Speed Up Windows 7 – Master Tutorial to Make Windows 7 Super Fast

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This is the 3rd tutorial of our "Master Tutorial" series. We have already posted 2 other tutorials for Windows XP and Windows Vista in past and now its turn of Windows 7.

Although Windows 7 is already very fast and reliable but this tutorial will help you in getting the max performance out of your system.

So without wasting any time, here we start our tutorial:

1. Registry Tweaks:

Following topic contains a few registry tweaks to optimize your system performance and add a few useful extras:

Ultimate Collection of Registry Tweaks to Speed Up Windows 7

You just need to download the ZIP file, extract it and run the file. It'll ask for confirmation, accept it. Restart your system to take affect.

2. Right-click on Computer icon on Desktop and select Properties (or press WIN + Pause/Break keys). Now click on Advanced system settings link in left side pane (You can open it directly by giving sysdm.cpl command in RUN or start menu search box). Now click on Settings button in Performance section:

It'll open another window. Disable all unnecessary options in Visual Effects tab, you can leave following options enabled according to your requirements:

Enable Aero Peek (If you want to use Aero Peek feature)
Enable desktop composition (If you want to use Windows Aero theme)
Enable transparent glass (If you want to use transparency in Windows)
Show thumbnails instead of icons (If you want to show thumbnails in Explorer)
Show window contents while dragging (If you want windows to show contents while moving them)
Smooth edges of screen fonts (If you want to show smooth fonts)
Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop (If you want to show shadows under desktop icon labels)
Use visual styles on windows and buttons (If you want to use Windows Aero or Basic theme)

3. Open Windows Explorer and go to "Organize -> Folder and Search Options" and click on "View" tab.

Now disable following options:

Display file size information in folder tips
Hide extensions for known file types
Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color
Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items

4. Right-click on Computer icon on Desktop and select Manage (You can also open it directly by giving services.msc command in RUN or start menu search box).

Now go to Services & Applications -> Services. Here you can set a few unnecessary services to Manual, so that these services don't start automatically with Windows and you can get a faster startup.

Visit following tutorial to know which services can be set to MANUAL to increase system performance:

Windows 7 Services Configuration: Turn Off / Disable Unnecessary Services to Optimize Performance

5. Type msconfig in RUN or Startmenu search box and press Enter. Now go to Startup tab and disable unwanted startup entries. You can disable your graphics card's driver utility, Sound Card utility, etc to speed up the system startup and to increase system performance.

6. Open Sound applet in Control Panel (or type mmsys.cpl in RUN or Startmenu search box and press Enter). Now go to Sounds tab and select No Sounds from Sound Scheme section. You can keep some of your favorite sounds enabled but make sure to set Exit Windows, Windows Log off, Windows Logon and Start Navigation to (None).

Also disable "Play Windows Startup sound" option to disable the sound clip which is played at login screen.

7. Also don't forget to:

Defrag the hard disk regularly
Install only necessary software
Use the latest device drivers
Keep your Windows up-to-date

After following all the above mentioned points, you'll definitely notice major improvements in your Windows 7 performance.

Other similar articles that may interest you:

This article was posted by VG in following section: Windows 7.

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INTERL0PER

Vishal,

excellent tutorial! Thank you for providing such an in-depth, informative guide. Many users of Windows7 do not know that significant performance increases can be acquired by applying these simple tweaks and changing a few settings, that most users never notice were there from the start.

Its fellow computer users such as yourself that are making the internet & computing process much better, easier and faster.

Thanks again. Keep up the great work!
INTERL0PER

@ partha,

please, do yourself a favor and UNINSTALL WINDOWS XP as fast as you can, reinstall windows7 and tweak til your hearts content. Win7 has a significantly better way of handling system resources & components. Not to mention all of the security exploits out for windows xp.
TheAslan

Hiya!!

I know this topic doesn't belong here but i didn't find any other place to go...so here's the problem:

I managed to turn off all the other windows features but when i tried to turn of media features it gave me next popup: An error has occured. Not all of the features were succesfully changed

Can you help me how do i get these media features off? I managed to turn off all the other features but not media features...
VG

^^ I'm not sure but it might be a modified system file problem. Did you try to customize WMP file or any other system file? Try to run sfc /scannow command in Command Prompt.
erick

thank you, mine is faster than ever now.
Sudhir

To oldddddd but still effective
Luus

Now go to Services & Applications -> Services. Here you can set a few unnecessary services to Manual, so that these services don't start automatically with Windows and you can get a faster startup.

It says that i disabled some activeX programs, where can i find these settings?
Uewd

@VG
The above comment from Luus was used by my email. I didn't use this name at all and I didn't write this comment.
Here is the e-mail message I got (captured using snipping tool): blubbz.co.cc/images/captureknk.png

What I have to do? Do you think I am hacked? Anyway I changed the email password few weeks ago (before 29/6, the day this AskVG reader commented).

Is this a problem with your site or this reader really used my e-mail. Please Help.
VG

^^ The above comment by "Luus" was posted at 29 June 2011 and the email ID is different than yours.
BB

@VG - No, the pagefile does not increase system performance. With pagefile enabled, you're copying contents of ram to the hard drive. Disabled means there's no copying involved. Pagefile is something out of the stone age when computers had low amounts of RAM. Now we have computers with 4 to 8GB of RAM. The odds of over spilling are very low. Even if that happens, all that will happen is a system crash, and the system will reboot just fine.