Is Second Life slow, or is it just you?

In the past few months or so, Second Life had been getting progressively slower and slower for me every time I went in. So much so that it got to the point where I didn't even want to go in, it was just too much of a bother to fight the sluggish movement and wait for things to rez. And yes, like many do I've mumbled under my breath about the grid needing to be stabilized and performance improved.

However, I had also been noticing that the PC that I run Second Life on has been booting slower, taking a couple minutes to finish loading stuff. Since the thing is a good 3-4 years old, I decided that enough was enough so I backed up my important files and stuff, wrote down configuration settings and a list of what was installed, then I grabbed the disk with the factory image on it and wiped the thing out, going back to the factory image. Then I spent a day reinstalling just the basic bits of software that I use all the time.

Now the machine is booting up quicker, loading web pages faster, and is just nicer to use over all.

Finally, I installed Second Life again, the main viewer.

Oh My Goodness, the first time I logged back in it was WONDERFUL, stuff rezzed quickly, I was able to actually walk, it was like I remember it being when I first logged in.

Yes, I still go places and rubberband while walking (appear to go forward, then jerk back) but in those instances I can actually see from the statistics (ctrl+shift+1) that it is the Sim that's having the problem with Sim FPS and Physics FPS and it's not me.

Lesson learned? If you have a PC that's over a couple years old and has been running all that time without ever being reformatted and everything reinstalled from scratch, seriously consider taking the time to back up your important stuff and doing a fresh install of the operating system and everything, dig out that disk that came with the machine and reset it to the factory default image. Yeah, it'll take a couple days to back everything up and then set everything back up the way you want it, but the benefit is you'll end up with a much better experience on your PC and a much better Second Life experience.