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Thread: How to Optimize Windows 7

  1. #1
    Over 75 Custom PC's in 20 years TheGreatSatan's Avatar
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    Default How to Optimize Windows 7

    1

    Right click the recycle bin and choose properties. Change the amount of space dedicated
    to trash only. Multiple gigs of just trash seems awfully wasteful to me, so I keep it at
    50MB for each drive.

    THEN

    At the bottom uncheck "Display Delete Confirmation Dialog"

    No more "Are you sure your want to delete?" messages will bug you.



    2

    Delete all icons you never use. Quicktime and Adobe always give you an icon you may never
    directly click on. Remember, if the icon has a little arrow next to it that means it's a shortcut
    and CAN be deleted. You don't have to delete it, but you can.

    3

    Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows Features on or off. Then uncheck:
    • Tablet PC Components
    • Remote Differential Compression
    • Click the plus sign next to Games to expand it. Disable things you will never use anyway.
      I will never want to play Solitaire or Hearts or any other card game, so I uncheck them all.
    • Under the Print and document services, you can disable items that you may also never
      use. My Netbook will never have a printer connected to it, so I don’t need any of
      these services.



    When you are done select OK

    Restart later

    4

    Right click the desktop and choose Personalize
    At the bottom click “Window Color” – at the bottom, again, choose Advanced Appearance
    settings

    Select the drop down arrow next to item and select “Border Padding”. Change this number
    from 4 to Zero

    Next, change Icon spacing to 36 in the Vertical and Horizontal option. This will cut the space
    between icons and give you a little more desktop space to work with.

    Lastly, select Icon and click the Bold button.



    Click OK to apply and close this box.

    5

    Start button - Run - type "msconfig" without quotes - select the Startup tab - Uncheck all
    unneeded items - Click Apply

    THEN

    Under the Services tab, at the bottom check “Hide all Microsoft Services”. Now select
    everything that doesn’t need to be running at startup such as QuickTime, Office and
    Windows Media Player.

    THEN

    Click the Boot tab – Change the Timeout from 30 seconds to 3 seconds. You can even
    disable the GUI (Graphic User Interface) from here. That would get rid of the scroll bar
    at startup or the animation that show W7 is loading. I didn't notice a speed improvement
    here, just a longer black screen before the desktop. I imagine if you have very little RAM
    this would help you.

    THEN

    Select Advanced Options - Put a check in the box 'Number of Processors' - Select the pull
    down menu and choose the number of cores onboard (2 for dual core, 4 for Quad core)



    Hit OK twice and restart later.

    6

    Right Click the Start Button



    Select properties - Under Privacy, uncheck both boxes - click OK

    7

    Right Click 'Computer' - choose Properties - On left side choose Advanced System Settings
    The Advanced Tab will be displayed, under Performance choose Settings - Under the Visual
    Effects Tab choose 'Best Performance' – Then select the following:



    This will keep those things that make Windows 7 pretty, but still squeeze a few milliseconds
    out of it. You can also check Transparent glass, but it annoys me in some instances.

    Click Apply.

    THEN

    Click the Advanced Tab - Under Virtual Memory click 'Change' - Uncheck 'Automatically
    manage....' - Click Custom Size - In the Initial Size block enter the amount of RAM actually
    present (2GB = 2048) - In the Maximum Size block enter double of the first amount
    (4GB = 4096) - Click 'Set', then OK



    Restart later

    8

    Click on the Windows Start button and type "regedit" without the quotes into the 'Search
    programs and files' box. Click on the expandable arrow next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
    Expand the Control Panel folder, and then click directly on the Desktop folder. In
    the right pane, look for and double click MenuShowDelay. Change the value from
    whatever it is to 100. This figure represents the milliseconds of delay between your
    click and a menu's display.

    Close the screen.

    9

    Click the start menu, then click on your name to open your personal folder.
    On the left side choose Libraries. Open the Pictures, Music, and Videos separately
    and delete all the samples.



    10

    Go to Computer, and right click your hard drive. Select Properties. Uncheck both boxes
    at the bottom for indexing and hard drive compression. When asked, apply settings to
    the drive only and NOT files and folders.



    Now you can Restart
    Last edited by TheGreatSatan; 02-23-2010 at 02:29 PM.
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  2. #2
    Will YOU be ready when the zombies rise? x88x's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    Nice, I actually didn't know about some of these.

    One thing I would add; if you have 8GB+ of RAM, disabling Virtual memory will give you a slight boost. You almost never would have hit it, and this saves Windows having to manage it.
    That we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
    --Benjamin Franklin
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  3. #3
    Resident 100HP water-cannon operator SXRguyinMA's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    nice thanks! +rep

  4. #4
    rawrnomnom diluzio91's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    that helped the speed noticeably on my pc! +rep

  5. #5
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    one question. how do you stop certain programs from asking if you really want to do what ever you just clicked? for example, i still want to have win 7 give me the "do you want this to happen" dialog box, but i want to disable it for certain programs that i click often, such as cpu-z. how do i tell it to use the same response always?

  6. #6
    Its not cool till its watercooled. Fuganater's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    Great write up. I will do some of these to my new build and laptop.

    Quote Originally Posted by xr4man View Post
    one question. how do you stop certain programs from asking if you really want to do what ever you just clicked? for example, i still want to have win 7 give me the "do you want this to happen" dialog box, but i want to disable it for certain programs that i click often, such as cpu-z. how do i tell it to use the same response always?
    Enable your built in Administrator Account. When I install Vista/7, I make my user name like "temp" or something random. Then I enable the Admin account, rename it to my name, and delete the "temp" account. This solves alot of problems including the "Do you really want this to happen" dialog.

  7. #7
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    hmm, i don't really want to do that though. it's for my mother's computer and i'd rather not give her total uninhibited admin rights.

    basically, i just want to tell it not to ask when she starts up word perfect.

  8. #8
    Its not cool till its watercooled. Fuganater's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    I know in Vista you can disable UAC... not 100% sure but try looking for that in the control pannel.

  9. #9
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    okie dokie.

  10. #10
    Will YOU be ready when the zombies rise? x88x's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to Optimize Windows 7

    Windows 7 added several levels of UAC interaction (accessible through the user account profile settings), but unfortunately I don't think there's an option to 'always allow [x] program'.
    That we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
    --Benjamin Franklin
    TBCS 5TB Club :: coilgun :: bench PSU :: mightyMite :: Zeus :: E15 Magna EV

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