So, before I go reformat...

Well it's never a terrible thing to have a fresh start every few months but if you want to go for the long term there are a few things you can do.

1) Realize that anything that is on your Desktop, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc. (your entire user profile basically) is loaded for quick access in your memory. Start storing too much shit on your Desktop and you'll start seeing a performance drop. Microsoft does this because it's convenient to have this shit load quick for the average consumer who doesn't really care that much about overall performance. Solution: Don't use My Documents or anything in your profile as much as possible. Instead make a folder on your C drive or even an extra drive on your computer if you have one and throw all your shit in there that you'd normally store in My Documents or files you pile on top of your Desktop. Then make a shortcut of that folder and place it on your Desktop. Have anything you save to your Desktop? Throw that crap in the shortcut and voila it's out of sight out of mind.

2) Download CCleaner and clean the fuck out of your machine. Might as well let it clean your registry while your at it.

3) Get rid of any of those fucking retarded Internet Tool Bars you may have installed. Fuck that shit. Uninstall it. If it keeps popping up then get something like Malwarebytes Antimalware, run it, and get rid of that shit.

4) Defrag your harddrive. My recommendation is PerfectDisk. It has a nice option to do offline defragging of your pagefile and other stuff that you can't get at while your operating system is running.

5) Make sure you have a decent amount of space available on your system drive. If that drive gets full then you'll start seeing all kind of quirks popping up. Keep your system healthy, yo.


If all that fails you then yeah I guess you might as well back up your files and start from scratch. It's not a bad thing. Clean is good. Just keep these things in mind next go around.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

My main HD is actually half-full (it's a 500GB SATA) which surprised me.

It's always good to keep at least around 30 to 15 percent of your system drive free. Thing is if you go too low then your harddrive has a harder time keeping healthy even if you defrag. Btw, go torrent the shit out of PerfectDisk. Its offline defragging and smartplacement technology are excellent.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

Most of that is in my music collection, which IS in my My Documents > My Music folder (thanks iTunes). All my pictures are in My Documents too. I don't mind moving all my music and pictures out of there if you think it's a good idea.

Yeah, go ahead and do it. And even if it doesn't manage to affect overall performance it should at the least get your machine to boot and get raring to go a bit quicker since the memory dedicated to operating system fun times doesn't have to keep track of so much stuff. I mean it was a good idea back in Windows 95, but nowadays it's just a waste of memory.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

Question though: my Games folder on my desktop isn't a shortcut to a folder on my main drive, it's a folder full of shortcuts. Should I change it to how you explained it, or is it fine the way it is?

A folder full of shortcuts is fine because that takes up like no memory footprint. But if you want to be fancy move that folder to your C drive and then make a shortcut to it on your Desktop. Then you can give it a dandy little shortcut icon when you right click and go to its properties~

And by the way my grievances and points were just made in general. I had no idea if your machine was treated like a trashheap or not when I wrote my post. They're just tips.

There's nowhere I can't reach.