
Just about every piece of software you use interacts with the registry. This is a file that stores thousands of bits of information and links to various files in Windows. One of the prime locations for this junk is the Windows Registry. This junk seems to build up to the point where it takes more and more time for applications to load. This slow-down, as far as I can tell, is due to junk that makes its way on to your machine as part of the many software installs/uninstalls/upgrades/patches that are part of what it means to run Windows.



Kind of like a car's engine except you'd think an operating, without any moving parts, wouldn't degrade. It seems to me that the performance of Windows-based machines decreases over time.
