I've come to notice from using the same XP install for over a year that operations start to become noticably slow after several months. I found that creating a new user account resolved this problem twice, so I'm led to believe that data is being accumulated throughout the lifetime of the user account and XP iterates over it during certain operations like invoking a program or popping a menu (especially the start menu, but some context menus as well).

Does anyone know the exact nature of this situation and if so, a way to remedy it that doesn't involve deleting the user profile and creating a new one. I'm using SP1 with all of the hotfixes released before SP2. I have no interest in installing SP2 unless there is a significant reason to do so (such as a major security hole, which I haven't seen news of yet).

All information appreciated.

Computers are like automobiles they need maintenance.
-Clean I.E cache
-delete old e-mails ,unused programs ,etc.
-Defragment your H.D.
-Scan for Virus,Trojans, etc.
Adding a new user is really just adding more files to your machine that are redundant if you are still the only user.This only delays the inevitable.

I've done this trick to to hold out from a re-install for a few months.

What I've found out is when you install a lot of software that was not designed natively to support 2000/XP multi-profile, it will install a lot of specific files, config files, prefrences to that profile only.

Over time this builds up like any many installs / un-installs and causes windows to slow down.

By changing the profile you start with a psudo-clean and does not contain a lot of junk installed by software.

That's what I've observed.

Hive information does accumulate, in various places. A registry defragmentation and a registry cleaning may help you, along with checking to make sure that any old applications have not left old library files behind. OnTrack's FixIt registry sweep will do a fairly nice job of removing old/unneccessary registry entries and allow you to defrag the registry in XP.