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Windows 7 is specially engineered for speed. It is built to
be fast. Faster than any of its preceding Windows
Operating Systems.
If you are looking for a little extra speed and a
performance, please follow through this guide to get
Windows 7 to turbo speed! This guide can really get you
the performance and speed up to where you want it.
1. Disable Any Unneeded Visual Effects
To begin right-click on the Computer icon on your Desktop
and select “Properties” from the menu that appears.
Select “Advanced System Settings” from the left pane to view
the System Properties Window.
Click the “Advanced” tab along the top of that window, and
then click “Settings” listed under “Performance”. Select
“Custom:” options from there.
In that window uncheck all the options and make sure that
only the last 4 options are checked, and the one Show
thumbnails instead of icons (8th from the
bottom)
Lastly, log off of your system and log back in for changes
to take effect.
Turning off the aero effects in Windows 7 is a good start
but you get even better results when you turn off many of
the other unwanted visual effects.
2. Turn off the User Account Control (UAC) Feature
Open the Control Panel and select “User Accounts and Family
Safety” then “User Account”.
Select the User Account Control Settings link.
Simply click-and-drag the slider until it reaches “Never
Notify”.
Click “OK” and restart your computer for changes to take
effect.
The UAC feature in Windows 7 is found annoying by many users
especially those that are daily users of their computer.
3. Disable Search Indexing Feature
Right-click the Computer icon on your Desktop and select
“Manage” from the menu that appears.
Select “Services and Applications” from the Computer
Management Window and click “Services”.
You will then see a list of services available – locate the
Windows Search on that screen.
Right-click “Windows Search” from that list and click
“Properties”.
The Windows Search Properties window will appear.
Select “Disabled” from the drop-down menu for Start-up Type.
Click “Apply” and “OK”.
Now the start-up feature for Search Indexing in Windows 7
has been disabled.
The Windows 7 Search Indexing feature was created so that
the computer would keep records of the files that have
previously been searched so items can be located quicker
the next time you search them. This feature is really only
useful if search for things very frequently and need them
searched as fast as possible on your system after
repeatedly requesting a search on that item.
If you only occasionally perform a system search for files,
downloads, etc. then the Search Index Feature, especially
when selected to run at system start-up can eat away at
memory and system resources without you even knowing it’s
running.
If you would like to disable the Search Indexing Feature all
together in Windows 7 you can by setting the Search
Indexing Service to “Manual”. That is along with following
the above steps under Disable Search Indexing Feature.
4. Disable Unwanted Services
A lot of the features and services offered with Windows 7
operating systems are not necessary for everyday use.
There are some; however, that are necessary and not safe
to be turned off or disabled. But things like the Print
Spooler are only needed when printed a document or
picture. This is something that you can safely turn off on
a regular basis and then turn on when going to print
something. Below are 10 more things in Windows 7 that you
can safely disable.
Secondary Logon
Windows Error Reporting Service
Desktop Window Session Manager (leave on if you want aero
effects)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Distributing Link Tracking Client
Offline Files
Diagnostic Policy Service
Protected Storage
IP Helper
Application Experience
Without these always running you can really improve the
speed on your Windows 7 system.
5. Set Up the Ready Boost Service (You may skip this one
if you like as you may not have this kind of drive)
You will need a USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive
that is Ready Boost compatible in order to configure the
Ready Boost feature.
After inserting the USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive
open it by going to Computer and right-click it and select
“Ready Boost” from the options
Check the “Use this Device” checkbox.
You can choose how much space on your USB/Highspeed
Flash/Pendrive you would like used as RAM
Windows 7 offers the Ready Boost feature so
that you can use your USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive as
extra RAM. This one step improves the speed and
performance by a good margin.
6. Disable the Sidebar
Right-click on the sidebar and click “Properties” from the
menu.
When the Properties window appears uncheck the box that says
“Start Sidebar when Windows Starts”.
Now the sidebar will not appear when you start your computer
or log in to Windows. Disabling this feature will not only
make your computer run faster in general but it will get
you to a fast startup.
7. Turn off the Thumbnail Preview Feature
Open your Computer and select the “Organize” drop-down menu
to select “Folder and Search Options”
In the Files and Folders section select the View tab and
check the box showing “Always Show Icons, Never
Thumbnails”.
Displaying thumbnails of folders rather than icons can take
up more space and time than just icons. So turning off the
thumbnail preview option saves you both!
8. Disable the Aero Theme
Right-click any space on your Desktop and select
“Personalize” from the menu that appears
Open the Window Colour tab.
Uncheck the box that says “Enable Transparency” and then
select “Open Classic Appearance Properties for More
Options”
A new window will appear, select a Standard or Basic theme
from it. (Standard Windows 7 theme is a good choice)
If you are looking for aesthetics rather than performance
you can keep the aero user interface. While it obviously
adds lustre to the appearance of things it also takes up a
lot of space on the graphics and video cards. You can
check this out yourself by viewing its memory consumption
when aero theme is both on and off to see the difference.
9. Disable Aero Peek and Aero Snap
Go to your Control Panel of Windows 7 and double-click the
“Ease of Access Centre” icon.
Select “Make It Easier to Focus on Tasks” listed near the
bottom.
Uncheck the box that says “Prevent Windows from being
automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the
screen”.
Right-click on the Windows 7 taskbar and click “Properties”
from the menu that appears.
Lastly, uncheck the box that says “User Aero Peek to Preview
the Desktop”.
Windows 7 has these new features designed to do things you
already did in XP and Vista just in new ways. Aero Snap
allows you to Maximize, Minimize and Resize your windows
simply by dragging-and-dropping at screen corners.
Aero Peek is pretty much the same as the “Show Desktop” icon
from Windows XP and Windows Vista. It hides all of your
windows to show a clean desktop and icons.
10. Disable Password Protection
Users that set up passwords to access their account in
Windows 7 spend a few seconds every time they start up or
log in to enter that password. If you are the only person
who uses your computer my opinion is that you don’t really
need this feature. I opt for getting on my account
quickly. When I previously had a password set and someone
wanted on my computer I would just give out the password
anyway so it was completely useless and took extra time to
log in every day.
11. Disable Unwanted Start-up Items
Open the Windows button and type “msconfig” in the Run
option of the start menu and press Enter.
This opens the System Configuration Utility window.
Select the Start-up tab and uncheck all items that you do
not need to run automatically when the computer starts up.
This can drastically improve start-up time and even running
time if you have had a lot of things running when your
computer starts. This often happens automatically when
several things have been downloaded and installed onto
your computer.
12. Change your Power Plan to Maximum Performance
Open your Control Panel and double-click the “Power Options”
icon.
Scroll down to see the Show Additional Plans option and
select “High Performance” power plan to activate it.
Further tweaking can be done to this by selecting the
Advanced Settings.
13. Turn off Unwanted Windows 7 Features
Open your Control Panel and select “Programs and Features”.
Select the “Turn Windows features On or Off” from the left
panel.
Uncheck all of the features that you do not use.
Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
There are several features that Windows 7 offers that many
users don’t need or use often so by disabling them you are
making more room for running time on things you do use
frequently.
14. Disable the Screen Saver and Wallpaper
Right-click any blank space on your Desktop and select
“Personalize” from the menu that appears
Select the Screen Saver link.
From the Screen Saver drop-down menu select “None” then
select “Apply” then “OK”.
Next click “Desktop Background”.
From the Location drop-down menu select “Solid Colours” pick
a colour and click “OK”.
It takes up memory to display wallpaper and screen savers
and more memory means faster computer.
15. Disable Unwanted System Sounds (Opptional)
Open the Start Menu, then Accessories and
type “mmsys.cpl” in the Run option.
Locate the Sounds tab.
Under “Sound Schemes” then choose “No Sounds”,
click “Apply”, click “OK”.
Optionally, you can keep some of your
favourite sounds turned on and select which sounds to
disable, but keep in mind that sounds played during
start-up, shutdown, logon, etc. take away from performance
that could be utilized better elsewhere.
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