Anyone that has a computer for 3 or more years, eventually faces the day that their beloved computer no longer performs they way they once remembered. If you have experienced this, I call it the ‘Broken Windows Syndrome’. If you are fortunate to have not experienced this problem, don’t hold your breath, it will soon happen to your computer. The problem is inevitable to anyone that uses their computer on the internet or install applications.

I have been studying computer performance problems on home and business consumer computers for the past 8 years. It is easy to come to the conclusion that the problem is caused by the computer users or installed applications and is usually blamed on by the kids of the household. Even myself for years came to the conclusion that performance problems are related to the amount of problems that are installed and computer use practices. Although this can be the cause of computer performance problems it is not 100% of the equation.

Before this article the most common causes for computer problems were:

1.)      Left over components from Installed and Uninstalled Applications.

2.)      The number of programs running and occupying memory.

3.)      Virus, Trojans, spyware, adware, malware, and worms.

4.)      Poorly written computer code of installed applications from store purchased or downloaded programs. Commonly known to cause memory holes, which causes the program to occupy memory space even after the program has been closed.

5.)      Computer hardware requirements below the required applications requirements.

6.)      Installed web browser add-ons, objects, and plug-ins.

7.)      Incompatible and conflicting applications and/or drivers.

8.)      How the user uses the computer.
a.) multitasking – running multiple applications at the same time, in turn reducing the available memory and CPU
b.) incorrect or improper application use - trying to use MS Paint to edit a 20mb picture or using Microsoft Word to create a content or multimedia extreme web page)
c.) impatient – trying to launch a slow application server times to get it to respond or doing a hard computer shutdown when it is absolutely not necessary.

With the long list of items that could potentially cause your computer performance problems it is a no wonder why performance problems can be some of the hardest problems to resolve. Some performance problems are very obvious such as computer worms or viruses. Unfortunately most computer problems are not caused by just one thing, but a accumulation of multiple problems. As the computer problems accumulate the harder it gets to resolve and in 30% of the cases the performance problems become unsolvable.

When computer performance problems become unsolvable the computer owner needs to  very careful on what action they take at the local or online computer store. I have seen many people get sold a bill of good for unnecessary computer hardware or even replacing their computer needlessly. The integrity of the technical advice you receive can make the difference of making a misinformed or wise decision.

There are some factors that contribute to computer performance problems that most computer owners and computer technicians have overlooked. After experiencing performance problems myself, I decided to eliminate all known contributing factors. I setup a computer loaded with only Windows XP Professional, Office XP Professional, , and Adobe Acrobat. I did not load any third party drivers, but let Windows use the drivers it found at setup. This computer was connected to the internet through a Netscreen firewall with it on antivirus checking and the computer was set to automatically install Windows updates. There were only 2 web sites that the web browser went to and that was to manually run Windows Updates and Office updates, which was to eliminate the potential of add-ons from being