Speed up Windows 7 - Discussion

Well said Clifford.

Guilty as charged! Unfortunately, I did not think loddos' first post could go unchallenged, bearing in mind the thread title, and was supporting Ian's follow up. It lead into other areas. I,m out of this thread!

Hi All,

It will be more helpful if those summarized tips are with details.
Sorry guys, I am new and learning so I prefer basic instructions.
Thanks for the help!

Some folks will argue that this tweak is unnecessary because Win7 automatically recognizes how many processor cores your system has at boot-up. However, it's worth checking it out just to make sure. I have a dual core processor but msconfig was set to only one processor.

Click start > type msconfig > click msconfig.exe > Boot tab > Advanced Options. Make sure the box next to "Number of processors" is checked and then make sure to select how many processors your machine has.

If Win7 is supposed to automatically enable all your processors, why does this option even exist? According to Microsoft reps who have posted in various online forums, it's there to LIMIT the number of processors during boot-up to troubleshoot certain hardware or software problems. But if your machine is set to one processor as mine was (for some unknown, inexplicable reason) then you might see a fairly significant decrease in boot time. My machine had an 11 second gain. Your mileage might vary.

You can also open Task Manager > Performance tab and see how many graphs are showing for CPU Usage History. If you have a quad-core (for example) you should see four graphs. Anything less and msconfig has limited your processors at boot-up.

Hey Guys!
Good list Ian!
I would just like to suggest a software that works very well, in the Defrag/Clean section: CCleaner and Defragler, by Piriform Ltd.
These softwares will find ALL the old files and Fragmented files on your PC and cleans it really fast (2GB in 30s).

They're both free and are composed of a Uninstall.exe, CCleaner/Defraggler.exe and a Link to the website.
So that makes it very portable.

CCleaner can also check for Regestry errors and fix them.

Hope this helps,

Fire Cat

You can always auto-login even if you want your computer to be locked at startup. Just create a .bat file that has the following:
And add it as a user-level startup program. This will lock your screen as soon as you "auto-login", so no time is wasted waiting for you to enter your password before logging in.

A very interesting idea! I may try this on my own machine, as I'm the only user on it - it's simply locked to prevent anyone tampering when I'm away from it.