Disabling the Minimise-Maximise animation can make your PC run a lot faster. Disabling is easy:
- Go to Start and type in ‘SystemPropertiesPerformance‘
- Go the Visual Effects tab
- Uncheck ‘Animate windows when minimizing and maximising‘ and click OK
Windows 7 only uses one core to boot out of the box. By increasing the number of cores used you can decrease the boot time:
- Click on Start and then ‘Run’
- Search for Run and type ‘msconfig’
- Click on the tab ‘Boot’ and click on ‘Advanced options…’
- Check ‘Number of processors’ and enter how many your PC has (usually 2,4 or 8)
- Click ‘OK’ and ‘Apply’
- Reboot
Remove Unwanted Fonts
Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
- Open Control Panel
- Open Fonts folder
- Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.
Windows 7 shutdowns a lot faster than Vista or XP, but it can be improved further by making this registry change which reduced the time Windows waits to kill processes:
- Click on Start and type in regedit and hit Enter
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl
- Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeOut and change and lower the value
- The default is 12000 (12 seconds) but you can lower this to any number
- Click ok and restart PC
If like me you know where your files are stored, and only do a file search once in a blue moon, then the Search Indexing feature is a total waste of time. It uses up quite a lot of resources and is one feature I’d recommend most users disabling:
- Click on Start and type in services.msc
- Find and right-click ‘Windows Search’
- In the startup type field choose ‘Disabled’
Taskbar thumbnail previews are one of Windows 7′s cool features. To decrease the time take to display thumbnails make these tweaks. (Note: be careful as you are tweaking the registry):
- Click on Start and type in regedit and hit Enter
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVe rsionExplorerAdvanced
- Right-click on Advanced, select ‘New DWORD‘ and enter the following value: “ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime”
- Then right-click on ‘ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime’ and select ‘Modify’.
- Choose Decimal Base and enter in your new number in milliseconds. I use 200 (0.2 secounds), but experiment until you find a time you like.
- Click Ok and restart
Turn Off System Sounds
Do you really need the system sounds? If not then disabling will again free up resources:
- Go To Start and type in mmsys.cpl
- Click on the Sounds tab and choose ‘No Sounds‘ in the sound scheme drop down
Many programs start automatically or start components with Windows, which will slow your bootup times and use unnecessary resources. These include programs like Acrobat, Quicktime, iTunes, Java etc. To stop these programs autostarting:
- Go to Start and enter ‘msconfig’
- Click on the startup tab and uncheck anything you are certain you don’t need e.g. don’t untick your AV program
I’ve tried to avoid listing tweaks that make Windows 7 look ‘worse’, but Windows 7 Aero Theme can really task, so disabling is advisable if you need that extra speed:
- Right-click on your desktop and select ‘Personalise‘ and click the ‘Window Color‘ tab
- Uncheck the ‘Enable Transparency’ box
- Click on ‘Open classic appearance properties for more color options’
- Choose a Standard or Basic theme from the popup that appears
Some windows 7 services take up a lot of unnecessary ram, which is particularly bad if you don’t use them. Black Viper maintains a very good list of services that can be stopped. Rather than disabling services, I recommend that you set services you don’t think you need to ‘manual’ just in case you make a mistkae.
To Start or Disable services:
- Go to Control Panel. Click on ‘Administrative Tools‘ and then click on ‘Services’
- Right click on each individual service you want to tweak below.
