How to speed up Windows 7 in 10 easy steps

Windows 7 is quite fast and even after you have installed and uninstalled a few programs, have cluttered your system and polluted your hard drive with countless useless files and leftovers, you shouldn’t see a dramatic decrease in your computer’s performance. However, if you want to make Windows 7 even faster, then follow these easy steps.

1. Configure Windows 7 for best performance

If you want to see instant increase in your computer’s speed, then you have to optimize it for best performance. Simply right-click on the Computer icon on your desktop and select Properties:

On the next window click the Advanced system settings link

Click the Settings button under Performance

On the Performance options windows select Adjust for best performance.

Now your Windows 7 will be much faster, but you will disable some of its great features; in order to prevent that simply choose Custom in the previous step and only disable the features that you don’t need.

2. Disable some of the start-up programs

Click the Start button on your taskbar, type msconfig in the search box and press Enter. Once the System Configuration window opens, click the Startup tab and deselect the programs that you don’t want to start with every boot-up.

3. Defragment your hard drive regularly

Make sure that disk fragmentation scheduling is turned on: Click the Start button, then All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. See that the Scheduled defragmentation is turned on. Keep in mind that while the disk is defragmenting it might slow down your system, which is why you should choose time of the day that you aren’t likely to be using your computer.

4. Run Disk Cleanup regularly

Click the Start button, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup.

Select the drive from the drop-down menu and click the OK button. Wait for the tool to inspect your drive and then select some of the items such as Temporary Internet Files, Recycle Bin, Downloaded Programs, etc.

5. Change your computer power plan for better performance

Open Control Panel, click on System and Security, click on Power Options. Expand the Show additional plans and select High Performance.

6. Enable write-caching

Write-caching is a useful feature since it saves your data and I would advise you to disable it only if you have an UPS or aren’t concerned about losing your data in the case of power failure or computer malfunction. In order to disable write-caching open the Device Manager and click on Disk Drives to expand it:

Right click on the drive and select Properties, on the Device Properties Window open the Policies tab and make sure that Enable write-caching on the device is ticked.

7. Disable thumbnail preview in Windows 7

In most cases the thumbnail preview isn’t useful, so you might want to disable it. Double click on the Computer icon on your desktop, click Organize and then Folder and search options:

Open the View tab in the Folder Options window and select Always chow icons, never thumbnails, click OK to confirm your choice

8. Turn off the System Sounds

Click the Start button and in the Search box type mmsys.cpl and press Enter. Open the Sounds tab, click Windows Default and choose No Sounds from the drop-down menu if you wish to disable all sounds.

9. Disable some of the Windows features

Open Control Panel, then click Programs, Programs and Features and then click the Turn Windows features on or off link

In the next Window deselect the features that you wish to turn off:

10. Enable ReadyBoost

In order to use ReadyBoost you need a flash drive. Just plug it in and if Auto Play starts, choose Speed up my system; if it doesn’t open Windows Explorer, click Computer, right click on the flash drive and select Properties.

Open the ReadyBoost tab and select Use this device. Click OK to confirm.