Introduction: How to speed up Windows 7 then?
Most guides will tell you to turn off all the aero features and use no background wallpaper. That’s not useful, that’s more like a trade-off, because who wouldn’t want a nice desktop? And AeroSnap is really useful! I agree that you can get some more performance by doing this, but it’s not worth it if you are not on a netbook. If you think you don’t need a “fancy” desktop, then feel free to do it anyway and adjust your PC for best performance (link below).
First, let’s think about it .. what is really consuming a lot of CPU and memory? Right! All the services that are running in the background all the time.
Things you should *not* do to make Windows 7 faster:
1. Hit Start
2. Enter “SystemPropertiesPerformance” into the search field, hit enter
3. Select “Adjust for best Performance” or at least uncheck the first two entries
Turn off services and boost your Windows 7 gaming performance!
To turn off all those unnecessary services we use a tool called “GameBooster”, it’s obviously only one of the ways to do it, but it’s a lot faster than doing it manually. You can temporarily stop all services (that are not required) while you play. Best of all, you can even edit the services list with just a couple clicks and add more services to get even more performance.
Boost Windows 7 Gaming Performance with GameBooster
To add any other services, click on “Options”-”Edit Service List”. Now, simply add any services using this format: RemoteRegistry=1
What other services should I add to this list?
Computer Browser (Browser=1)
Protected Storage (ProtectedStorage=1)
Remote Registry (RemoteRegistry=1)
Secondary Logon (seclogon=1)
Security Center (wscsvc=1)
Themes (Themes=1)
Windows Errors Reporting Service (WerSvc=1)
Windows Media Center Service Launcher (ehstart=1)
Windows Search (WSearch=1)
Windows Time (W32Time=1)
Update 04/21: This tweak does not seem to have great effects on your boot time. Instead use a
and remove as many startup programs as you possibly can.
Do you have a dual-core or quad-core processor? Great, let’s lower the boot time of Windows 7:
1. Click on Start, enter “msconfig” into the search field
2. Open the “boot” tab
3. Click on Advanced
4. Check “Number of proccessors” and select “2″ or “4″ from the dropdown menu. (obviously, you can only select it if you have a dual-core/quad-core).
Speed up Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Preview
1. Click on Start, enter “regedit” into the search field.
2. Goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
3. Double-click on “MouseHoverTime” and change the value to 100 or lower:
Change the mouse hover time to 100 or lower
4. Voilà, your thumbnail previews should appear a lot faster now. For another great tweak to speed up the Windows 7 taskbar.
Speed Up Windows 7 Shutdown Time
1. Open the registry editor (enter regedit into search field)
2. Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Con trol”
3. Lower the value (12000 is the default value = 12 seconds) to a value of your choice
Speed Up Windows 7 Shutdown
Speed Up Application Access – Increase your productivity
First of all create a folder “QuickStart” somewhere on your PC. Right-click on your taskbar:
Locate the folder “QuickStart” (you just created the folder so yo should know where it is) and then click “Ok”. You are almost done, but we don’t want that ugly text on our taskbar that is using a lot of space, turn it off:
Right-click on the new toolbar and uncheck “Show Text” and “Show Title”! Now drag the toolbar to the left until it’s below the main icons and you will have something like this:
Speed Up Windows 7 Using ReadyBoost
Ok, now all unnecessary services are stopped. What would be the next logical step? When AMD and Microsoft were not able to increase the CPU power significantly any more, they simply added more CPU’s, that’s why we have dual and quad-core CPU’s nowadays. So, what you can do is to get more RAM. However, we don’t want to buy anything new, because we’re on a low budget. Although, I am sure that you own an USB-stick , right?
Since Windows Vista there is a little feature, that most people do NOT use effectively. To be honest with you, I haven’t used it myself and I might run into errors while I try to show it to you. The feature is called ReadyBoost and can give you up to 6% more performance. This depends on the amount of RAM you have. Low-End system with less RAM will see a great performance increase and many applications will load faster. Since Windows 7 there is no longer a memory limit of 4GB and you can use several devices for ReadyBoost.
1. Plugin your USB-stick
2. Move all your files on that stick into a folder on your hard drive to make room.
3. Start the Explorer (Windows + E), do a right-click on your drive and select properties.
4. Open the tab ReadyBoost and pick Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. Click on Apply.
5. Repeat the steps 1-4 for all other devices (unlimited)
ReadyBoost - increase your performance by 4-6%
Ok, so we added a ReadyBoost device. Let’s see what it looks like:
ReadyBoost Cache (898MB)
On the drive you can find a cache file now that should be pretty big. Still had some other files on the stick, because this is my MP3-player.
Check if ReadyBoost is working
What’s next? Right, did it really improve my performance or is a USB-stick (not even USB2.0) insufficient? First of all,
1. Goto “Start” – Enter “Performance” into the search field
2. Click on “Performance Monitor”
3. Add “ReadyBoost Cache”
Most guides will tell you to turn off all the aero features and use no background wallpaper. That’s not useful, that’s more like a trade-off, because who wouldn’t want a nice desktop? And AeroSnap is really useful! I agree that you can get some more performance by doing this, but it’s not worth it if you are not on a netbook. If you think you don’t need a “fancy” desktop, then feel free to do it anyway and adjust your PC for best performance (link below).
First, let’s think about it .. what is really consuming a lot of CPU and memory? Right! All the services that are running in the background all the time.
Things you should *not* do to make Windows 7 faster:
1. Hit Start
2. Enter “SystemPropertiesPerformance” into the search field, hit enter
3. Select “Adjust for best Performance” or at least uncheck the first two entries
Turn off services and boost your Windows 7 gaming performance!
To turn off all those unnecessary services we use a tool called “GameBooster”, it’s obviously only one of the ways to do it, but it’s a lot faster than doing it manually. You can temporarily stop all services (that are not required) while you play. Best of all, you can even edit the services list with just a couple clicks and add more services to get even more performance.
Code:
Download Gamebooster
Boost Windows 7 Gaming Performance with GameBooster
To add any other services, click on “Options”-”Edit Service List”. Now, simply add any services using this format: RemoteRegistry=1
What other services should I add to this list?
Computer Browser (Browser=1)
Protected Storage (ProtectedStorage=1)
Remote Registry (RemoteRegistry=1)
Secondary Logon (seclogon=1)
Security Center (wscsvc=1)
Themes (Themes=1)
Windows Errors Reporting Service (WerSvc=1)
Windows Media Center Service Launcher (ehstart=1)
Windows Search (WSearch=1)
Windows Time (W32Time=1)
- Link:
- Link:
Update 04/21: This tweak does not seem to have great effects on your boot time. Instead use a
and remove as many startup programs as you possibly can.
Do you have a dual-core or quad-core processor? Great, let’s lower the boot time of Windows 7:
1. Click on Start, enter “msconfig” into the search field
2. Open the “boot” tab
3. Click on Advanced
4. Check “Number of proccessors” and select “2″ or “4″ from the dropdown menu. (obviously, you can only select it if you have a dual-core/quad-core).
Speed up Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Preview
1. Click on Start, enter “regedit” into the search field.
2. Goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
3. Double-click on “MouseHoverTime” and change the value to 100 or lower:
Change the mouse hover time to 100 or lower4. Voilà, your thumbnail previews should appear a lot faster now. For another great tweak to speed up the Windows 7 taskbar.
Speed Up Windows 7 Shutdown Time
1. Open the registry editor (enter regedit into search field)
2. Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Con trol”
3. Lower the value (12000 is the default value = 12 seconds) to a value of your choice
Speed Up Windows 7 Shutdown
Speed Up Application Access – Increase your productivity
First of all create a folder “QuickStart” somewhere on your PC. Right-click on your taskbar:
Locate the folder “QuickStart” (you just created the folder so yo should know where it is) and then click “Ok”. You are almost done, but we don’t want that ugly text on our taskbar that is using a lot of space, turn it off:
Right-click on the new toolbar and uncheck “Show Text” and “Show Title”! Now drag the toolbar to the left until it’s below the main icons and you will have something like this:
Speed Up Windows 7 Using ReadyBoost
Ok, now all unnecessary services are stopped. What would be the next logical step? When AMD and Microsoft were not able to increase the CPU power significantly any more, they simply added more CPU’s, that’s why we have dual and quad-core CPU’s nowadays. So, what you can do is to get more RAM. However, we don’t want to buy anything new, because we’re on a low budget. Although, I am sure that you own an USB-stick , right?
Since Windows Vista there is a little feature, that most people do NOT use effectively. To be honest with you, I haven’t used it myself and I might run into errors while I try to show it to you. The feature is called ReadyBoost and can give you up to 6% more performance. This depends on the amount of RAM you have. Low-End system with less RAM will see a great performance increase and many applications will load faster. Since Windows 7 there is no longer a memory limit of 4GB and you can use several devices for ReadyBoost.
1. Plugin your USB-stick
2. Move all your files on that stick into a folder on your hard drive to make room.
3. Start the Explorer (Windows + E), do a right-click on your drive and select properties.
4. Open the tab ReadyBoost and pick Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. Click on Apply.
5. Repeat the steps 1-4 for all other devices (unlimited)
ReadyBoost - increase your performance by 4-6%Ok, so we added a ReadyBoost device. Let’s see what it looks like:
ReadyBoost Cache (898MB)On the drive you can find a cache file now that should be pretty big. Still had some other files on the stick, because this is my MP3-player.
Check if ReadyBoost is working
What’s next? Right, did it really improve my performance or is a USB-stick (not even USB2.0) insufficient? First of all,
1. Goto “Start” – Enter “Performance” into the search field
2. Click on “Performance Monitor”
3. Add “ReadyBoost Cache”
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