Speed up Windows 7 - Discussion

[Ian]

Please leave any feedback about the Speed up Windows 7 article in this thread.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Nice article Ian.

I thought that was a pretty good summary of all the things that will help speed up Windows 7.

 

[Veedaz]

Very good Article Ian :top:

Just a note: if your Windows 7 boot drive is SSD you may not have the option of Ready Boost >

 

[toddos]

Most of the tips are decent, but you ruined the whole thing when you suggested turning off Search Indexing. That's the worst idea ever. If you really believe it's a problem -- and it's not unless you're constantly adding large files to the indexed directories -- you can modify the indexed locations to limit it to just program files. Otherwise, you lose all of the power of the Start menu.

 

[Ian]

Most of the tips are decent, but you ruined the whole thing when you suggested turning off Search Indexing. That's the worst idea ever. If you really believe it's a problem -- and it's not unless you're constantly adding large files to the indexed directories -- you can modify the indexed locations to limit it to just program files. Otherwise, you lose all of the power of the Start menu.

I agree that it's a bad idea to do this in most cases - perhaps I should make this more explicit within the article. I'll edit it now to make it clearer that the start search will also be affected. I mentioned that it was only suitable for those that don't perform many searches, as some people want to gain every ounce of extra power that they can.

Welcome to the forums toddos

 

[davehc]

The search facility could easily lead into a thread of it's own. My own opinion is that it is singuarly the worst new feature of Vista/7. I admit to being a user who does not find a need to be constantly searching. Up to a point, I know where what I need is situated. The loss of the mentioned "Power" of the Start menu does not affect my way of operating to any marked degree. I have my programs categorised into groups and it is , at most, two mouse clicks to open anything. Frankly, in my case, I would probably forget the exact names of anything, if it was a matter of typing them into the start box.
For my search? Well, if you disable the search facility, as I do on every reinstall, then it reverts back to the normal search pattern. However, I have turned to third party search facilities which are, mostly, more efficient. See my post here for one such:

https://www.w7forums.com/text-based-search-windows-7-doggy-friendly-t3436.html

 

[toddos]

The search facility could easily lead into a thread of it's own. My own opinion is that it is singuarly the worst new feature of Vista/7. I admit to being a user who does not find a need to be constantly searching. Up to a point, I know where what I need is situated. The loss of the mentioned "Power" of the Start menu does not affect my way of operating to any marked degree. I have my programs categorised into groups and it is , at most, two mouse clicks to open anything. Frankly, in my case, I would probably forget the exact names of anything, if it was a matter of typing them into the start box.
For my search? Well, if you disable the search facility, as I do on every reinstall, then it reverts back to the normal search pattern. However, I have turned to third party search facilities which are, mostly, more efficient. See my post here for one such:

https://www.w7forums.com/text-based-search-windows-7-doggy-friendly-t3436.html

I guess it depends on how you use the system. I'm a big fan of using the keyboard whenever possible, so it's much easier for me to hit the windows key to bring up the start menu and then start typing the first couple letters of what I want than it is to mouse around the menu. As an example, I can type windows key + mou + enter and open the mouse control panel faster than you can even open the control panel menu.

Similarly, I pin my frequently used apps to the taskbar so I can quickly open/switch to them with winkey+<number>, where <number> is the icon's position. Like the old quick launch toolbar, but even more powerful because it will bring up running instances of the app (if you want a new instance, just do winkey+shift+<number>).

I'd go so far as to say that most true power users (whatever that means) use keyboard shortcuts extensively, and intentionally limiting that by turning off search is a disservice. Besides, as I mentioned before, the search indexing has pretty much 0 cost unless you have constantly changing files. Indexing is much better than it was in XP (to be fair, it was also really good in Vista, though I wouldn't expect anybody to say anything nice about that OS ). If you'd like to see what little work the search indexer is actually doing, I'd suggest installing this search indexer gadget. That shows you how many files are already indexed, how many files are waiting to be indexed, and if indexing is done or not. When indexing is up to date, the indexer is obviously not doing anything so it isn't contributing any load to your machine.

 

[davehc]

Well yes. There are certainly two sides to this, as can be well read on the web.
"true power users (whatever that means)"
LOL - I,m with you! But I must say, from my own perspectve (I think I may be one of those). I prefer to use a GUI as just that. On top of being an extremely poor typer (as some members may have noticed) My hand rarely strays from the mouse. One click or, at most, two clicks gets me to most of the favoured places
.
"When indexing is up to date, the indexer is obviously not doing anything so it isn't contributing any load to your machine."

Not sure about that. Indexing is reindexing whenever there is a change in the overall environment. I cannot browse to anything substantive on this, but you will find that many users, experienced or otherwise, are disabling the search facility.
The previously unknown hard disk activity, which many complain about, is often narrowed down to this function.

 

[toddos]

... you will find that many users, experienced or otherwise, are disabling the search facility.

Just because they're doing it doesn't mean they're right.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Guys this article was written to show the different ways that Windows 7 performance could be increased. If you step back and look at all the steps, something is being disabled or cleaned up to allow for more performance else where. Some may argue that all these things are needed and should not be disabled.

I for one would rarely use the search features and find that I do not need it running in the background. It is not clear as to how many would use this feature. The idea of this article is not to lead you into shutting down all feature but to show what can be done to increase performance. It is your choice in what you want disabled.

 

[Kalario]

Well said Clifford. :beer:

 

[davehc]

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!

 

[Gigi]

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!

 

[marsmimar]

Make Sure Win7 Recognize All Your Processors

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.

 

[Fire cat]

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

 

[trevorsg]

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:

start c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

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.

 

[Ian]

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:

start c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

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.

 

[amaltom61]

Removing unwanted fonts can decrease boot time,ram usage and increase performance.
Fontfrenzy is a good application for font management
I am not providing a link because fontfrenzy dosesn't have a website

You could add this too to your list