What Really Slows Windows Down

Here's the table of results for all three sections ranked by their overall performance degradation. The control times where:

• Boot Time: 70 seconds
• Prime: 26 seconds
• FileIO: 25seconds

Software	% Boot Delay	% Prime Delay	% FileIO Delay
Norton Internet Security 2006	46	20	2369
McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8	7	20	2246
Norton Internet Security 2007	45	8	1515
Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006	2	0	1288
ZoneAlarm ISS	16	0	992
Norton Antivirus 2002	11	8	658
Windows Live OneCare	11	8	512
Webroot Spy Sweeper	6	8	369
Nod32 v2.5	7	8	177
avast! 4.7 Home	4	8	115
Windows Defender	5	8	54
Panda Antivirus 2007	20	4	15
AVG 7.1 Free	15	0	19
Internet Explorer 7 RC1	14	4	0
Windows Media Player 11	10	0	8
iTunes 7 (with QuickTime)	5	8	4
ZoneAlarm Free	4	4	8
Nero 7.5.1.1 Premium	10	4	0
Windows Media Player 10	5	0	8
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.8	4	4	4
Miranda IM 0.5.1	2	8	0
Winamp 5.24 Full	2	4	4
Real Player 10.5	2	4	4
Skype 2.5.0.141	5	4	0
Daemon Tools	4	4	0
Alcohol 120% 1.9	5	0	0
Opera 9.01	2	0	0
VLC Player 0.8.5	2	0	0
AdAware	1	0	0
Maxthon 1.5.6 (IE6)	1	0	0
Zoomplayer 4.5.1	1	0	0
Firefox 1.5.0.7	1	0	0
CDBurnerXP Pro 3.0.116	1	0	0
Foxit PDF Reader 2	0	0	0
Xchat 2.6.7a	0	0	0
5000 images in My Photos	0	0	0
mIRC	0	0	0
Black Viper's Services Tweaks	-4	0	0

Boot Delay

The boot delays were quite a lot smaller than last time, likely to be attributable to VMWare having a better grasp on its file system than Virtual PC, but the same names were at the top of this test.

Prime Delay

I wasn't expecting too much of a result from here. The prime delays would have come on systems where there were applications hogging resources.

FileIO Delay

The only applications this was going to affect were the system-monitors; those applications that require 100% attention on the file system, namely the security products.

Source :-- http://www.thepcspy.com

Source Site could give you more information