How to speed up YOUR Windows 7 -Beginner Friendly-

[eIGHTY]

Hi there, since it's my first post here i thought i might as well make it a good one!

 

So here is my pretty in-depth guide of How to speed up YOUR windows 7, and reduce the amount of processes you're running.

 

So to begin with i'll show you the amount of processes my computer is running while i'm doing general things, such as browsing the internet or playing games,

 

 

So as you can see i'm only running around 45-50 processes while on the internet, if i wasn't on chrome i would only be running around 30-35 as chrome accounts for all your open tabs and other background pages.

 

Now to help you reduce these processes, first of all i'm adding a download link at the bottom of the topic of a bunch of files i have uploaded, they range from temperature testing, from a batch file which contains code of what will set un-neccesary processes to manual, please do not think this is a virus as i'm just trying to help, another file inside is a registry tweak, i have obtained this from askvg and it adds tweaks like adding take ownership to the context menu, and it speeds up menu display.

 

-PLEASE BE AWARE-

Some tweaks can result in your OS not working properly, or it can destroy your boot into windows, be careful what you download,although these tweaks are widely used and have worked for several people, not everything is safe.

 

 

Another thing you can do is go into "MSCONFIG", if you don't know how to do this here you go,

 

Click the windows start button, and then type run, you will then be greeted by this window.

 

 

 

Now in here you can see what services, and what programs are starting up when you are booting into windows,

 

 

ensure that when you go to the services tab you check Hide microsoft services, this will you help stop yourself from disabling any services you wish you shouldn't have.

Now uncheck the programs you wish you don't need starting up especially in your boot tab as this is where most of the startup services will come from, as soon as you launch programs services have to run for the program to be able to do what it does, varying from sending information to the internet or downloading updates etc. many of these services are svchost.exe

 

 

 

Now onto some of the other programs i have attached,

When you first run the registry tweak you will get a message like this appear

 

Do not worry this is just a warning that anything bad can cause certain things to not work, please remember that this is safe and nothing bad will happen. after you have applied these tweaks you will be greeted with this message

 

Now the batch file will only turn alot of un-necessary services off or to manual as you will see here

 

Now if you wish to turn a service back on after running this simply go to the run program again, and type "Services.msc"

 

Now you can see a whole lot of my services that i do not need are set to manual, before your services are changed i can guarantee that most of your services are set to auto or delayed, setting these to manual are great because that means it frees up your memory and the amount of calculations your CPU needs to do.

 

 

 

Now moving onto a few more advanced things,

 

If you click your start menu button, and right click computer and hit properties you will be greeted of where the system specs are contained 

 

now head over to advanced system settings on the left tab and then you can head over to the advanced tab, here you will see performance options for example disabling certain theme animations etc

 

now if you have a really slow PC and you don't really want any of the animations then you can easily untick here what you want and do not want, this will give you a significant increase in menu browsing etc.

 

now if we head over to the advanced tab once again you will be able to change your page file, page file is basically hard drive memory kind of converted to temporary space or something i'm not fully knowledgeable about this, for 8GB of ram like me, i have set my page file to 12000 or 12GB with a maximum of 13.5GB if you have 16 Then double this and so on,You may not see the most huge difference but it will definetly help out in the background of your computer.

 

 

 

3rd Party Programs

 

CCleaner

Auslogics Disk Defrag

Game Booster

Advanced system care

 

Ccleaner will remove any junk files and privacy traces and history from your browsers as well as it's great registry fixer, this will delete un-necessary registry entries and allow it to run smoother

..

 

 

Auslogics Disk Defrag will defrag your hard drive(s) as well as optimize them, for anyone who doesn't know what defragging is, it is basically getting parts of different files, data and programs and it positions them next to eachother so each time you open a program your HDD does not need to move from one side of the platter to the other, it will only move right next to it, this increases loading time and possibly program speed

 

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Game Booster will close several different processes and services running on your computer for you with the click of a button, you are able to choose from several different programs you wish to close or services, this is great because it allows your CPU to run smoother and not being cluttered as well as your RAM with other un-needed Programs.

 

 

Advanced System Care This is also another amazing program with a bucket load of features from defragging your hard drive, to defragging your registry, and removing privacy traces etc, this program works great and combined with all these other programs you are guaranteed are a fast computer after all this hard work.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Download link to the files : http://www.sendspace.com/file/u7b06b

And a pastebin of the registry and batch tweaks ; http://pastebin.com/9XTSwYqa

 

 

And here is a Virus scan for anyone worried   :) 

 

 

 

 

So this concludes the first part of my guide of how to speed up YOUR Windows 7, i hope it's helped you and feel free to share it around!

 

By Josh

[eIGHTY]

83 Views no comments :l

[Wats]

This is good. I remember I used almost everything listed, except Advanced System Care. I used to do all of the optimizing I could for Windows but now i try to leave it all alone. Now I use it until I break it and just re-install.

 

You did remind me to go mess with msconfig, thanks :]

[mumbojumbogumbo]

You should add that a note saying that some of these steps are not safe. Registry tweaking is always dangerous and although it might work for you, someone else might corrupt their OS doing this.

 

Some of the start up programs and services are required for some programs to start. Not to mention that you don't get a huge performance increase by disabling Microsoft services unless it's conflicting with something else.

 

Why in the world would you want 12GB of pagefile? Unless you run with 2GB less and do crazy editing, it's recommended to leave it as Automatic or 512-1024 if you have an SSD. If you have a lot of RAM and you don't edit, it's recommended to set it at 512-1024.

CCleaner was known to delete AMD CCC registry files that are needed to run CCC. I'm not sure if it does that now. CCleaner as a file cleaner is pretty safe.

[eIGHTY]

"You should add that a note saying that some of these steps are not safe. Registry tweaking is always dangerous and although it might work for you, someone else might corrupt their OS doing this."

Added this in, thank you.

 

"Why in the world would you want 12GB of pagefile? Unless you run with 2GB less and do crazy editing, it's recommended to leave it as Automatic or 512-1024 if you have an SSD. If you have a lot of RAM and you don't edit, it's recommended to set it at 512-1024 even w/out and HDD."

 

Windows set my default page profile to 8-10GB by its self so i'm not sure where you're coming from with this.

 

 

[GoodBytes]

Its good, good work.
But have some issues:
-> You don't explain that some services are needed, and that are depending on others. Making everything or the wrong thing to manual can break things.

-> Game Booster is complete crap. It does nothing, and help nothing. This is as helpful as "memory defragmenter", or a blank window.

-> Registry defrag is not needed. Because your system defrag does it, and your entire registry is loaded on memory at startup. Things in RAM are accessed almost instantly compared to the HDD.

-> "Advance System Care" beside the registry defrag does nothing more than CCleaner. Also, clenaing stuff does not make Windows go faster, but it's nice to mention nonetheless. So I like.

-> Pagefile. Page file should not shrunk bellow the amount of RAM that you have, let alone disable, as you are blocking context switch processed form occurring (more on that later). You can shrink the page file, but only if you are desperate for storage space, and you can't afford a higher capacity drive. There is no benefits from shrinking the page file. Since Vista, the system uses the RAM FIRST, once it's full or near full, it now starts using the pagefile, by moving things that you don't use into there.
 

What is Context Switch?

Context Switch is a method that your RAM does to defragment itself. Let me explain,

 

A running program is called a process. When a process runs it consumes a certain amount of memory on your RAM. That capacity stays always in 1 block, and can't be cut into pieces like a file on your HDD. So in a way it never fragments. Great! Also, for many and complicated reasons that I won't cover, the block of memory that a process occupies cannot be moved while the program(s) is/are running. Ok, right. But, this means that by doing this it fragment itself.. Wait what? Yup! It fragment empty space. Basically you have plenty of empty space blocks separated, and not together as you open and close programs.

Let's have a look at what happens (in a simple way)
- Process A consumes 10% of your RAM.
- Process B consumes 40% of your RAM.
- Process C consumes 5% of your RAM.
- Process D consumes 30% of your RAM.
- Process E consumes 5% of your RAM.
- 10% Free space after Process E to the end of your memory.
Total: 90% used, 10% free.

 

Now, you close Process C. So now, as nothing can move, you have a 5% free space hole in your RAM. In total, you have 15% of free space.

Now, you open Process F, which consume 15% of your RAM. Well you are out of RAM. Because while you have the space, it doesn't fit into 1 block. Remember nothing can move. You have fragment free space. So you get a low memory error, despite having plenty of free space.

What normally happens in such situation is that Windows (or wtv OS you use) executes something called Context Switch, where it flushes out the RAM clean. And copies pagefile to your RAM in a organize clean way (defragmented).

Your page file is a backup of your RAM. Everything you put on your RAM is duplicated on your pagefile, to make this Context Switch perform the fastest as possible (else it would need to copy the RAM to your HDD or SSD and then flush it, and copy the page-file back to the RAM. We know how much time it takes transferring several GB of data, it sure isn't instant especially using an HDD.

 

But why the backup, I can wait! you say. Well it's because, anything that isn't in your RAM, can't be processed by the CPU. So, your system will temporally lock up, as your RAM will be emptied. Now Windows (well Vista and up) is smart. To hide this, it will first priorities key component of the OS, related to the user interface and your interaction with the system, by transferring that, first onto your RAM, this will make it invisible to you as its just a few MB and everything else will follow, with some fancy algorithm on what you are currently using, and other guess work. Pretty smart.

 

In the old old days back when we had 128/256MB of RAM with XP or older, you might recall that your system, after starting a program, just becomes unresponsive for a moment (temporarily freezes), and comes back to normal. When this occurred, your system was doing the Context Switch operation.

 

-----------------

 

Also,
You need to pay 10$ to get your download. When you create an account it asks you pay. Your download doesn't seam illegible for the Basic or the site, at the moment I check it, is broken. Please use better systems, like the free SkyDrive from Microsoft.
Can you paste the content of the .reg file and batch file in text form.

[mumbojumbogumbo]

 

Windows set my default page profile to 8-10GB by its self so i'm not sure where you're coming from with this.

Obviously if you're using tons of RAM Windows will allocate more space to the pagefile.

[eIGHTY]

Sorry about the download i had no idea, and thanks for explaining that for me, found it very insightful,

In other words, here is a fixed download link, http://www.sendspace.com/file/u7b06b

and the pastebin of what you wanted, http://pastebin.com/9XTSwYqa

[GoodBytes]

Thanks!

 

I am noticing some programs in your files. While it's really cool you do this, I don't think you can do this, without permission of the author. Just a heads up to avoid problems. What I would do is include links files that goes to the website of each programs.

 

I am looking into the registry file, and I see it add things. like "Take ownership", "Move To", and "Copy To".

Why?

 

Also it seams that it will change the command prompt to always open as true administrator. This is not good for user level security reasons.

 

It also reduces the timeout for killing services. This is not good as well, as it means that Windows will force close these services, no waiting them to finish what they are doing before closing.

 

Also, you reduce the time for Windows waits for a service to response. This might be an issue if a software uses a service to do a heavy task... during this time it is normal it won't respond, same for applications.

[eIGHTY]

Thanks!

 

I am noticing some programs in your files. While it's really cool you do this, I don't think you can do this, without permission of the author. Just a heads up to avoid problems. What I would do is include links files that goes to the website of each programs.

 

I am looking into the registry file, and I see it add things. like "Take ownership", "Move To", and "Copy To".

Why?

 

Also it seams that it will change the command prompt to always open as true administrator. This is not good for user level security reasons.

 

It also reduces the timeout for killing services. This is not good as well, as it means that Windows will force close these services, no waiting them to finish what they are doing before closing.

 

Also, you reduce the time for Windows waits for a service to response. This might be an issue if a software uses a service to do a heavy task... during this time it is normal it won't respond, same for applications.

As i said, i have listed ASKVG as the author of these tweaks, they were theirs and that's where they are from, however i see where you're coming from, but i created this guide in order to attempt to help people speed up their computers, i wasn't expecting them to be worried about security level measuresif they are going to activated registry and batch tweaks. i would of thought alot of this was already said in the thread, but it appears not, anyway thanks for your feedback.

[GoodBytes]

Ah ok, I follow you. The batch file is fine... it's mostly set stuff that already there by default. Which can be good, in the case someone accidentally disable a needed service and things stop working or having issues.

[eIGHTY]

Alright hope this clears up a few things for anyone possibly reading, all feedback is welcome.

[WhatARoaster]

May be relevant:

 

**Not sure how much is the same/repeated**

[eIGHTY]

May be relevant:

 

**Not sure how much is the same/repeated**

Awesome, thanks for adding, helps everyone

[eIGHTY]

Will try to add more eventually

[Rhizo]

Decent guide. I have also found reinstalling windows every 10 months or so significantly helps things.

[GoodBytes]

Decent guide. I have also found reinstalling windows every 10 months or so significantly helps things.

You should not have to re-install Windows.

[Rhizo]

You should not have to re-install Windows.

I know, but for some reason windows degrades over time. A reinstall every year or so helps tremendously. Gnu/Linux does not have this problem. I have an old pc with arch linux on it for a few years now and it works like I just installed it.

[GoodBytes]

It does not have this problem. It's because you screw up your Windows in some fashion :)

Maybe you are tweaking Windows, and disabling thing you should not (I guess?) or you install everything you come by, and not removing it, leaving startup programs and background services and such. Or maybe the defrag software you use for your HDD (if you use that) actually sucks at doing it's job... Maybe yuo use registry cleaners, which makes programs and Windows loose data, and forces it to start searching.. slowly slowing down your computer over time. It can be many things.

[eIGHTY]

HOT

[SinTonNiSon]

Very useful thx!