The computer speed-up guide. This is a guide that will show you how to increase the speed of your computer. While these tweaks may not make your computer as fast as a fresh reinstall of windows, You'll be amazed at what your computer can do!
Notes and Warnings. list of 6 items • Please make sure you have a backup of your working system before you start. • Make sure you have the licance keys for both windows and any programs, in case you need to reinstall windows for some reason. • Use all these tweaks at your own risk - I am not responsible for any damage to your computer or files. • If you are unsure about any of these tweaks, don't do them, or Contact me First. • Make sure you create system restore points. • Have fun, enjoy the guide and a faster computer! list end What You will Need. list of 2 items • A computer with windows. Mac and linux guides are coming soon. • All software used are given in the sections they are used in. list end OK, let's get started. Speed up the boot menu. If you have only 1 operating system on your computer, you do not need the boot menu to appear, and can save some time on boot-up. Here is how to disable it: list of 7 items 1. Go to start>control panel. You can also type control.exe into run... dialog box. 2. If you have not done so already, switch your control panel to clasic view. To do this in XP, click the "Switch to clasic view." button. If using vista, click "clasic view" link. If your using windows 7, click the catagory button, and then click small or large icons. If using old version of windows, it's already in clasic view! 3. Click "system." The system properties dialog will appear. If you are using windows vista or 7, you will need to click "advanced system settings. If a UAC dialog appears, allow it. 4. Click the advanced tab, and then click "startup and recovery." 5. This is where you have to make a choise. If you have more than 1 system on your computer, such as windows and linux, change the value in the "time to display list of operating systems" edit box to something smaller than the default (30). If you only have 1 system, and you don't want the boot menu, you can uncheck the "time to display list of operating systems" checkbox. 6. Click OK. 7. Close the control panel, and restart to see the boot time difference. list end Disable the unwanted visual effects. If you are visually impaired, or if you care more about performance than nice visuals, you can disable the visual effects. list of 3 items 1. Go to the system properties, mentioned in the step above. 2. Click the advanced tab, and then click "performance." 3. On the visual effects tab, change the setting in the list of radio buttons to "Ajust for best performance". If you don't want to loose them all, you can select "custom" and then choose from the tree-view which ones you want. When you're done, click OK, click OK in system properties, and close control panel. list end Tweak the services. Services are background applications that start every time your computer starts. These services control your computers software, such as the event log. You can disable services you don't need. For example, on a desktop computer that does not need wireless internet, you can disable the wireless services. list of 3 items 1. Go into the control panel, and then into administrative tools. 2. Open the "services" application. 3. You are then given a big list of services, with information about what each service does. For more info about the service, you can press enter on it to view it's properties. To disable a service: list of 3 items nesting level 1 1. Open it's properties, iether right click and select properties, or press enter on the service name. 2. In the startup type box, change the value to "disabled," or on vista and windows 7 "startup (delayed) 3. Click OK. list end nesting level 1 4. Make sure you know what the service does before you disable it. If you don't know what it does, you can look up the name of it on Google And you will get hundreds of pages telling you what the service does. 5. When you're done, close the services app. list end Note that you can also get into the services app by going to start>run... and typing "services.msc" (without the quotes). Startup Items SLOW Down Startup... One of the ways you can really increase the speed of your computer is by removing old startup items, or any apps you don't need to start up. For this, you will need a program like CCleaner. CCleaner is a computer cleaning and repair tool. You could use MSConfig, but I find that CCleaner does a better job. I'll give the instructions for MSConfig as well though if you want to do it that way. Please note you will need CCleaner later in this guide. So let's get Startups! list of 6 items 1. Install CCleaner, and open it. 2. Click (or tab to) the tools button. Then, click "startup. 3. You will then see a list of the programs that start when your computer starts. Select a program and click the "disable" button to stop it starting up. I recommend that you don't delete the startup items just in case you need to re-enable them later. 4. Be careful not to remove anything you're not sure about. If you don't know what one of the items is, look it up on Google or Conduit Search. And check before you disable it. Some drivers will put themselves in the startup items list. 5. When you're done, close CCleaner. 6. Note that with some screen readers, when you have clicked "disable" to remove an item, you will need to alt+tab out of the window and then back in again. list end If you want to do it with MSConfig, here's how: list of 6 items 1. Go to run... on start menu or press windows key+R. 2. Type "msconfig" (without the quotes) and press enter. 3. in the system configuration utility, click the "startup" tab. There is also a services tab, but it's better to use the services app. 4. Once in the startup page, you will see a list of your startup items. Uncheck any of them to disable them. 5. When done, click "OK" or "close" and restart your computer. 6. If the system configuration utility pops up when you have restarted your computer, check the "never show this message or launch the utility again" checkbox, and click "OK. list end If you disabled a lot of items, you should now have a much faster startup! A little speed tweak for computers with duel core or quad core CPU'S! There is a little speed tweak if you have a duel or quad core CPU. Here's what to do: list of 6 items 1. Go into msconfig, mentioned in the step above. 2. Click the "boot" tab. 3. Click "advanced options" 4. Then check the box labeled "NumProc=" or "Number of processers=" depending if you are on XP or older, or vista and 7. 5. When this box is checked, a combo box will appear. In this box, you can select the number of processers. Select 2 if you have a duel core or 4 if you have a quad core processor. 6. When done, click OK and then close the utility. Restart your computer. list end Check your hard disks for arers. If you reset your computer using the "hard reset" button a lot, it's likely you have harddisk arers slowing you down. To check for arers using the MS Check disk utility, do the following: list of 5 items 1. Go into "my computer" or "computer." 2. Right click (or press applications key) on the drive you want to check and click properties. 3. On the tools tab, Click "arer-Checking check now..." button. 4. The Check disk dialog window will appear. Check all the boxes and click "start." If your computer needs to be restarted, restart it and leave it. You will probably not get any sound, but you will hear hard disk activity. Just wait till it's done. It could take longer than 2 hours on larger drives. 5. When your computer boots back up, you will have a arer free drive. list end Remove unwanted drivers. Old unused drivers can slow down a computer. The best thing to do with these... is to remove them. Get a program like Driver Magician. Or you can use the device manager, by following the instructions below: list of 6 items 1. Right click (or press your applications key) on the my computer or "computer" icon on your desktop or start menu. 2. In the menu, click properties. 3. In the system properties, click the hardware tab, and then click "device manager. 4. In the device manager, expand the catagories in the tree-view and look for any drivers you don't need. If you find any, right-click (or applications key; shift+F10 also works) on them and click "uninstall." 5. If you are given a confirmation dialog, click "OK" or "Yes" to remove the driver. 6. When you are done, restart your computer. list end Please note: do not remove any drivers if you don't know what they do, as some are esential system drivers. Make sure you have backups of your drivers, either from driver magician or other backup software, downloaded from internet, or on a CD. Update your drivers. Updating your drivers can really boost your computers performance. You will need to buy a program like Driver magician. - It's the easiest way i've found and i've never had any problems with it. It's the same software I recommended in the above step. To update your drivers using it: list of 8 items 1. Open driver magician. 2. Click the updates menu on the menubar, and then click "driver update." 3. A drivers update dialog will appear. It will take a few secconds or a few minutes to analise your system. When it is complete, you will be given a list of the drivers that can be updated. 4. To update a driver, select it and click the "download" button. 5. It will open up the download link in internet explorer (or your default browser, such as firefox) and you will be given a normal download dialog box. 6. ASave the file anywhere on your computer, and then install the drivers using the driver installation instructions. If it is a .zip file, it will normally have the instructions in the package. If it is a .exe file, run it and follow any on-screen instructions. 7. Do this until all your drivers are up-to-date. 8. When you have finished, close open windows and restart your computer. list end Put a shutdown icon on your desktop. You can put a shutdown icon on your desktop. To do this, open up notepad - start>programs>accessories>notepad. Or type notepad into your start menu's run dialog. Then, in your notepad document, type the word "shutdown" but without the quotation marks. Then, go to the save as item in the file menu. Type in the file name, "shutdown.bat" making sure you put quotes around the name. This is because if you put quotes around a name, notepad will not add a .txt extention to the end of the file. Then, save on your desktop or anywhere you like. Then you should have a batch file, that when opened, will shut down your computer. You can do this for restart as well - just type the word restart into the notepad document instead of "shutdown" and save it as "restart.bat" keeping the quotation marks around the file name. Save some disk space by removing old system restore points. System restore, can use a lot of disk space. I've known it to use about 50 GB on my computer (until I disabled it.) If your computer has been working properly for the last few weeks, you don't need your old restore points, so why keep them. To remove them, do the following: list of 8 items 1. Go to start>programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup. You can also type diskmgr in the run... box. 2. If you have more than 1 drive in your machine, a drive selection dialog will appear. Choose the drive you want to remove the restore points on (normally drive C:\) and click "OK." 3. Wait for disk cleanup to scan your drive. When it is done, look through the list of stuff you can clean. Check any boxes you want to clean - recycle bin, temp files, temp internet files... Anything that's in that list should be OK to clean. Then go to the "more options" tab. 4. Click on "system restore clean up..." button. 5. A dialog will appear asking if you want to delete all but the last restore point. Choose yes, and wait for it to remove the restore point files. 6. When it is done, click the "OK" button in disk cleanup. 7. A dialog will appear asking if you're sure you want to delete the files. Click "yes" or "delete files" button. 8. The disk cleanup utility will delete the files and then exit. list end Add more RAM. RAM (random access memory) is one of the main components of your computer, used to run your programs. Less ram means a slower computer. I recomend you have at least 1 GB of ram. Use tweaking utilities to do the job for you. There are a number of cool tweaking utilities out there. Here a few: Windows XP powertoys - tweak UI. Totalidea software - tweaking software for vista and windows 7 and XP. XPLite, 2000 Lite, and 98 Lite - strip down windows and make it the way you want it. Also check out the tweaking guides: Here. Back to the speed tweaks! Improve boot times even more... You can improve your boot times even more with this tweak: list of 3 items 1. First, restart your computer twice, each time wait 1 minute after everything has loaded. 2. When that is done, paste the following line into the run... dialog box in start menu: Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks And click OK or press enter. 3. You will notice a lot of disk activity. Wait about 10-15 minutes for the computer to finish. You will not be notified when this is done. list end Tweak the computer with Tweak UI, mentioned above. The Microsoft "power toy" Tweak UI, is a free program that lets you tweak some hidden settings of windows. Install and Open tweak UI and make the following settings: list of 3 items • Under "general: Uncheck "optimise hard disk when idol." This will defrag your drives, but there are better tools than the windows defragmenter. They are given near the end of this guide. Under explorer: Uncheck "allow recent documents on start menu." • Under "taskbar and start menu:" Uncheck "show name on start menu," "warn when low on disk space (unless you have a drive below 80 GB). list end Note that these will not really speed up your computer, so these are optional. Clean your drives... Use the ccleaner program found Here To clean your drives. Open CCleaner, in the tree-view select what you want to clean, and then click "run cleaner." Click OK to the warning that files will be removed. CCleaner will then remove old files. When done, close CCleaner and launch the windows disk cleaner. Check everything, and then go to the "more options" tab. Click "system restore clean up..." button. Click yes if you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. (Note: Only do this if your computer is working fine, and has been for the last week or 2). When all restore points are gone, click OK. You will then be asked if you want to delete files, click "yes" or "delete files." Disk cleanup will exit when it is finished. Finally, defragment your drives with a good defragmenter. There are many defragmenters out there - some are good and some not so good. The best 2 that I've found are Smart Defrag. and JK Defrag. Follow the user guide for JK defrag. Here are instructions for smart defrag: list of 4 items 1. Launch Smart Defrag. 2. If this is your first defragment since applying these tweaks; or after cleaning your harddrive, select all your drives or partitions in the list view. 3. There is a drop down list/combo box next to the drive list view. Select "deep optimise" in this box. Then click the start button and give it about 1-2 hours to complete. 4. I recommend checking the "turn off computer" checkbox so that smart defrag will automatically shutdown your computer when it has finished. list end thanks and regards shankar mo +919591846442 To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
