Tune Windows 7 for Optimal Performance
Windows 7 is like the engine of a car – the more you know about how it works, the less you have to get help from a third party. Beyond major problems that stop the engine working, there are also many simple tune-ups you can carry out to optimise its performance. Read more to make sure your Windows 7 install is running as well as it should be.
The following tips allow you to boost your machine’s performance without any investment other than time. They are safe to execute. Beware of other sites that promise huge speed boosts or massive space saving tricks. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is and you could end up doing more harm than good to your computer.
Scream if you want to go faster
Everyone gets frustrated when their menus take ages to open. We all want a lightning-fast Windows environment that feels smooth and slick. Did you know you can actually change a setting on your machine to make this happen?
Click on the Start button and type ‘regedit’ into the search field. Click on the Regedit program – this will open the Windows 7 Registry. Be very careful in here – unintentional changes can have huge repercussions. Double-click on the HKEY-CURRENT-USER folder to expand the contents. Then double-click on the Control Panel folder and look for MenuShowDelay in the right-hand pane. It will usually by set to a value of 400 or 200. This is the number of milliseconds it takes for a menu to open. You can enter any value that is greater than 1 to eliminate the delay. You will need to restart your machine for the changes to take effect.
You can do exactly the same with the MouseHoverTime value that’s located in the Mouse folder for an even faster-feeling Windows environment.
Sorting the wheat from the chaff
As you install more and more applications on to your computer, there will be processes running (not to mention using CPU resources) in the background that you don’t need to be running. The problem with these processes is that they’re often linked to applications that aren’t even open. The processes start running automatically when Windows 7 boots. However, it’s very simple to rectify this and conserve your system’s resources.
Open the Start menu and type ‘msconfig’ into the search field. Then click on the ‘msconfig’ search result. Navigate to the ‘startup’ tab and you’ll see a list of all processes that launch during startup. You may want to click on the ‘Startup item’ column to alphabetise the list so you can find things easily. Two examples of unnecessary processes are iTunes Helper and Quicktime. iTunes helper will launch whether you open iTunes or not and Quicktime runs just to give you a quick launch item in your taskbar. Uncheck these from the list and then click Apply.
As everyone’s installed applications list is different, the best thing to do is carry out a quick Google search on all of your startup processes to see if you really need them or not. The more redundant processes you can remove, the faster your system will boot and the smoother your Windows 7 environment will run.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
