Discussion on:

10 ways to speed up Windows 7

Maybe you forgot remove task schedule, perhaps: Google chrome acts like spyware when its update starts as startup program, startup service and task schedule

I've noticed an incredible increase in boot up time on 7, in the last 8 months.This is a home built system. MSI 760GM E51 mobo, 16 gig DDR3,AMD 640 quad core processor, Nvidia 8400 video card, and a 1.5 TB HD. I have Linux Mint 11, as my main OS, win7, Win XP, and Peppermint Linux. Peppermint boots up in around 18 seconds, Mint in 22 seconds, and 7 takes 1minute, 14 seconds. XP I don't even bother checking, as it takes 2 minutes plus. The windows partitions are only used for games, as I have zero trust in Microsoft. Been through all the tweaks, and they helped for awhile, bur eventually slowed down again. Assume it is just another windows problem. Linux remains as fast as the day they were installed.

I'm impressed with Microsoft Security Essentials. I assume the developers know a bit more about the inner workings of windows beyond the API the rest of the world is given. MSE is very fast, it doesn't bog things down the way other anti-malware stacks invariably do.

I also agree with tweaking the search indexing. I usually shut it off entirely, but on occasion I'll set it to rifle through a very specific set of data, if the user has a lot of stuff and does a lot of searching through it.

I've been using MS Security Essentials, but just last week I used Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to discover a pair of rootkits that I subsequently tried to remove. During the removal process, two viruses cropped up that MSSE hadn't previously detected, but it was unable to remove them because the virus/rootkit combo was able to turn off MSSE's real-time protection. By that time, it was too late and many of my core system files had been corrupted to the point that Windows ceased to function for more than 60 seconds at a time before spontaneously rebooting. Safe Mode didn't work either and I was forced to burn down the C drive and re-install the OS.

I've also been to a webpage recently that was compromised with a re-direct attack that one computer with AVG was able to detect and block, but was completely transparent to another computer running MSSE, which allowed the computer to be infected with malware from the malicious re-direct target site.

My faith in MS Security Essentials is quickly dwindling down to nothing after these kinds of blatant incidents of total failure. It may not leave a big footprint on your system resources, but if it doesn't work, what's the point? }:(

1. Don't use multiple anti-malware programs because they often work against one another.

2. Don't visit websites that are likely susceptible to misdirection and attack.

With some degree of optimism after reading a lot of comments about MSSE, I installed and ran it for 24 hours or so during which time I had multiple issues with my formerly okay-running system and 'usual' programs. I even uninstalled a couple of my favorite security freebies, Avast! and Advanced System Care, just to be sure they were not conflicting but the issues became so annoying and time consuming that I just uninstalled MSSE and went back to my faves. Occasionally I install and run other AVs in 'deep scan' just to be sure there isn't something on the system that the usuals haven't caught, and so far only one time had that find a formerly unknown virus. (BTW, caught with MalwareBytes. I always reserve a few alternates that are not installed on my machine for the rare time something sneaks in (usually on an image file downloaded by a kid from seemingly harmless sites, e.g., coloring pictures of critters and feature-creatures). Using safe mode with networking, I've been able to go out and load a different AV program NOT on the disk when it was infected and usually can skip around the bug and grab it with the new program. Hardly high-tech pro here but have developed a little system for self-preservation. I have a couple other strategies for getting back into an infected computer with virus-disabled AV/anti-malware programs but my choice of start-up method is dictated by the way the infected computer is running (not my own computer usually but family members who are less 'brave' about trying to fix their system). So far I haven't killed any computers but have 'fooled' some ugly stuff on their systems. As far as going back to MSSE...not unless I get a different computer that comes with Win 7 and has it preinstalled because I don't want the headaches of trying to get my system back to speed with the programs I use daily and absolutely need (a couple of sophisticated film-production programs besides the usual mail, surfing, and office items). At least as is, I know what to expect!

Because as a Linux user you'll have a lot of free time on your hands to read and respond to blogs about using Windows.

Downloading WinPatrol is a great way to keep track of what's running/starting on your computer (www.winpatrol.com). One of the best utilities you can find.

Having worked with all versions of Windows for many years its interesting that, for the most part, the basic "Speedup Tweaks" have really never changed...I would also suggest, for low end machines (CPU/Ram limited), turn off automatic update, run them manually monthly or biweekly, especially for Laptops

Aside from the obvious benefits of quick and accurate PC-wide search, the indexing service rapidly and efficiently gives up resources when needed by other processes. When you're working on your PC, indexing pauses until you're finished. It would never cross my mind to turn it off - search is a function I use frequently, and IMO disabling it would eliminate one of the most useful functions of the PC.

Supposedly that reduces drive fragmentation on traditional drives, but I've heard mixed feelings about that in Windows 7. Thoughts?

For years I have despised the poor performance of the Microsoft search utility, indexing included. Recently I tried a free utility called EVERYTHING. I am constantly amazed that it takes only seconds to search entire disk(s) to produce a complete listing. Everything does create a database but to kick things off but even that only takes a very short time - from then on Everything will be creating a list on the screen as you are typing in the search target.

My SATA3 SSDs made an incredible difference in performance. I have four presently in my PC - 120GB C Drive (Windows, some apps,) 120 GB D Drive (still empty - haven't decided what to install on it yet,) 240 GB E Drive (Steam & Origin games - FPS games need the speed to load maps,) Older 80 GB F Drive (still empty as well.) The biggest lag I run into at boot time is from the Asus Sabertooth 990FX UEFI boot checks which for some reason are about 20 seconds, and after that, about 15 seconds max. Opening apps is just about instantaneous. Kicking the RAM up to 8GB minimum helps a lot as well.

Items #1 and #2 are always on the list. But, make it easy for non-hyper techie types to do it. Trying to decipher cryptic services file names is not fun, nor is the "try it and see what happens" method.

Do EXACTLY what people have been suggesting eversince the roll-out of Windows 7. Why did this author spend the time duplicating what has been easily sourced in search engines for YEARS??? This is OLD, OLD news!

There are, infact, many more tweaks which have a far more noticeable impact on Win7 performance such as uac, superfetch, network auto-tuning (I call it DE-tuning), aero peek, sidebar and ten-tonne more which the author negated to mention.

Poor article, poor plagiarism, lack of effort and a very bad advice throughout.

I'll start at the beginning.
#1 Services: Microsoft has already done a pretty good job of optimizing Win 7, you said that yourself in the first sentence. Shutting down additional services probably isn't going to help much since some disable themselves anyway when there is no purpose. You won't save move that a blink of your eye...maybe.
#2 Startup Item: This is the primary cause of poor performance. It seems that every programmer thinks I want to 'Quick-Start' their code just because I turned on my computer. WRONG! Again, for what to salvage a blink of an eye in the course of a days work.
DUMP EVERY STARTUP DEVICE except what is native to Windows and specific to built-in hardware. That ALSO means the crapware from your printer. I don't need to be told my INK is low or the printer is out of paper, just to be lead off to some webpage to replenish supplies.
BUT WAIT don't be stupid here. DO NOT USE MSCONFIG! MSCONFIG is a troubleshooting tool NOT a bootloader! DO NOT EVER RUN WINDOWS in any other mode than NORMAL STARTUP. Using MSCONFIG to control startup devices is a LAZY and irresponsible way for a TECH to deal with the problem.
First, look at each device that loads. If you don't need it at all, remove it entirely using the control panel 'Programs and Features'. If you want it present choose whatever options/preferences that control starting with Windows. If there are no choices use REGEDIT find where it loads in RUN and delete the entry. DO NOT USE MSCONFIG!!!!!!!!
#3 and #4 are already understood DUH!
#5 and #6 Well, of course add new HARDWARE, more memory, Solid State drive, hey while your at it swap out that 2nd Gen core i5 for the new 3rd Gen i7...Come on man, anybody can tell someone they could use the newest hardware. After a couple weeks everything is obsolete anyway. This is supposed to be advise on how to improve on what we have to work with.
#7 Defragmentation: The default settings of Windows 7 will take care of that for you. The only time one might run this manually is after installing something like MS Office and the 100 updates that butchers your hard drive into microscopic sized fragments. On the other hand, leave it alone and Win 7 will straighten that out for you.
#8 Power settings: Are you kidding? Changing power setting only change what devices shut down or sleep while you are not in front of your computer. If you are plagued with waiting for your computer to resume from hibernation multiple time during your work day just disable it completely, but power setting won't make the computer 'faster'.
#9 Search indexing: Really? Just uninstall Google Desktop or similar junkware.
#10 Readyboost: Again anybody can advise NEW HARDWARE. Most flashdrives won't help performance anyway. Run the Performance Index in the Control Panel device 'System' with and without Readyboost. Not even a blink of on eye.
Here is what you totally left out:
Control Panel
System
Advanced System Settings
Performance
Settings
Adjust for Best Performance

Windows will never adjust anything for you. All the performance robbing functions of Windows should be disabled.

First thing I look for is some "genius expert" using msconfig. Leave services at default. Disk cleanup and defrag after a major software and update install. I could go on forever...

Best bet? FIND (if you can) and PAY a tech that knows what they are doing.

Please tell me what's wrong with using msconfig to control startup.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with using MSCONFIG as a troubleshooting tool to temporarily alter startup. It was never designed to be used on a permanent basis though. It was designed to allow you to easily turn things on/off and test the results. After things are the way you like them, go and make the necessary permanent changes and put MSCONFIG back in normal startup mode.

It's a troubleshooting tool, an excellent one, but a tool nonetheless.

Gotta admit. I'm one of those hobbyist "genius experts".
Thanks for answering my question, but please allow me to rephrase it.
I noticed that in Windows 7, msconfig actually tells you the date items were disabled. Gives me the impression it's not just a temporary tool, at least in W7. I really meant to ask, what could go wrong with leaving the settings changed in msconfig? With your alternate solution, regedit, I know one mistake can mess up the whole system.

Nothing really wrong with msconfig. Some garbage keeps getting reinstalled unless you are obsessed with avoiding websites and installs. Using regedit and searching for the related file system objects to get rid of something which will very likely get reinstalled later is not for everyone. Not everything can be located easily with search in regedit, particularly if it is encrypted or used odd key names.

It depends on the circumstance whether you really have the time and inclination to be a purist, and, for me, paying someone else to clean my PC feels like hiring a male prostitute for my wife.
Use the Windows image create just in case and make exports of the keys you are touching. With a good image (and restore disk) available, you can hack away without too much fear.

I notice in the updated laptops with 4-8 GB ram, core i5/i7 and ssd hard drives, the ammoung of software loaded at startup is irrelevant. I check a very good vaio laptop with 2 x ssd in raid0 with tons of software loaded in memory and works like a charm.

Is amazing the performance you can get in the pc systems today. video cards now have 2Gb of ddr5, cpu have 8 cores, you can have tons of memory: 8gb to 32gb without too much investment.

And with generation 4 SSD, the performance bottleneck is not now in storage. I spend less time now tuning computers.

First of all, I get the feeling that this is written mainly for a desktop computer. Second, laptops need some of what's called bloatware to run. I own a Toshiba Satellite laptop, and need the TECO, or Toshiba Eco Utility, it helps with the power management. As well as a couple other things.

Now, let's tackle the list, as if we are on a desktop.
1) Some services aren't needed, some should never be ran, and some are needed. Remote desktop is not needed and should never be running, or ran, at all. The remote desktop from Micro$oft.
2) There are somethings you can disable for startup, but do you really need to turn off somethings to make a decent machine faster? Of course running a 6 core AMD Phenom II, it's fairly fast, and you don't need to turn off as much.
3) If you built your own computer, installed Windows 7 from CD, or DVD now, you don't have any bloatware, but Windows. If you buy your computer off the shelf, then you will have some stuff added by manufacturer, vendor, and even store. Google is your friend here, and use it to search and make sure things are good, or not.
4) Run one anti-virus, a couple of anti-spyware/malware programs, and Windows stuff. Now, I recommend Avast for the anti-virus. Others use AVG, others other stuff. Go with what you like, and comfortable with. As for anti-malware, the absolute best is Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. Keep it running all the time. MBAM is one of the best out there. There are others you can run, as well.
5) Memory is good, but make sure your motherboard, etc. can handle more memory, sometimes you have wiggle room, sometimes you don't.
6) SSD is nice, if you can afford it. But I would put the money towards a better CPU, cooling, memory, video card, etc. before you buy a SSD. The little speed you gain from an SSD is offset by the amount of space they have.
7) Desktops, if you are like me, are never off, so you do need to adjust the power settings. I recommend, though, that you adjust it for max performance, and never turn off the monitor, you can do that yourself. You can adjust other things. But never turn off your hard drives, unless the system is going to sleep. And then only put the drives to sleep as well.
8) you should schedule defrags for when you aren't using your computer. Either asleep, at work, etc. Running a defrag in the middle of an intense game will do more harm than good. Utilities that do defrag as well are better than Micro$oft's defrag
9) I hate search in windows 7. I prefer the older XP method. It's should be an option on 7, not mandatory. And I prefer searching from where I need to be, not from the start menu.
10) If have the USB slots for Readyboost, then you should use it. I recommend double, at least, the memory you have, if not triple, or more. Readyboost is a nice thing, for the moment. But buying more memory may negate the need of Readyboost. And guess what people, this is placing the page file on a flash drive. If you don't have a flash drive, then another hard drive, or partition, can be made for just your page file, and won't take up all that hard drive space, and you should be able to defrag that space.

is bloated down with unnecessary junk, services, etc. that don't necessarily need to be running on every workstation (desktop / laptop)

by the time I've finished configuring a bare install the running process count is split almost in half

a fresh install of XP SP3 is around 30 - 35 processes as shown in task manager
when I'm done configuring it's usually down to 17 - 20

laptops tend to be just a bit more because of extra hardware such as wireless NIC, etc.
but my XP laptops still only weigh in at 24 - 26 processes

1. Install Windows 8.

I can wait a minute or two.

Searching from Windows Explorer allows you to fully tailor your search locations. In any event Point 9 in the article is wrong - indexing takes almost no time (except when indexing 10s or 100s of thousands of files) and once indexed has no significant impact on performance. See for example:
http://blog.tune-up.com/myth-buster/myth-busters-is-windows-search-a-true-performance-hog/

It doesn't take long to search the file tables. But the index search tends to cause files to get missed, especially if they are on a network drive.

If you don't use a network drive (like me) - no problem. If you do use a network drive - don't ask Windows to index it. Simple. I wouldn't give away my indexing for quids. Allows me to search the 80,000 files in my data partition for text or filename in a split second.

I;v got an old pent D 805.. he runs windows 7 fine, 6 seconds to shut down and about 30 to start.
MUCH FASTER than vista which was probably about 30 to shut down and at least 3 minutes to start. Now if only my android phone could boot in under 5 minutes.....

I'm following most in here by design of default.

Default:
I installed 7 myself and thus have 0 bloatware
This also means minimal startup items.... though wifie's WP 7.5 is demanding I install zune software if i want to get anything off of it.
So far no spyware. (install is ruffly 8 months old)

And by design I use readyboost, hey I had a spare flash drive so why not.

Readybiost wil only take 4GB of disk space. on a USB key or SD card. Buy the clas 10 SD card, insert it and forget it. Beter than a USB key. Don't expect huge improvements in sped though.
If you get a largert key or SD you can move your temp folders over to it.
[Not realy a sped boster but use a third party DNS service like OpenDNS instead of your ISP. Your ISP won't block much or any malware/suspicios sites. places like OpenDNS will.

I have a brand new Acer Aspire 5349 3Gb DDR3 Ram and 320 Gb disc, running Windows 7. My my machine isn't slow in boot up but extremely slow in closing down. Boot up in less than 1 min closing min. 1,5-2 min. Any ideas

First off, RedyBoost should be at the top of the list. A 4 GB thumb drive is cheap and the speed difference is extremely noticeable.

Secondly, resident anti malware programs are a scam. In addition to eating your RAM and CPU cycles they are quite invasive. Get Spybot Search & Destroy ONLY from http://www.safer-networking.org/ or a mirror linked from that site. Update it once a week and schedule it to run twice a week.

Then get What's Running or Process Explorer (SysInternals) and know what's happening on your system. Both of those free products will show you what is actually running on your system, including the contents of Microsoft sanctioned wrappers such as svchost. This is the equivalent of knowing how to change your oil or change your tire on your car, basic knowledge. It's YOUR computer, not Microsoft's. Take some personal responsibility.

I run Win 7 Pro 64 bit on an Asus 2.33GHz intel quad core with 8 gig ram. We run nothing but Avast antivirus on all our machines here at home. Weekly maintenance is spybot S & D, malwarebytes, and ccleaner with the occasional Avast boot time scan. I've also turned off all the bells and whistles (I'm not a fan of fancy, flashy things that just slow down my machine and make things look like cartoons). My husband bought me this machine 3 yrs ago so I would have something decent to do my school work on when I returned to college. I think we may have reloaded it once but to this day, it boots in less than 15 seconds. Thanks honey

In many years looking how to speed up Windows systems, I came to this conclusion draw from experience: if I run a utility to "wipe" or to "compact" the MFT, the system will run snappiest than ever. That should be done along with the rest of the other steps. Windows do spend a lot of time going through that MFT for its file accesses. If you have many many files, lets say from having temporarily backuped user files or that kind of thigns, your MFT is bloated and a treatment to it will do wonders. Alas there are very few utilities to do that. I have found R-Wipe&Clean and a product from Paragon.
Best regards,
Roberto

With 500GB or 1TB disks being the norm, defragging is hardly necessary anymore. Generally, by the time a defrag would do any good, you may as well wipe and reinstall Windows itself. Happily, even that is not necessary like was up through the XP days.

If you're running 64-bit, memory is so dirt cheap you may as well get at least 8GB. When I upgraded my work PC from 4GB to 8GB a week or so ago, the 4GB cost $28. Shove in another 4GB and turn the page file off - Windows has gotten better, but it still likes paging way more than is necessary. If you're feeling ambitious, get 16GB, use a utility like ImDisk to create an 8GB startup RAM drive and point programs to that for temp/caching. I had a SQLite db I would load into my RAM drive and queries that would take nearly a minute from HDD would take 10 seconds from RAM.

Avoiding multiple A/V packages is solid advice - I recently cleaned up a C2D desktop running Vista that took nearly 15 minutes to fully boot. Once it did, I discovered the problem was not spyware or viruses...it was 4 different A/V programs and two more anti-spy/'tuner' programs that would all start up on boot.

All that said, this article seems a little mis-aimed. This might be good advice to post up on MSN or Yahoo, not TR.