One of the main virtues of Windows 7 is its speed, especially when compared with its predecessor, Vista. But most people haven't experienced the 15-second boot for the operating system that Microsoft engineers were shooting for. Here are 12 tips to speed up Windows 7.
Speed It Up
1. Uninstall bloatware that came with your laptop or PC. Or even apps you installed but no longer want. Head to Control Panel | Programs | Uninstall a program and take the hatchet to anything, such as unwanted games or software, that you'll never need. Many programs will load processes at boot time and take up valuable RAM and CPU cycles. While you're in here, you can also click Turn Windows Features On or Off and scan the list to see if there's anything you don't use. You might also want to try out software utilities such as PCDecrapifier and Revo Uninstaller.
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Simplify Startup
2. Limit startup procesess. In the Start button's search box, type MSCONFIG, then head to the Startup tab. You'll likely see a slew of apps, mostly for system support, but you'll be able to identify some that clearly aren't necessary. There's absolutely no need to have Google Update or even QuickTime running all the time, for example. Don't delete those that support your hardware or security, but anything blatantly nonproductive can go. You may have to check the program names online with a site like processlibrary.com to see what they are—they may even be malware. If you want to get more granular, run Microsoft's Autoruns utility.
3. Add more RAM. Windows 7 isn't as much of a hog as Vista, but if you're moving from XP, the memory requirements are greater.
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Turn Off Indexing
4. Turn off search indexing. If you do a lot of searching, this won't appeal to you, as some searches will be slower. To turn off indexing, open the Indexing Options Control Panel window (if you just type "index" in the Start button search box, you'll see that choice at the top of the start menu), click Modify and remove locations being indexed and file types, too. If you want to leave search indexing on, but find that it occasionally slows you down, you can stop its process when you need extra speed. Right-click on Computer either in the Start menu or on the desktop, and choose Manage. Then double-click Services and Applications, then Services. Find Windows Search, and double-click on that. From this properties dialog, you can choose a Startup type of Manual or Disabled to have the process silent by default.
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When In Doubt, Defrag
5. Defragment your hard drive. Your disk stores data in chunks wherever there's disk space, regardless of whether the space is contiguous for one file. Defragging tidies everything up and blocks a program's bits together so that the reader heads don't have to shuttle back and forth to read a whole executable or data file. Windows 7 comes with a built-in defragger that runs automatically at scheduled intervals, but if yours is set by default to run at a time when your PC is usually turned off, it won't get defragged. You can either change the scheduled time, or defrag on demand. Just type "defrag" in the Windows Start Menu search bar, and click on Disk Defragmenter. The version of the utility is improved in Windows 7, and shows more information about what's happening on your disk than Vista did.
6. Change power settings to maximum performance. Of course, this isn't a good choice if you want to save electricity, but it could boost your computing. Head to Control Panel | System and Security | Power Options. From here, click on the left-panel choice Create a power option and choose High Performance.
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Get Rid Of The Junl
7. Clean up Your Disk. From the Start menu, choose All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup. This finds unwanted junk and files such as temporary files, offline Web pages, and installer files on your PC and offers to delete them all at once. You may even find that your Recycle Bin is bulging at the seams: Mine had 1.47GB I didn't know was there! This will generally only have a noticeable affect on speed if your machine is getting close to full, however.
8. Check for Viruses and Spyware. You can run the built-in Windows Defender or a third-party app. You could start with our Editors' Choice, Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus 2010. If you don't want to pay, though, there are plenty of free antimalware options. Our current choice for free AV is Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/).
9. Use the Performance Troubleshooter. In the Control Panel's search box, type "troubleshooting" and under System and Security, you'll see the choice "Check for performance issues." Run the troubleshooter and it may find the root cause of your slowdown.
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Pare Down The Visuals
10. Turn off Desktop Gadgets. Windows 7 ditched the actual visual sidebar of Vista, but there's still a sidebar process running. Turn it off by typing "gadgets" in the Start menu search bar, choosing "View list of running gadgets" and select each in turn and click Remove to shut down any gadgets you can live without.
11. Don 't use a beautiful desktop background. This will free up extra RAM and therefore boost speed slightly. Right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize, then Desktop Background at the bottom of the resulting dialog window. Set it to a solid color.
12. Turn off Aero effects. Head to the Control Panel's Performance Information and Tools section, and choose Adjust Visual Effects. Here you'll find a long list of effects, but simply choosing Adjust for Best Performance will turn everything off. You'll feel like you stepped back into a decade ago.
Customize It
More than any other Windows OS, Windows 7 allows you to make it your very own, with some handy and simple-to-execute customization options. Here are eight of our favorites.
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Location Is Important
13. Move the taskbar. Vista and XP let you move the taskbar, too, and users of those operating systems who preferred that the taskbar reside on the sides or top of the screen can easily drag it to any of those locations in Windows 7.
14. Pin your frequently used folders to the taskbar. This works a little differently from pinning an app. You have to right-click the Windows Explorer default pinned icon to see your pinned folder; your new folder doesn't get its own icon.
15. Tone down Notifications. Or pump them up. I always want to see everything, so in the Notification Area Icons control panel I check the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar check box. But many will want to tone it down, choosing Hide icon and notifications for some services and apps.
16. Change the tray and icons. By default, Windows 7 hides many of the system-tray icons, which you have to hit an up arrow to reveal. I prefer seeing all of them, especially since some apps install system tray icons that I otherwise might not know about, and from which I can easily perform functions of the app. To get to this setting, right-click on the taskbar, choose Properties, then click the Customize button under Notifications. This lists all tray icons, and at the bottom is the check box to show everything.
17. Tone down User Account Control. This was a pain point for a good many Vista users. Now you have options ranging from Always notify me when programs try to install software or make changes to system settings to never doing so. You can even tell it not to do that disconcerting dimming of the desktop.
18. Set up a Home Group. When you designate your Internet connection as Home, you get the option to make all PCs connected to the same router members of a HomeGroup. This means they can share files and stream media to each other. When you create a HomeGroup, you get a password to enter into any other machines you want to join the HomeGroup.
19. Set up your Libraries. Libraries are basically folders that can draw their contents from multiple folders, whether on the same machine, an external drive, or a networked PC. Each library folder has a little link stating the number of locations it draws its contents from; just click this to add more locations.
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Preset Autoplay
20. Change Autoplay options. When you plug in a device or disc, the AutoPlay dialog pops up automatically, offering a number of actions you can perform with what you've inserted, such as running an app or viewing files in a folder. Go to Control Panel's Hardware and Sound panel, and you can specify exactly what actions you want AutoPlay to offer.