8.1 speed issues

[William D. Colburn (Schlake)]

So I've just upgraded from whatever was stable in 2004 to 8.1 (it's a
private file server in my house, I pay no attention to it until it
crashes), and uh, the speed difference is very noticeable.  In short,
it's like I bought a brand new machine that eleven times as fast when
all I did was upgrade the OS.  How on earth did you guys make such a
dramatic improvement?

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-- Schlake