How do i make this computer faster?

[micropage7]

This thread should be closed, the best possible answers have already been given and everyone here is just repeating whats already been said. The OP hasnt given any other feedback other than the fact that he doesn't want to spend any money on it. He wanted our advice and he didn't accept it when we gave it. There's nothing more to see here

could be, with such as limited resources with win7 its just smashing the wall and theres nutting you can do with that

 

[Derek12]

just fork out some cash and get it up to 2Gb as everyone suggest, crickey thats about 20€uros

Yep 2GB +1GB (if the OP is using a 1GB stick) = 3GB that would be fair enough

 

[Mindweaver]

He's using Windows 7 32bit, and the minimum ram requirement is 1gb of ram. I've installed windows 7 32bit on an old laptop and it was a lot more responsive then I thought it was going to be. If you can reinstall the os then that would be your best performance increase with out spending money. If you can't then do as others have suggested and check for viruses and malware, defrag, and clean temp files. Also, check to make sure the virtual memory is set to what ever the os recommends and not a huge number.

 

[micropage7]

i just recall something
ReadyBoost

Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows Vista and later to service random disk reads with better performance than without the cache. This caching applies to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs. Flash devices typically are slower than a mechanical hard disk for sequential I/O, so, to maximize performance, ReadyBoost includes logic that recognizes large, sequential read requests and has the hard disk service these requests.[1]

When a compatible device is plugged in, the Windows AutoPlay dialog offers an additional option to use the flash drive to speed up the system; an additional "ReadyBoost" tab is added to the drive's properties dialog where the amount of space to be used can be configured.[2] The minimum cache size is 250 MB. In Vista or with FAT32 formatting of the drive, the maximum is 4 GB. In Windows 7 with NTFS or exFAT formatting, the maximum cache size is 32 GB per device. Windows Vista allows only one device to be used, while Windows 7 allows multiple caches, one per device, up to a total of 256 GB.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost

 

[SchrodingerPC]

Hey, I know you said you aren't willing to purchase anything for this computer but if you change your mind, you may have noticed everyone going nuts over your RAM. And of course that is true, get at minimum 4GB RAM. However, if you want to try some free ways of speeding your pc up, use "CCleaner" to clean any files not used and temp files. Defragment your Hard Drive (there should be a defragmenter already in your pc, just search it from start button). Use an antivirug program to search for viruses such as AVG, Microsoft Essentials (both can be downloaded for free, i personally use AVG). And finally type in "msconfig" into the search bar in the start menu, hit enter, press yes, go to "startup" tab and untick any programs you dont want to run upon boot. This should make boot a bit faster. Hope i helped. Good Luck

 

[Blue-Knight]

Ubuntu Gnome eats 512Mb on boot on my i7 rig. A clean Ubuntu install using something like i3 will eat as little as 128-256Mb. Windows 7 eats 3Gb of ram on my tower with 16GB, it used 1.5Gb with 8Gb of ram, and if you use less, Windows uses less, but all in all, Windows uses significantly more memory than Ubuntu does, regardless of the particular distro. You really should stop talking about things you don't know.

Please, I said that about the current version (obviously)... The older versions or the non-default window managers will eat much less memory (obviously).

That's because @Blue-Knight already said that his posts are stupid and that we're all stupid for replying to him so really, just ignore him.

You didn't do that in your post. So, I consider you just want a stupid discussion here.

Windows takes more RAM because of prefetch

No, it really eats your RAM , and a lot of it:

Linux, swap off, 3917MiB total, ~250MiB used:
:~$ Preparing to eat as much memory as I can...
:~$ Maximum memory I could eat was: 3722444800 bytes.

On Linux, the program could effectively use 3550MiB.

Windows, swap off, 4059MiB total, ~800MiB used:
\> Preparing to eat as much memory as I can...
\> Maximum memory I could eat was: 3407872000 bytes.

On Windows 7, the program could effectively use 3250MiB.
That's practically a clean install of Windows 7. Yet, 800MiB was lost for "nothing".

Conclusion, the memory usage you see on "Windows Task Manager" is true, that memory was lost and cannot be used by programs anymore.

 

[TheUninvited]

Guys, thank you pretty much all of you for taking time and answering on my questions, i really appreciate it.

I will now try to do some things of what you suggested

 

[arskatb]

agree, moar RAM and disable all unnessassery startup programs/services

 

[XSI]

Yes ReadyBoost is one of the good advice. Grab some 2-4 GB USB drive. Put in in your pc. Configure it as ready boost.
Next, advice which was not given: right click My Computer, go to properties and set Adjust to best performance.
Also startup, registry, malware cleaners. or maybe clean install.
And clean the dust. after all this i bet it will be much better.

 

[Aquinus]

Please, I said that about the current version (obviously)... The older versions or the non-default window managers will eat much less memory (obviously).

Nope, that was with Ubuntu 13.10 on my tower running Gnome 3; a clean install of Ubuntu Gnome. I'm not at home right now, but I'll be happy to make a screenshot when I am later.

You didn't do that in your post. So, I consider you just want a stupid discussion here.

No, I'm looking at having a reasonable conversation like most of the other threads here at TPU and I'm not going to let your need to talk before thinking to stop me from correcting you.

No, it really eats your RAM , and a lot of it:

Linux, swap off, 3917MiB total, ~250MiB used:
:~$ Preparing to eat as much memory as I can...
:~$ Maximum memory I could eat was: 3722444800 bytes.

On Linux, the program could effectively use 3550MiB.

So you boot the machine and it used ~250MB total? That's what I'm talking about. the "Maximum memory I could eat" must have been an application other than the OS.

Windows, swap off, 4059MiB total, ~800MiB used:
\> Preparing to eat as much memory as I can...
\> Maximum memory I could eat was: 3407872000 bytes.

On Windows 7, the program could effectively use 3250MiB.
That's practically a clean install of Windows 7. Yet, 800MiB was lost for "nothing".

You didn't lose anything. What would show that something like Superfetch uses and doesn't let go of the memory would be to disable the Superfetch service, restart the machine, and try again, but I'm pretty sure that Superfetch releases its resources when active applications want resources that aren't available.

Also 800MB wasn't just "lost", something is using it.

Conclusion, the memory usage you see on "Windows Task Manager" is true, that memory was lost and cannot be used by programs anymore.

If you start eating all the memory you have available you'll see free go to zero and cached start falling until you get to a point where the only thing left to take out is the OS and other running apps. No swap means you can't take what you're not using out of system memory to make room for other things that you are going to be using right now. Turning the page file off when you only have a little bit of RAM is a terribly stupid idea.

...also we're talking about a rig with 1GB of ram. Since disabling the page file is out of the question to begin with (it should be in your case as well, I don't know why you bother), I really don't know what you're getting at.

 

[Blue-Knight]

Also 800MB wasn't just "lost", something is using it.

Something useless that shouldn't be there is using it... Not myself.

So you boot the machine and it used ~250MB total? That's what I'm talking about.

That's what the kernel reports... Nothing can be done there. Of course, it took more than that...

But the fact is the program could load 3550MiB of memory despite all of that. That's 300MiB more than it could on Windows...

No swap means you can't take what you're not using out of system memory to make room for other things that you are going to be using right now. Turning the page file off when you only have a little bit of RAM is a terribly stupid idea.

It is not a stupid idea, it is the correct decision if you don't want to experience extremely slow down with the cost of using less RAM. Of course, you will not be able to use every byte available from your memory sticks but at least you will use the maximum you can with top performance.

And if some application starts using a lot of memory than it's better to crash some programs than to wait minutes for your system to become stable again (and this will definitely kill your productivity).

 

[Aquinus]

And if some application starts using a lot of memory than it's better to crash some programs than to wait minutes for your system to become stable again (and this will definitely kill your productivity).

Killing applications that you're working with while they're running will kill your productivity by potentially putting the application in a bad state by just killing it while it's running. What if the application died while it was writing to the drive? Then what? Also, we're talking about a machine with 1GB of ram. He may not have any choice because there simply isn't even enough system memory to do what he wants to do. Will it be slow, yes, but at least he could do it.

Disabling the page file is only worth while if you have more than you're going to use. If not, it's a terrible idea.

 

[buildzoid]

While I strongly advise getting more ram you can always use task manager to find and turn of any process that you don't need. You should also set your theme to windows basic as that will free up some ram too also dropping screen resolution can help I once got my copy of win 7 to use 700mb of ram when I was benching Super Pi with the methods I described.

 

[Blue-Knight]

Killing applications that you're working with while they're running will kill your productivity by potentially putting the application in a bad state by just killing it while it's running. What if the application died while it was writing to the drive? Then what? Also, we're talking about a machine with 1GB of ram. He may not have any choice because there simply isn't even enough system memory to do what he wants to do. Will it be slow, yes, but at least he could do it. Disabling the page file is only worth while if you have more than you're going to use. If not, it's a terrible idea.

That's exactly what I was talking about, it would be hard to occur such a thing to me (applications crashing due to low memory).

And that's one of the reasons I disable it, because I know I will not use all of that, unless I am doing a thing to use all my available memory (intentionally).

And I didn't recommend him to disable page file with only 1GB, I would recommend with 2GB or above if he could be within the limits of memory usage... If he disables page file or set it too low then the crashes while doing ordinary stuff as web browsing would be too often (i.e.: almost unusable)...

 

[rhino]

Yo! Here's my ten pence worth. I started doing these tweaks with XP and there will be a lot of comment coming about whether to do or not to do some of the stuff in it.
Either way, for your own sanity, check how your PC runs after each change so that you know which change to undo.



Easy Windows Tweaks
1. Turn off Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> System -> Remote -> Uncheck ‘Allow Remote Assistance invitations to be sent from this computer’, and ‘Allow users to connect remotely to this computer’ -> Click ‘OK’
This saves memory by disabling these services that you’re most likely never going to use, and it increases XP security by preventing unknown people from trying to remotely connect to your computer.

2. Disable System Restore:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> System -> System Restore -> Check ‘Turn off System Restore’ -> Click ‘OK’
System Restore is only good for if you end up breaking your computer a lot, having children that are on the computer, and love to download unknown files. However, if you somewhat know your way around the computer chances are you’ve probably never used it and probably never will. This will save you a ton of hard drive space (at least a couple gigs), and provide a decent performance boost.

3. Set Your Virtual Memory To 1.5-3.0 Times Your Computer’s Memory:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> System -> Advanced Tab -> Performance Settings -> Advanced Tab -> Change -> Select Custom Size -> Set the Initial size to 1.5 x amount of memory installed in your computer (You have 1024mb, 1GB of RAM installed so I’d set it to 1.5 x 1024 = 1536 MB) -> Set the Maximum Size to 3 x amount of memory installed in your computer (You have 1024mb, 1GB of RAM installed so I’d set it to 3.0 x 1024 = 3072 MB). -> Click ‘Set’ -> Click ‘OK
This makes sure the paging file stays put, by doing this it will perform better, and it is optimized for the amount of memory you have so Windows XP doesn’t have to keep adjusting the paging file automatically. It also helps prevent the paging file from becoming fragmented.

4. Disable Windows Error Reporting:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> System -> Advanced Tab -> Error Reporting -> Select ‘Disable error reporting’ -> Check ‘But notify me when critical errors occur’ -> Click ‘OK’
By disabling error reporting you will no longer get those annoying messages that your program has encountered an error, and asks to send information to Microsoft, this saves memory by getting rid of the feature. I think it’s a good trade-off to get rid of those critical error messages. You’ll still be notified when a bad error occurs.

5. Turn off Indexing Service:
Start Menu -> My Computer -> Right Click Local Disk (C (or available hard drives) -> Properties -> Uncheck ‘Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching’ -> Check ‘Apply To All Files And Folders’ -> Click ‘OK’
The indexing service hogs a huge amount of system resources. It keeps certain files in memory to allow your Windows File Folder Search to run faster, so unless you’re using the Windows Search multiple times per day you don’t need Indexing, the search will still work, but just not as fast as it would if indexing is enabled.

6. Change maximum size of the Recycle Bin to something more manageable, and get rid of the display delete confirmation dialog:
Desktop -> Right click Recycle Bin -> Properties -> Set ‘Maximum size of Recycle Bin’ to a smaller, more manageable percentage like 3-5% -> Uncheck ‘Display delete confirmation dialog’ -> Click ‘OK’
Lowering the maximum size of the recycle bin makes sure that it doesn’t use up more than a gig or few, because it’s normally set to 10% of each drive you have, and 10% of 250GB is 25GB, that’s a lot of space to be dedicated to your recycle bin. Unchecking the display delete confirmation dialog stops Windows from asking you every time if you’re sure you want to delete the file that you want to delete, which of course we always say yes. If you accidentally delete something it’ll still be in your recycle so you don’t have to worry.

7. Disable Hibernation:
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Power Options -> Hibernate Tab -> Uncheck ‘Enable Hibernation’ -> Click ‘OK’
Hibernation is one of those things that you’re just never going to use, unless you have a laptop, it makes it so that when you put your computer into hibernation mode it saves everything that was in your memory onto your hard disk. It sounds handy, but they don’t make it to put it into hibernation and it just mostly wastes space and processing power. Just put your computer in stand by if you don’t want to use it for a while.

8. Disable automatic search for network folders and printers:
Start Menu -> My Computer -> Tools Menu -> Click ‘Folder Options’ -> View Tab -> Uncheck ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers’
By disabling automatic search for network folders and printers when you open up Windows explorer your computer will not automatically search for network folders and printers that may or may not be there. Chances are you have no network printers or folders, and if you do Windows wouldn’t need to search for them every time you want to get into My Computer. This speeds up file browsing, access and Windows responsiveness.

9. Defragment your hard drive:
Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Click ‘Disk Defragmenter’ -> Click ‘Defragment’
Defragmenting your hard drive is very important to the performance health of your computer, it can speed up Windows XP significantly if you never have defragmented your computer before. It takes your folders and files and moves them around on the hard drive so Windows XP can have better and faster access to them, the more files you have the more they need to be organized on the hard drive.

10. Check your hard drive for errors with Disk Check:
Start Menu -> My Computer -> Right Click ‘Local Disk (C’ -> Click ‘Properties’ -> Tools Tab -> Click ‘Check Now’ -> Check ‘Automatically fix file system errors’, and ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’ -> Click ‘Start’
The Disk Check will require a reboot, and it certainly takes some time to check the disk (1-2 hours). Disk check allows Windows to scan your hard drive for any errors, and automatically fix any errors if they are found. If you hard drive contains errors it can slow down your computer and your overall Windows XP experience.

11. Turn off Windows Visual Effects:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> System -> Advanced Tab -> Performance Settings -> Click ‘Custom’

Uncheck:
Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Fade of slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after click
Show window contents while dragging
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folder

This gets rid of certain visual effects. You won’t hardly notice any of the visual effects that have disappeared, but this saves lots of memory and processing power by disabling these visual effects. The only one that you’ll most likely notice missing is the Common Tasks in folder, if you want to you can go back and enable that one, but you don’t need it for anything.

12. Delete unused fonts in the fonts folder:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> Fonts Folder
Delete any unnecessary or fonts that you will never ever use. As a precaution first move the unused fonts to a different folder so you make sure there are no side-effects, because you could move a system font that’s needed for Windows by accident. Feel free to delete Wingdings and Symbol and all those Eastern/Western fonts that you’re never going to use. Windows checks this folder each time it loads, and then it loads the fonts into Windows memory so they’re easily accessible with the click of a button, by deleting these fonts you save system memory and increase start up time.

13. Disable unused Windows sounds:
Start Menu -> Classic Control Panel -> Sound and Audio Devices -> Sounds Tab
Set all the unused Windows/Application sounds to ‘None’. I just go through each sound and listen to it, and if I don’t need it’s disabled, some sounds you hear all the time, those are the ones I don’t disable, but the ones that are for Net meetings or Windows startup I disable, the more you disable the greater the performance boost.

14. Uninstall unused Windows Components/Programs
Start Menu -> Add/Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components
Uncheck the Windows Components that you don’t use. I uncheck Fax Services, Indexing Service, Internet Information Services, Management and Monitoring Tools, Message Queuing, Other Network File and Printer Services, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express, and MSN Explorer. They’re probably handy tools and services for businesses, but I will never need Message Queuing and Fax services. Also while you’re in the Add/Remove Programs menu look for any programs that you don’t use and uninstall them as well, it’ll save disk space and increase performance.

15. Disable unused devices in Device Manager:
Start Menu -> Right Click ‘My Computer -> Click ‘Manage’ -> Click ‘Device Manager’ -> Right Click unused devices -> Click ‘Disable’
Be careful when disabling unused devices that you don’t disable something that may be important to the necessary functions of your computer. Only disable something if you have an onboard sound card, or an onboard ethernet adapter that you’re not using because you have PCI slots filled with a sound card or network adapter.

16. Use MSConfig to disable any unnecessary startup items:
Start Menu -> Run -> Type ‘MsConfig’ -> Startup Tab -> Uncheck unnecessary startup items
Extra startup items are one of the main things that slows down a computer. The startup items are the programs that are loaded into memory when a computer starts up, like AIM, Antivirus programs, all of the little programs sitting in your task bar, and some programs you can’t see. Go through the list and look for any familiar programs and disable those first, then go back and look at the unfamiliar programs and try to find out what application they belong to, google the process name like ctfmon.exe and it should come up with a detailed use for the program in the listings and if it’s harmful or just a system program.

17. Disable unused Windows services:
Start Menu -> Run -> Type ‘Services.msc’
It’s important to always save the best for last. This last tweak is going to provide the most performance out of all other tweaks, and it takes the longest to implement. After you’ve opened up the Services windows you’re going to go down the list and look for services that you don’t need, then right click on them, go to ‘Properties’, pull down the ‘Startup type:’ menu and click ‘Disabled, then click ‘OK’.

Disable These Services:
Application Management
Clipbook
Error Reporting Service
HID Input Service (Note: This service will disable the multimedia functions on many multimedia keyboards, so if you have a multimedia keyboard it is recommended that you do not disable this service)
Indexing Service
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Network Provisioning Service
Portable Media Serial Number Service
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Secondary Logon (If you only have one user on your computer)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service
Telnet
Uninterruptable Power Supply
WebClient
Windows Time
WMI Performance Adapter

 

[rhino]

Ha! Found it! Here is the W7 version:
Speed Up Windows 7 – Ultimate Guide To Make Windows 7 Blazing Fast!!!

Windows 7

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.
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 Color Tab.
  • 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.

• 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.

http://www.computingunleashed.com/2009/01/registrytweaks-for-speeding-up-windows.html

• 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.

 

[Jetster]

I remember doing all that to XP to try to squeeze all the power I could out of it. I still have my "list" somewhere.

As far a W7. Well unless your running it on a P4 then its pointless

 

[brandonwh64]

Put a turbo on it!!!

Seriously, Ram is the biggest point of the slow downs in this machine. I built a I3-2100 a couple of weeks ago and only had one stick of ddr3 at home and with windows 7 even 32bit version it was SUPER SLOW causing ram to idle at 600mb+ on a fresh install. I finally brought home my extra 4GB set I had and man it really made a difference.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Put a turbo on it!!!

Seriously, Ram is the biggest point of the slow downs in this machine. I built a I3-2100 a couple of weeks ago and only had one stick of ddr3 at home and with windows 7 even 32bit version it was SUPER SLOW causing ram to idle at 600mb+ on a fresh install. I finally brought home my extra 4GB set I had and man it really made a difference.

should I ask why you were even running with 1GB DDR3?

 

[Aquinus]

should I ask why you were even running with 1GB DDR3?

There are plenty of devices that typically don't need more than 1Gb. A NAS or a gateway are some prime examples. A bare install of Debian (no X or any WMs) only eats 80-100Mb on boot. The real question is why did you install Windows on a machine with 1GB of ram.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I am not willing to purchase anything for this computer , i already got a good one but it has a problem now and i can't use it.

I am asking what i can do to fix the performance a little bit better.

Should have said that at the beginning but anything is going to be a waste of time, that 1GB of ram is raping that system of performance.

 

[brandonwh64]

should I ask why you were even running with 1GB DDR3?

Freedom.... did you even read my post???? Thats all I had at home, my 4 gig set was at work....

 

[arskatb]

Rhino gave you a few good advice

 

[rhino]

Thanks Arskatb, sometimes I wonder if I'm talking to myself around here.

 

[arskatb]

Thanks Arskatb, sometimes I wonder if I'm talking to myself around here.

That's happen so often, they don't listen smart talk