Having optimization goals and knowing what optimization
will accomplish for you are good starting points, but it’s also important
to know where the sources of optimization problems lie. Sometimes,
the source of a problem isn’t apparent, or you might pass it by without
really understanding that the resource is having problems. Part of
the problem is that Windows is all too willing to gobble resources
behind the scenes, making it impossible to know whether that hard
drive problem is really your fault. For example, Windows will often
grow the page file (the area on the hard drive that acts as virtual
memory) to fulfill memory requirements. Because there isn’t a big
sign saying that Windows has performed this task, you might suddenly
find yourself without the hard drive space required to store a download.
The following sections discuss the three most common sources of grime
in your system.