Optimizing Windows 7

As you may know, Windows 7 has received significant improvements in boot times and system response compared to its predecessor Windows Vista. These changes allowed the system not to use all system memory when opening large number of windows. Also changes optimized system services and processes.

In this article we will discuss:

• optimizing the work of the Start menu;
• optimization of the hard drive in Windows 7;
• optimizing the speed of copying and moving files in Windows 7;
• optimizing the work with the drivers for Windows 7;
• speed up Windows 7 boot time;
• accelerate the process of viewing thumbnails;
• speed up Windows 7 shutdown.

Attention!

Please note that some of the considered methods to accelerate windows 7 are based on turning off some tasks, that simplify or improve the functionality of the system for more convenient use.

So in essence you are choosing between convenience and performance.

Now let's take a look at all of these little ways to optimize windows 7.

1. Speeding up the Start menu.

Determination of the newly installed programs, as well as highlighting newly installed programs  takes the system some time, each time you open the Start menu.

You can save this time.

For this you need to go to the Start menu: in the properties of the "Taskbar and Start Menu" (to activate, go to the Control Panel of Windows 7: Start → Control Panel). Go to the tab "Start Menu" and click "Customize"

 Uncheck "Highlight newly installed programs", then click "Apply". 

In order to reduce the pause for windows start menu,
Go to the Registry Editor (command "regedit" dialog "Search programs and files")

Start Registry Editor (regedit.exe), then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Control Panel →  Desktop

Change the value of the key MenuShowDelay from "400" to "50". The pause will be significantly reduced.

2. Optimizing the hard drive in Windows 7.

This option was known since the days of Windows XP, but in XP  it was enabled by default, the Windows 7 disk optimization was considered unnecessary and was disabled by default -  now we'll explain a way to turn on this option.

Go to "Start →  Control Panel →  Device Manager →  Disk Drives →  (select your hard drive) →  Properties →  Policies ... and put a check mark next to the item "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device".

Now in the same "Device Manager"  open another branch "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and then in the properties of all channels of ATA (ATA Channel 0, ATA Channel 1, etc.) in the “Advanced settings” check whether a check mark is at "Use/enable DMA.

Check if unchecked. 

3. Acceleration of copying and moving files in Windows 7.

Windows 7 has another interesting feature - Remote Differential Compression.
On the one hand, this option estimets and transmits the differences between two objects, minimizing the amount of data transmitted, but on the other - it takes time to estimate.

You may disable this feature. To do this go to Start → Control Panel → Programs and features → turn Windows features on or off → Remote differential compression (it is necessary to uncheck).

4. Disabling signature verification of drivers.

This action may also slightly increase the speed of the system (when installing new drivers).

To disable this option in Windows 7, follow these steps:

Execute in the "Start" gpedit.msc

Then follow this path:
User Configuration → Administration Templates → System → Driver Installation → Turn off Windows Update device driver search prompt → Set into "Off" mode.

5. Speed up Windows 7 boot time.

It is well known that boot time of operating system Windows 7 is quite optimized (compared to Windows Vista it is 10-20 seconds faster).

We can win a few more seconds, though this advice applies to those users who work with multi-core processor and operating system Windows 7. So, follow these steps:

1.  Type "MSCONFIG" (without quotes) into the search box of "Start" menu and press "Enter".

2. In the opened window, go to "Boot" and click on "Advanced options"

3. Put check mark next to "Number of processors" and in the drop-down menu under this paragraph, select the maximum number of your cores (2 or 4).

4. Click "OK" and reboot the system to feel quite a difference in the Windows 7 speed boot time.

6. Accelerating the process of viewing thumbnails.

You can speed up the viewing of thumbnails in Windows 7. To do this you must do the following:

1. Type "regedit" (without quotes) into the search box of "Start" menu and press "Enter".
2. Go to the branch HKEY_CURRENT_USER  → Control Panel → Mouse.

3. Double-click on the option "MouseHoverTime" and change its value to 100 or lower.

7. Speed up Windows 7 shut down time.

Windows 7 shutdown time can be significantly reduced. But note that this is a pretty drastic way - we reduce the time for the completion of the program, and the program will be shutdown by force.

1. Type "regedit" (without quotes) into the "Start" menu search box and press Enter.
2. Go to the thread HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → System  → CurrentControlSet → Control.

3. Change the value of "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" from the value 12000 (12 seconds) to 2000 (2 seconds).