Does win 7 get sluggish after a while?

[thedynamics]

I noticed start times and all around snappiness has gotten sluggish over time. I've been on the same install for almost 2 years

I clean her and check for viruses around twice a month

All drivers are up to date to.

Is it time for a fresh win 7 install?

I'd really like to avoid it..nothing irks me more than having to reinstall software and set everything up again.

 

[iroc409]

I've never really noticed this issue with Windows 7. All previous versions of Windows definitely (except maybe Vista).

 

[pxc]

If you have a mechanical hard drive, fragmentation or simply just the partition filling up can slow down data access. I wouldn't reinstall since that's not really a problem with Windows itself.

You can of course remove any extraneous programs, particularly ones which add startup items or services. Free up as much partition space as possible and run a defrag.

Maybe I'm one of the strange people who never felt the need reinstall, or experienced sluggishness with an aging OS. Not even in the XP days.

 

[Coldblackice]

I noticed start times and all around snappiness has gotten sluggish over time. I've been on the same install for almost 2 years

I clean her and check for viruses around twice a month

All drivers are up to date to.

Is it time for a fresh win 7 install?

I'd really like to avoid it..nothing irks me more than having to reinstall software and set everything up again.

I wouldn't. I used to reformat every six months or so, until I discovered that it just isn't necessary anymore from Windows 7-onward (at least, as far as doing it for just general speedup/maintenance). I haven't reformatted in almost 3 years, and my startup is still as snappy as ever.

The clincher: Startup programs and services (and those running in background).

You need to use a utility to see everything that's starting up and being run in the background, choking your machine. I wager this is what the culprit is. A free tool that expansively shows anything/everything that's starting up, organized into startup locations and methods:

Autoruns
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

CCleaner also has a startup-manager. Revo Uninstaller also has one. I actually use the Revo Uninstaller autoruns manager as my main go-to manager, and I'll check to see what all is starting up every couple weeks. There is nearly ALWAYS some new "rogue" program or service that's been snuck in there, and pretty much always from "official" software -- e.g., Skype injecting its startup garbage whether it was unselected or not on install, iTunes starting up multiple "helper" services, updater services (like Adobe's multiple ones) etc.

So try that first -- use an autorun manager, uncheck the bulk of non-OS programs and services starting up, and see if that makes any difference.

Other ideas:

1. Do full malware/virus scans in safemode (scan for rootkits with a rootkit scanner in safemode, as well).
2. Open up Task Manager, sort by CPU usage, and see if there's anything slurping CPU or spiking unusually. Click on the Performance tab and look at CPU usage and memory levels. Note anything maxing out or unusual. Could be that you're running up against resource limits somewhere, like memory/CPU/disk usage.
3. Also in Task Manager, under the Performance tab, click on "Resource Monitor" at the bottom (also accessible via Start menu). Go through the tabs and note any high resource consumption. e.g., on the "Disk" tab, sort each section by "Total" usage, descending. Note any programs that are abnormally or excessively reading/writing to disk (particularly writing)
4. Possible driver issues. Uninstall and update critical drivers, like your SATA/RAID controller and graphics drivers.
5. Possible hardware issues.

-Are you using an SSD? Does it have TRIM capability, and is it properly TRIMing your drive? Do you have at least ~10% of free (or unpartitioned) space on your SSD?
-Test your memory on boot with Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/)
-Miscellaneous hardware -- disconnect peripheral devices like webcams, etc.

6. Try out "Process Lasso" (http://bitsum.com/processlasso/). It's a brilliant program that monitors and manages system resources management through running programs, like an improved CPU/System scheduler, with an ability called "ProBalance" (http://processpriority.com/).

I'm usually wary of utilities like these that "boost" or "tweak" OS-level operations for the better, but this one has actually been very helpful. It'll also help you to diagnose "rogue" programs that are spiking resource usage on an infrequent level -- enough that you likely won't catch it with just a cursory glance of Task Manager -- by showing their average resource-usage over time. And it'll "temper" background-running programs that try to slurp more from the resource-straw than they should.

But use this only after you've diagnosed and tried the above suggestions first. You want to get to any core issues, and not just paint over them.