think there's anything missing from the list, use the contact page to tell me what to add.
| Software
| Mean Boot Time
(s)
| System Delay
(s)
| System Delay
(%)
|
| Norton Internet Security 2006 |
118.33 |
43.33 |
57.78 |
| 1000 Fonts |
105.00 |
30.00 |
40.00 |
| Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303 |
85.67 |
10.67 |
14.22 |
| Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.0 |
85.67 |
10.67 |
14.22 |
| AOL Instant Messenger 1.5 Preview |
85.33 |
10.33 |
13.78 |
| McAfee SecurityCentre |
83.67 |
8.67 |
11.56 |
| Kazaa 3 (+included crapware) |
83.67 |
8.67 |
11.56 |
| Trillian 3.1 Basic |
83.33 |
8.33 |
11.11 |
| VMWare Workstation5.5.1-19 |
83.33 |
8.33 |
11.11 |
| Microsoft Visual Studio2005 Pro. |
82.67 |
7.67 |
10.22 |
| .NET Framework Runtime2.0 |
81.67 |
6.67 |
8.89 |
| 100 Fonts |
80.33 |
5.33 |
7.11 |
| Microsoft Office 2003(v11) Pro. |
80.00 |
5.00 |
6.67 |
| Windows Live Messenger(MSNM8) |
80.00 |
5.00 |
6.67 |
| Gaim 1.5.0 |
79.67 |
4.67 |
6.22 |
| Adobe Photoshop CS 2 |
79.33 |
4.33 |
5.78 |
| OpenOffice 2.0.3 |
79.00 |
4.00 |
5.33 |
| Macromedia Studio MX 2004 |
79.00 |
4.00 |
5.33 |
| QuickTime 7.1 |
78.67 |
3.67 |
4.89 |
| DivX 6.3 |
78.67 |
3.67 |
4.89 |
| DirectX 9.0c |
78.67 |
3.67 |
4.89 |
| Azureus 2.5.0.0 (+ Java Runtime) |
78.33 |
3.33 |
4.44 |
| BitDefender v10 |
78.00 |
3.00 |
4.00 |
| WinRAR 3.60 |
78.00 |
3.00 |
4.00 |
| Java Runtime 1.5.0.06 |
78.00 |
3.00 |
4.00 |
| WinAce 2.65 |
77.67 |
2.67 |
3.56 |
| K-Lite Codec Pack 2.76FULL |
77.33 |
2.33 |
3.11 |
| WinZip |
77.33 |
2.33 |
3.11 |
| 7-Zip 4.42 |
77.00 |
2.00 |
2.67 |
| BitComet 0.7 |
76.67 |
1.67 |
2.22 |
| uTorrent 1.4 |
76.33 |
1.33 |
1.78 |
| Control (none) |
75.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
Things That Did Bad
The results of the security software were quite shocking. I've always known that being most involved with the system, antivirus and firewall programs are going to make things slower, but I was just completely astounded by the Norton result when compared against the other software on show.
Fonts were as, if not more, amazing. I know people always say not to install too many fonts (which is really hard when you have a DVD full of them), but this is the first proof I've seen that shows fonts have a massive effect on the windows load time.
One conclusion that we can take from this is software that makes many, many changes to the system when it installs is going to have a larger effect to windows boot timings. Examples of this were shown by the .NET runtime (both standalone and part of Visual Studio) and the fonts which get scooped up by system services. VMWare Workstation installs a lot of system drivers to emulate hardware properly which also goes a long way to slow down a computer. Furthermore, if that software loads at boot, this is going to have an added knock on effect, shown best by the antivirus programs and the chat clients.
Things That Did Well
Surprisingly, the codecs made little effect. Even the full (everything checked) K-Lite Codec Pack only added a few seconds to the boot time. Quicktime was slower as this installs a load-on-boot tray icon.
The compression utilities all did very well considering that all of them add about thirty extension associations and add explorer context menus. I think this shows that they're both fairly lightweight and you shouldn't be too concearned over applications which install them.
BitDefender was another suprise. I've heard a lot of mixed things about it since I started the testing but it certainly uses the fewest resource on boot. This could mean a couple of things: Either its incredibly efficient or its a very lazy protection scheme that doesnt protect your computer all the time.
Final Words...
In closing, just be careful over what you install. If you need a font for something, you only need to open it in the Windows font browser and it should become available in your application until you close the font browser. Installing and forgetting about fonts is a very easy way to slowly degenerate your boot times. If you can avoid them, don't install an antivirus program (especially not Norton). That's not perfect advice for everyone, but if you've got an oodle of web-smarts, you should be able to spot what's bad and what's ok.
One thing not covered by this test (for sheer time purposes)is what happens when you uninstall the software. It's well known that applications junk the registry with crap long after they've gone so be aware that the only way to get some of that performance back from a bad application may be to do a clean install of Windows.
Another was drivers. Drivers are known to increase the boot time (as VMWare displays) but are completely impossible to demonstrate on a testing system like this. If I did the tests again with a whole PC and different hardware, this would be more a test of hardware than software. If you want to know how drivers perform, read the hardware reviews.
Pages
- Introduction
- The Offending Software
- Results and Conclusions
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