Some Easy Ways to Make Windows 7 Faster

If you’re looking for even more speed from your Windows 7 PC, then here are more ways to speed up Windows 7

Speedup External Hard Drives

Write caching is disabled for external drives by default in Windows, so that you can remove external drives without losing any data.  Enabling write caching will provide a significant performance increase for external drives:

1. Click Start and type “Device Manager” and open Device Manager
2. Expand “Disk drives” and right-click your external hard drive and select Properties
3. click the “Policies” tab and click “Optimize for performance”
4. Check “Enable write caching on the device” and “Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device” then click Ok
5. Reboot to apply changes

Increase SATA Disk Performance

Enabling write caching will also improve SATA hard drive performance

1. Follow steps 1 to 3 above, but select your SATA drives
2. Only check “Enable write caching on the device” and then click Ok
3. Reboot to apply changes

Faster Menus & Mouse

Reduce the amount of time it takes for menus to appear:.

1. Click Start and type “regedit”  and open the Registry Editor
2. Left-click on the expandable arrow next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER and expand the Control Panel folder, and then select “Desktop”
3. On the right hand side find “MenuShowDelay” and doubleclick it. Reduce the value to any number between 400 (default) and 1 – the lower the number the smaller the delay in ms between clicking on a menu and the action occuring
4. Now below Desktop on the left select “Mouse”.  On the right hand side find “MouseHoverTime” and doubleclick and chose a low number for faster mouseovers
5. Reboot

Disable Thumbnail Previews

Windows 7’s thumbnail preview feature takes up a lot of resources just to show a few small images rather than folder icons.  To disable the thumbnail previews:

1. Open Computer and click on “Organise” in the menu and select “Folder and Search” options
2. Click on the “View” tab and in the “Files and Folders” options check the “Always show icons, never thumbnails” option
3. Click “Apply” and then OK

Faster Windows 7 Taskbar

Another registry tweak that will reduce the amount of resources used to create your Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail previews:

1. Click Start and type “regedit”  and open the Registry Editor
2. Left-click on the expandable arrow next to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” and then “Software” and expand until you get to the Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced folder
3. Right click on Advanced and select “New DWORD”, then enter the following value: “ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime”
4. Right click on “ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime” and select “Modify”.  Choose “Decimal Base” and enter your new number in milliseconds.  A good number to use is 200.
5. Select “Ok” and then reboot

If you’re looking for more Windows 7 tips then don’t forget to subscribe Windows 7 Park

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Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7

Windows 7 makes it much easier to deal with UAC settings, and in fact you don’t have to completely disable UAC if you don’t want to. Just type UAC into the start menu or Control Panel search box.

You can simply drag the slider up or down, depending on how often you want to be alerted.

  If you drag it all the way down to the bottom, you’ll have disabled it entirely.

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How to Keep Windows 7 from Slowing Down?

I have been using Windows 7 for almost one month and I haven’t noticed a lag in speed since the first install. I have been installing and unistalling drivers and programs and currently I do not using any startup programs to speed things up. However, my parents, whose PC runs on older hardware has seen a slight slow down on boot and general program use. We certainly cannot expect Windows to take all of the abuse an average user throws at it and have it continue to speed up or stay the same, so I gave my parents some elementary, yet helpful tips for maintaing their PC’s performance, not just in Windows 7, but in any version of Windows. I thought this might be helpful for other users as well:

1. You’re running out of space – As is often the case with PC’s who have had a Windows installation for a while without reformatting, an at-capacity hard drive may slow down your Windows 7 installation. Most users will constantly install new software and never give a thought about removing previous installations or unused softwares titles. I can’t tell you how many times a friend has asked me to speed up their computer, only to find that they have a five-page list of programs on their PC that needs to be removed.

2. Time to run a disk defragmenter – When a user is constantly installing an uninstalling programs, a hard drive will leave pieces of those programs in different places throughout the drive. When the user goes to use a specific program, the hard drive will need to search different locations to access that information, creating a longer wait time. To remedy this, a hard drive should be defragmented fairly often. I would say every few months, at least, to keep everything running smoothly.

3. Garbage-ware and installing more and more and more programs – This point is almost directly related to point number 1 because new programs are the main reason for a hard drive being at capacity. It is worth mentioning that small programs and garbage-ware downloaded from the internet are often a huge cause of a PC slowing down. My rule of thumb is to only have programs installed that are going to be used on a daily basis or are a necessity. Anything else is just going to get in the way.

4. Startup programs kill boot times – I am always looking at speeding up boot times and usually this can be achieved by keeping those startup programs from loading everytime Windows does. Most garbage-ware comes with a small program that loads itself on Windows startup and stays running, in the background, slowing things down even more. For those not used to solving this problem, you can access a list of startup programs by clicking on Start then typing ‘msconfig’ into the search box (in earlier versions of Windows:  Start->Run and type in ‘msconfig‘ and click OK). You will then click on the Startup tab and uncheck those programs that you’d prefer not to have run at startup. (Do some research on which programs to uncheck, because some may need to start up when Windows does)

5. Certain Security software is sometimes a drag – While a few security suites have slimmed down their software to keep from hogging resources, there are a few name suites that continue to slow PC’s down because they are constantly running. You may want to test a few out and see which ones are known to hog resources.

6. It may be time for a memory upgrade – While Windows 7 has made leaps and bounds in managing programs and memory, Microsoft’s new OS is certainly no miracle worker. It can only do so much with so little. If you are trying to run a million programs on only 1GB of Ram or less, then it might be time to pop open the wallet and invest in some more. After Windows has used up the allotted memory, it replaces actual Ram with a page file, which is much slower. If you have noticed your system slowing down after much use, you might want to do a memory check.

7. Shut down every now and then – There is great debate over whether it is better to shut down all the time or keep the system running. Personally, I subscribe to the belief that shutting the system down every night is best for my system. (Mostly because I like to refresh my Ram and start over) This may be a bit more often than necessary, but if I don’t plan to use my PC for a few hours, it is turned off. I have a very quick-booting Windows 7 installation, so I’m not bothered by the constant powering on and off.

Some users always argue that turning a computer on and off constantly is harder on the hard drive, but hard drive manufacturers note that this is not the case with modern hard drives and heat is usually the common denominator for hard drive failures.

8. Remove the crapware from a new PC – This is very common with store-bought PC’s, so I don’t believe that I need to go into much detail here. Navigate to add-remove programs and remove anything that is not necessary and any program trials that you will not be subscribing to.

Of course there are many reasons why a Windows installation could start to slow down, but these are the most common culprits that I have found. Hope it helps.

Let us know if you have found any specific keys to keeping your Windows 7 installation running quickly and I will add it to this list and credit you accordingly.

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