Speed Up Windows 7 – Ultimate Guide To Make Windows 7 Blazing Fast!!!

Windows 7 is Engineered for speed. Special attention has been given by the Windows team for making Windows 7 faster than the previous operating systems. Windows 7 is much faster than Windows Vista, but even then most of us don’t get satisfied with it. There are many who still have their old PC. Installing Windows 7 on them wont be as soothing as they would work with XP and Even with latest hardware’s installed some users are still avaricious  for more performance. We could optimize Windows 7 to the maximum possible extent to squeeze out extra performance from it. So, for all the extra performance lovers, here is the Ultimate Guide To Speed Up Windows 7
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I can guarantee you that after following this guide and implementing the listed recommendations on your PC, you’d definitely experience some performance gain.

The bare Minimum Requirements You need To Run Windows 7

1) 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
2) 1GB of main memory
3) 16GB of available disk space
4) Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface)
5) A DVD – R/W drive

Even if you don’t have own a DX 9 capable graphics card its okay, because our target is performance and not the ” Eyecandy “. But if you need the aero experience, you’d definitely need a powerful graphics card.

If you’re on windows 8, check out our exclusive guide to

The Best Tweaks & Software’s To Speed Up Windows 8

So, lets start The Ultimate Guide to Speed up Windows 7

• Disabling the Search Indexing Feature in Windows 7

  • Right Click the “Computer” Icon in the desktop and select “Manage”.
  • Click “Services and Applications” in the “Computer Management” window.
  • Click on “Services”.
  • You’d see a lot of services being listed inside the window. Find “Windows Search” from the list.
  • Right Click on “Windows Search” from the list and choose “Properties”.
  • The “Windows Search Properties Window” will open up. From “Startup type” click on the drop down menu and choose “Disabled”.
  • Click “Apply” then “OK” and that’s it. The Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature is now disabled.

Most Windows 7 users are likely to do less file searches in their system. The Search Indexing service in Windows 7 will index and keep track of the files, so that they could be found out quickly when required at some other time. This feature is useful only if you perform frequent searches on your system.
For occasional file searchers the Search Indexing service in Windows 7 is a total resource hog. It unknowingly eats up your system resources in the background. If what you need from windows 7 is maximum performance, then i would certainly recommend you to disable this resource hogging Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature.

If you’d like to completely disable the search indexing feature in Windows 7 you may set the Search Indexing Service to Disabled (See the above method about disabling unwanted services).

• Disable the Aero Theme on Windows 7

  • Right Click on your Desktop and select ” Personalize ” click the Window ColorTab.
  • Uncheck the Box saying ” Enable Transparency ” and then click on ” Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.
  • You may also Apply a Standard or Basic theme from the previous window. The Standard Windows 7 theme is more preferred as its gives a neutral look than the classy windows old theme.

The aero user interface certainly adds some ” Eyecandy ” to Windows 7 but it requires a quite powerful hardware to run smoothly.  Older graphics cards would be squeezed to their maximum when aero is forcefully enabled. So why dont we just avoid the Windows 7 aero if what we care more is about speed and performance in Windows 7? So Disabling the Aero in Windows 7 certainly adds an extra speed boost to it.

Disabling the aero theme in Windows 7 will really speed things up as the hardware could now be allocated more resources and you’d get an idea by looking the memory consumption when aero is turned on and off.

• Disabling the Unwanted Visual Effects in Windows 7 to Speed Up more

  • Right click on ” Computer” and select “Properties” from the right click menu.
  • Click on ” Advanced System Settings ” from the left pane to open up the ” System Properties ” window.
  • Select the “Advanced” tab from it. Then Under ” Performance ” click ” Settings “. Choose ” Custom: ” Options From it.
  • Now un tick all the options (Choose “Adjust for best performance“) and select only the last four options (actually three are preferable  you may un- tick the second option out of the last four). Take a look at the screen shot below.
    
  • Now just logoff your system and login again.

Even though we have tuned off the aero effects in Windows 7 still there are many unwanted visual effects that could well be safely set to disabled to speed up windows 7 even more. After the login, you’d notice a speed difference now.

• Disabling the Unwanted Services to Speed up Windows 7

There are many services in windows 7 that we dont require for our daily use though there are some exceptional cases though. Services such as “print spooler” are used only when there is a need to print a document. If you does’t own a printer, you could safely turn off that service in Windows 7 and turn it on only when there arises a need to take a print.

I have previously prepared a,

List of services in Windows 7 that can be safely set to manual / disabled

Disabling the unneeded services in Windows 7 can really speed up the system boot time too.

• Disable the User account control (UAC) Feature in Windows 7

  Disabling UAC is recommended for advanced users only its not recommend doing it if not.
  • From the Control Panel open the ” User Accounts and Family Safety ” > User Account.
  • Click the User Account Control settings link.
  • Now just Drag the Slider towards “Never Notify”.
  • Click “OK” and Reboot your system.

The User account control (UAC) feature in Windows 7 is very annoying for experienced windows users and for others it could protect your pc from harmful virus activity etc. If you do software installations more frequently on your system, turning off the uac feature would definitely save you extra time.

• SetUp the Windows 7 Ready Boost Service for an Extra Speed Boost

  • To configure the Ready Boost Feature in Windows 7 you need to have a High Speed Flash/USB or Pendrive with you which is ready boost compatible.
  • After plugging your pendrive, open “Computer” > Right-click the on USB Drive/Pendrive > select “Ready Boost” tab > tick the “Use this device” checkbox.
  • You may configure the  amount of space on your USB drive/ Pendrive to be used as Ram.

The ready boost feature in Windows 7 will help you to use your flash drive or pendrive or USB drive as Ram there by improving the performance and speed of windows 7 greatly. You’d certainly experience it when launching bulky applications such as Adobe Photoshop etc.

Note : Ready Boost would only be of benefit for systems which have low amount of ram installed (less than 1GB). For others it doesn’t make a difference.

• Turn off Unused Windows 7 Features

  • Open up ” Programs and Features ” from Control Panel.
  • Click the ” Turn Windows features on or off ” from the left pane.
  • Now uncheck all the Feature that you don’t use in Windows 7 and restart the system for the changes to take effect.

There are many features in windows 7 that we often don’t use. Disabling these unused features in Windows 7  would help in speeding things up.

• Speeding Up, Tweaking and Optimizing Your SSD

If you’ve got a new ssd for your system, then you’d definitely consider checking out this guide which explains 9 tweaks to properly speed up, optimize your ssd and prolong the life of your ssd, while getting the best performance from it.

The Best Tweaks & Steps To Speed Up SSD & Optimize it for Performance

The guide have some added tips which includes, using a ram cache for speeding up your disk performance, enabling caching etc. So be sure that you dont miss out those awesome tweaks. 

• Disable the Windows 7 Sidebar (The Gadgets)

  • Right click on the sidebar and choose ” Properties “.
  • On the properties windows untick the check box showing ” Start sidebar when Windows Starts “
  • From now on windows sidebar won’t start when windows 7 start up.

Disabling the window 7 sidebar help you free up resources and gain a few more seconds during start up time.

• Disable the Aero Peek and Aero Snap features in Windows 7

  Aero Snap will help you to maximize, minimize and resize the windows just by dragging and dropping it into the screen corners.
  I dont advice to turn it off as the Aero Snap feature really helps to speed up working with windows by arranging them side by side. But, if you are not a regular user of the same, you may proceed by turning of aero snap in windows 7.
  • Open the Windows 7 ” Control Panel ” and double-click on ” Ease of Access Center ” icon.
  • Now click on the ” Make it easier to focus on tasks ” seen at the bottom in there
  • Now untick the check box saying ” Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen ” .
  • Right click on the Windows 7 taskbar and select ” Properties “.
  • Now untick the ” Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop ” option from there.

That will now disable the Aero Snap in Windows 7.

Now To Disable the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7

The Aero Peek feature in Windows 7 helps you to peek through all open windows by hiding all other windows and showing only the outlines of all windows. Aero Peek is similar to the ” Show Desktop ” Feature in XP and Vista.

If you have followed step 3 then Aero Peek will be automatically disabled. If not,

Right Click the Taskbar and choose Properties. Un-select the ”Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop” option.

The aero peek feature will now be disabled in windows 7.

• Change the Power Plan To Maximum Performance

  • Double click the ” Power Options ” in the Control panel.
  • Click the down arrow showing ” Show Additional Plans ” to see the ” High Performance ” power plan.
    
  • Now just activate the ” High Performance ” plan and that’s it.
  • You may go for the advanced settings for further tweaking if you want.

The Power settings in Windows 7 is not automatically set for maximum performance. By default the power plan in Windows 7 is set for a balanced performance with energy consumption on hardware. So you may not get the optimal performance from windows 7 if this is the case. So we need to change the power plan to High Performance Mode.

• Disable the Thumbnail Preview Feature to speed up File browsing in Windows 7

  For disabling thumbnails in Windows 7,
  • Double Click on ” Computer ” >click on the “Organize” drop-down menu and select the “Folder and Search options”
  • Under ‘Files and Folders’ section, go to the “View” tab and tick the check box showing “Always show icons, never thumbnails” checkbox.

The thumbnail preview feature in Windows 7 will show the small thumbnails of the contents of a folder instead of showing it’s icon. But this feature really do take up some system resources. So by disabling the Thumbnail Preview feature in Windows 7 the file browsing in Windows 7 explorer can be speed up.

• Useful Software’s To Speed Up Windows 7

  • Wise Registry Cleaner
  • CCleaner
  • TCP Optimizer
  • TeraCopy
  • Startup Delayer

In order to maintain Windows 7 Performance and keep it up in Top Shape there are some very essential software’s that could be of great help to Speed Windows 7. I will list some of them here. You may download and install these utilities. Make sure that you run these utilities at least once in a week. If you are regular at this, Windows 7 will be in top shape every time.

You may check this post which i have prepared earlier about the Top 5 Tools To Speed Up Your PC.
http://www.computingunleashed.com/2009/05/top-5-tools-to-speed-up-your-pc-to.html. You’d get more idea reading the usage of the software i mentioned above.

• Registry Tweaks to Speed Up Windows 7

  Here are some registry teaks that can be used to speed up windows 7 even more. I have complied only the safest tweaks that can be applied to your PC. Apart from speeding up windows 7 they will also add some functionality in windows like adding Copy to / Move to in right click context menu to speed up your daily tasks.
• If you have the full licensed version of Tune Up Utilities software, i’d say it’s one of the best tools to keep  Windows 7 in top shape.

• Turn OFF Windows 7 Password Protection To save a few More Seconds!!!

If you’ve set a password for accessing your user account in windows 7, then you need to enter it each and every time you login to windows. Logging into windows automatically without entering any password will save you a few seconds more. If you are the only person who use your computer then i’d recommend to turn this off. If that is not the case you may skip this step.

How to Automatically Logon to Windows 7 without entering any username or password

• Turn OFF Windows 7 Screen Saver and Wallpaper

  To Disable The Screen Saver and Wallpaper in Windows 7,
  • Right click on desktop and choose “Personalize”.
  • Click the Screen Saver link ” From the Screen Saver drop down menu, Set it to “None” and click “Apply” and then “OK”.
  • Now click on “Desktop Background” link.
  • From the “Location” drop down menu select “Solid Colors” and pick one color and click “OK”.

In order to display the wallpaper and screen saver the system needs some memory. So by disabling those two we can save a few Mega Bytes of memory.

• Disable Unwanted Start Up Items and Speed Up Windows 7 Start Up

  • Type ” msconfig ” in the “RUN” option from start menu press [Enter] to open up the System Configuration Utility.
  • Now navigate to the “StartUp” tab.
  • Untick the Entries which are not needed

This really matters when you have installed a lot of softwares on your PC. Many software such as AcdSee will run services such as device detector etc during the system start up. These are of no use actually for most windows users. So preventing such services from starting up during the start up of windows 7 can result in quicker start Ups. This will actually save some seconds during windows 7 start up.

• Disable Unwanted System Sounds in Windows 7

  To disable the system sounds in Windows 7,
  • Type mmsys.cpl in RUN From the Windows 7 Startmenu search box and press [Enter].
  • Navigate to the “Sounds” tab.
  • Now from under “Sound Scheme:” select “No Sounds” > Click “Apply” > “OK”.
    
  • You may keep some of your favorite sounds turned on if you want, but sounds played during the Windows 7 start up, shutdown, Logon, logoff, start navigation etc should be set to none if you want some real speed boost.

In order to play the sounds you hear in windows 7, system resources are being utilized. So if you could disable these sound effects, that would successively free some system resources too.

Thats it! following all these steps will certainly boost the speed and performance of your windows 7 operating system. :)

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