On 13/12/2011 2:58 AM, David Brown wrote:
Maybe there is some sort of indexing service or "desktop search" running
that gets slower as it deals with more files? And by using up more I/O
bandwidth and cache memory, it could slow down the rest of the system.
The same goes for other background tasks that might be running, such as
defragging or scheduled malware scans.

Yeah that's true, there is a desktop search feature built into Windows
(it's very visible in Windows 7, but it has been around since XP). It
could conceivably get slower with the more files it indexes.

Here's some tips about improving search indexing:

Improve Windows searches using the index: frequently asked questions
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/w...sked-questions

Here's some general tips about optimizing Windows 7 performance:

Optimize Windows 7 for better performance
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...er-performance