Wear and tear doesnt slow down a PC?
So why do they over-heat? whats the whirring noise noise the hard disk makes when its spinning? It's a mechanism.
Here's the "Top Five" Reasons A PC Slows down over time.
1. Because like machinery computer parts wear and tear, the electronics and connectors on your hardware parts tarnish and corrode. You can count your prayers and hope that your parts will last another year or so before breaking down. Oftenly the problem parts are the computer processor or the cpu, sometimes it can be your harddrive or disk drive. However the only real solution to this is to replace the parts and often than not you won't even be able to tell if your parts are worn or not, unless you are an expertly trained computer technician.
2. If you had your computer for a while, the exhaust fans and parts of your computer will begin to collect dust. Dust in your computer your processor and video card fans can be a problem. The dust not only slows down the RPM of the fan but it also traps heat, causing your processor and video card to overheat -- which is not good for any electronic parts. Many computer users did not know that computer hardware is especially vulnerable to moisture and end up damaging their computer parts with water or water based solutions. The right way to clean out your fans and parts is with a can of compressed air and patience.
3. Your computer slow downs might just be purely non-physical. Whenever you install a program your computer caches files in different segments so they can access them readily when you want to use them. These cached segments or fragments are misplaced over time and each time you try to access your programs, your computer will try to look for these fragments. The more displaced these fragments are the longer it will take your computer to find them. The most simple method to solving this program is to perform a disk defrag.
You can find this program in all windows operating systems. To access this program simple click on your start menu then select program then accessories then system tools and you will see the disk defragmenter icon. Click on that and you will be well on your way to defragmenting your disk drive. It does take some time though, so grab a cup of coffee and just sit back and relax until the disk defragmenter is done with its voodoo.
4. Spyware and adware can sap your computer performance and cause it to slow down. The solution to this is to download anti-spyware programs that can quickly identify and delete the unwanted spyware and adware programs. Most of the time you will not know that your computer might be infected with spyware so scan your computer frequently.
5. When you computer ever you install a program on your computer it will be saved to your computer windows registry. The registry is essential information that will dictate what tasks these programs perform. When you uninstall a program, most of the time the registry files will be kept. This is the major cause of slow downs, blue screens and errors.
I ought to add of course, that the above points made by everyone else on here are still valid. And cleaning out the registry will absolutely help if its a non-physical problem.
I use "CCleaner" which I think is still freeware.
hth
