Increase Windows 7 Performance in 4 Easy Steps

[solin]

1. Click on your start menu and type the words “ease of use” into the search box, and then press return. You will find a section called Ease of Access Center. In this area scroll all the way down to the bottom and find a section called “Make it easier to focus on Tasks”. Click on this you’ll be taken a new screen. Go to the bottom of this screen and find the section called “Make it easier to manage windows”. Uncheck the box that prevents windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge. This will give you a small increase in performance.

Please note that you cannot move windows to the edge of the screen anymore to automatically arrange them afterwards.

2. Now go to your start menu again and type, “turn off features” into the search box. This will give you a search result called “Turn Windows features on or off”. Click on this and this will take you to an area that will enable or disable certain windows features. Disable anything you don’t need, such as games. It’s really up to you what you need and don’t need, so go down the list and decide what you use. If unsure, leave it enabled. Chances are you’ll find a few things to turn off, and that will free up resources in Windows.

3. Go back to your search from the start menu and type “uac”. This will enable you to change user account control settings. There will be a sliding bar that controls how often you are notified about changes to your computer. If you’re not worried about messages and are happy to let your computer manage itself, slide the bar all the way to “never notify”. This means you’ll get fewer messages, it will be less annoying, and you’ll boost your performance slightly.

4. Now go to your start menu and right-click on “Computer”. You’ll get a sub-menu where you can then click on “manage”. In here, click on “services and applications”, and then on “services”. In services you have a number of different things, which can be turned on and off automatically on startup. Most things in here should be left alone, but one feature called “windows search” can take up a lot of resources. This is the indexing feature of windows. You can double click on this and choose “disabled” from the drop down list. This will help improve your computer’s performance, because Windows won’t be indexing every file from now on. Of course, you can always turn it back on again if you wish later.

These are just a few things you can do to help boost your computer’s performance with very little effort

Source

[Raymond]

My 2 way of increasing performance in Windows 7.
1. Right click desktop > Personalize > select Windows Classic theme.
2. Win+Pause/Break > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > click Settings button for Performance and select "Adjust for best performance".

I am fine with these 2 settings because I don't need all those flashy animations. Speed is all it matters.

[JayCub]

Hopefully the next version of windows will address these performance issues and if you want "i candy" you load a profile rather than the other way round, the default settings are not always the best that's for sure.

be mindful of the services that you disable or you could end up with and unstable operating system.

The two mentioned by Raymond are safe settings, and there is plenty of help regarding windows services on google.

[Bearcat]

2. Win+Pause/Break > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > click Settings button for Performance and select "Adjust for best performance".

Thanks for the tip Raymond. I wasn't aware of this one.

I am fine with these 2 settings because I don't need all those flashy animations. Speed is all it matters.

I totally agree!!!

[A Guy]

It is not suggested to disable UAC. It doesn't have much impact on performance, and provides a great protection. The others are up to the individual. Most Windows 7 users have sufficiently powerful PCs normally unaffected by these functions. A Guy

[Bearcat]

It is not suggested to disable UAC. It doesn't have much impact on performance, and provides a great protection.

But it is still very annoying IMHO.

[solin]

I prefer the Custom.. Because in the "Smooth edges of screen fonts" must be activated. If not activated, the letters and writings will look blurry..

[Raymond]

In fact there is another tip which I've wanted to share for a very long time but never did because I wanted to do a more detailed benchmark. Numbers are very important to me because I don't want to be sharing tips which "I feel".

Modern computers comes with a lot of features such as Bluetooth, DVD/BD drive, webcam, card reader, wifi, network adapter, Infrared, internal modem, and etc. Think about it, how often do you really use those built-in specifications? I know I don't so I went ahead and disable all those unneeded features in Device Manager. Surprisingly my boot up time decreased noticeably. I need to run benchmarks before and after disabling to see what has improved.

[Bearcat]

Modern computers comes with a lot of features such as Bluetooth, DVD/BD drive, webcam, card reader, wifi, network adapter, Infrared, internal modem, and etc. Think about it, how often do you really use those built-in specifications? I know I don't so I went ahead and disable all those unneeded features in Device Manager. Surprisingly my boot up time decreased noticeably. I need to run benchmarks before and after disabling to see what has improved.

That was one of the first things I did on my new PC Raymond. With Windows 7 installed on the OCZ Vertex SSD, I can't say I noticed much difference in boot up times, as they are very fast either way, but I just don't care to have un-necesssary hardware running if I am not using it.

[Stranger]

If I sacrifice looks of windows 7 for performance i feel a bit cheater to myself because i have spent few hundred of dollars or i say Rupees for windows 7 to just have good look of my desktop
I would rather stick to xp if i have to increase performance