How to Speed Up Your Windows 7 Computer

Compared to its predecessors, the Windows 7 Operating System (OS) is designed to perform faster. However, as you use it for your tasks and leisure time, it tends to get slower. This problem is technically not the fault of the OS that you have. In fact, most operating systems, no matter what type it is, face this same problem.

There are plenty of reasons for this. Some of the common ones include accumulation of junk and temporary files within the system, a heavily loaded hard drive and running too much programs and services in the background which are mostly not necessary.

How can you bring your Windows 7 machine to the speed it once had? Here are few essential tweaks you can do to your computer/laptop that will help speed it up.

Visual and Sound Settings

1. Disable Other Visual Effects

Do you really need all those sound and visual effects? Disabling some or all will surely improve system performance. To make changes to your computer’s visual effects just follow these steps.

  • On your keyboard, press the Windows key, hold it down then press the Pause/Break key on the upper right portion in line with the function (F1-F12) keys.
  • A window will appear. On the window, look for the “Advanced system settings” option on the left side of your screen then click it.
  • You will see tabs on top of the window that appears. Choose and click on “Advanced”, under the “Performance” category, click “Settings”.
  • On performance options window that appears click “Visual Effects”. You can then start disabling (by unchecking) the effects that you don’t need. Choosing the “Adjust for best performance” option on top will disable all effects.
  • After choosing the effects to be disabled, simply click “Apply” then “OK”.

Disabling some or all of the effects will make your screen less attractive but it will greatly boost your computer’s performance.

2. Disable Certain Sound Effects

Here is how you can disable your sound effects.

  • Click the “Start” button, type mmsys.cpl on the search box and press Enter.
  • A Sound window will appear, on the window click the “Sounds” tab.
  • Choose the “No Sounds” scheme by clicking the dropdown menu.
  • You can also enable (check) “Play Windows Startup sound” option or disable (uncheck) it.
  • After setting it up, click “Apply” then “OK”.

Services and Software Must-Do’s

1. Disable Unnecessary Services

You might not know it but there are actually processes and other services that are running in the background and most are not necessary. They automatically run once your computer starts and consumes your RAM’s storage and the processor’s speed which slows down the more important processes.

Disabling them is a good idea. To disable unnecessary processes, follow these steps:

  • Click the “Start” button then type “services.msc” on the search box then press Enter.
  • You will then see the “Services” window. On the list of services, you can choose the ones that you want to be set to manual, stop or disable. You can do it by right clicking the item. (Refer to figure below)
  • If a service is already running, right click on it and stop it first.
  • Once the service is set to ‘Stop’, you can right click on it again and select “Properties” on the pop-up menu that appears.
  • Look for “Startup type”. If you’ll need the service you can select “Manual”. If it’s not needed, you can choose “Disable”.
  • Close the window after making the desired changes.

2. Disable Unused Startup Programs

There are certain programs that automatically run when your system starts. This may cause the startup process to slow down. You can disable startup programs which are not needed. To do this, just follow the instructions below:

  • Click the “Start” button then type “msconfig” on the search box and press Enter.
  • The “System Configuration” window will appear, on the window, click the “Startup” tab.
  • To disable the programs which are not necessary for startup just uncheck the box before each program description.
  • Once you’re done disabling unneeded processes, click “Apply” then “OK”.

3. Install only the software that you need

Be sure that you only install the programs that you really need. Trial programs are the common ones.

If you installed a program on a trial version then later on you found out that you don’t actually need it then you should uninstall and delete is right away free some RAM and disk space and as well as save more processor speed.

If you already exhausted all available options of removing a certain program but you still can’t get rid of it then it would be best to format your hard disk. Remember that formatting might delete all data inside your drive so before doing it, make sure that you backed up all the critical files that you saved on your machine.

4. Install and Run a Reliable Antivirus Program

Make sure that you installed excellent virus protection software on to your PC/laptop. Having a good antivirus helps protect your machine from viruses, adware and malware from 3rd party sources.

These programs and software are installed automatically to your system for malicious purposes. In time, as these malicious devils accumulate, your computer becomes more prone to software and other serious hardware damages.

Hard Drive Tweaks

1. Perform a hard drive cleanup regularly

Accumulated junk, temporary and download files should be cleaned up from your hard drive in order to free up some System resource (RAM) and hard drive space as well.

You can do this on Windows Disk Cleanup utility. To access this useful tool on your Windows 7 machine just follow the steps below:

  • Click the “Start” button on the lower left corner of your screen.
  • In the search box, type Disk Cleanup.
  • Click Disk Cleanup under the “Programs” category on the search results.
  • In the window that appears, click the dropdown button and choose the drive that you want to cleanup (Drives C: or D: commonly), Click OK. The system will then calculate and search for files to be cleaned up.
  • You can then “check” the type of files that you want to be deleted or “uncheck” the ones that you want to be retained on your hard drive then Click OK.
  • Click “Delete Files”. Wait until the next window completes deleting all useless/junk files and you’re done!

2. Defragment your drive on a regular basis

When you disk runs out of space where it can store files into, the OS automatically splits up the data to bits and stores it in separate locations making your drive fragmented which causes your machine to slow down.

Defragmentation helps solve this problem. To defragment your drive on your windows PC just follow these steps:

  • Click the “Start” button on the lower left corner of your screen.
  • Enter “Disk Defragmenter” on the search box.
  • Select/click “Disk Defragmenter” under the “Programs” category.
  • On the next window that appears, choose the disk partition that you want to defragment (C: or D: commonly). Choose the one which has Windows on it (C: by default) and click “Defragment Disk”.
  • Wait until the system completes relocating and consolidating all related files (reaches 100%) and you’re done!

Wrapping Up

These tips should surely make your Windows 7 machine perform like brand new again. Maintain your computer just like how you maintain your car or other investments that you have and you’ll get the most out of it no matter when, where and how you use it.