Boost Your System Speed the Easy Way In Windows 7

Microsoft Windows 7 is pretty good when it comes to speed, reliability, and ease of use. Windows 7 is developed to maximize performance of both: users and hardware. There aren’t a lot of things we can do to further speed up the computer. But there is always a room for improvement.

In this article, we will be talking about some advance tweaks that you can do in order to Boost your Microsoft Windows 7 based system’s performance. These tweaks are further categorized into Hardware tweaks and Software tweaks.

Hardware Tweaks

Hardware is the stuff in your computer that you can touch. It is the stuff that actually delivers the performance; Operating system’s job, on the other hand, it to utilize this performance to the fullest. If you do not have a good hardware, no matter which OS you use, you’ll end up having trouble completing your day to day tasks. But there is often a balance that is required between hardware and software. You don’t want to buy hardware that your OS cannot support. Similarly, running your top notch OS on old hardware won’t give your peace of mind.

1. Increase RAM (Random Access Memory) to Increase Performance

The minimum requirement of RAM for Windows 7 is 1 GB for 32bit (x86) processors and 2 GB for 64bit processors. Adding more memory is getting cheaper day by day so we’d recommend that you have at least 3 GB of RAM for 32bit (because 32bit windows don’t see more than 3.5 GB of RAM) and 4GB for 64bit.

In case it is not possible for you to increase RAM there is another way to increase memory of a computer. You might consider using Windows ReadyBoost. It uses a flash drive to maximize performance by pre fetching items from hard drive.

2. Use SSD (Solid State Drive) to Boost Speed

Solid State Drive gives great performance when reading but are too slow when data is being written on them. This helps reduce loading time of programs when they are loaded from Hard Disk (in this case SSD) into RAM. If it is possible, you should use an SSD instead of a Hard Disk to boost your Windows 7 speed. Using SSD boosts Windows 7 load time as well as decrease applications load time.

Software Tweaks

There are a lot more things you can do in terms of Software Tweaks. Although, they are not as good as the hardware tweaks but still, these tweaks manage to boost up windows 7 speed.

1. Disable Search Indexing

The indexing service in Windows 7 indexes all the files on your hard drive in order to speed up searching process. Indexing service runs in the background and takes a lot of resources. If you search for files rarely, then it is a good idea to disable this feature. To disable Search Indexing:

• Click Start
• Type “services.msc” (without quotes) and find Windows Search from the appearing list of service.
• Right click the Windows Search service and choose properties.
• From the appearing dialogue box, disable the service and restart your Computer.

2. Switch Off Unwanted Windows Programs

Windows 7 comes equipped with a lot of programs: some of them you use and some of them you don’t even know about. While executing, these features consume precious resources of your system. To avoid waste of resources, you should switch those features off. In order to do so:

• Go to control panel and click Uninstall a Program
• In the appearing window, click on Turn Windows Features on or off.
• Now un-check the items you don’t want and click OK.

3. Remove Unwanted Startup Programs

A lot of programs start when you start your PC which makes it longer for Windows to boot up. Some of these startup programs are the ones that you don’t use or are not required. To handle this situation you should disable startup programs. To disable startup programs:

• Click on Start, type msconfig and hit enter.
• From the appearing window, simply un-check the program you don’t want to start at start up.

4. Disable Aero and System Sounds

Aero is one hell of a cool feature of Microsoft Windows 7. The cool thing is that you can peek at desktop and behind other windows. The not so cool thing is it takes a lot of resources. So, if you are low on resources, you better disable this feature so that your other work speeds up. Same is the case with System Sounds and disabling it surely help saving system resources. To disable Aero:

• Right click on your desktop and select Personalize
• Select Windows 7 Basic theme.

To disable System Sounds:

• Click on Start and type mmsys.cpl.
• From the appearing window disable the sound and click OK.

Hope these tweaks will speed up your computer and make you bring the most out of your Windows 7 based System. Do let us know in comments about your experience.