Thread: [UPDATED] [TUT] Boost Your PC's Performance to the MAX! [Windows]

This is the ULTIMATE guide to boost your PC's performance without buying any new hardware. This guide has been written by ME for PS3ISO and I've tested everything in it personally and on several computers. I take no responsibility if you f*ck up something. I made every step detailed and with picture guides to facilitate it
!!CAUTION!!
You need be the PC's ADMINISTRATOR to complete this guide fully.

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1) Boost your PC startup speed!

Spoiler:

Part 1:[/SIZE]
You can set the number of Processors and memory for booting in msconfig.

Type msconfig in the 'Search for programs and files' bar at the bottom of the start menu. Go to the 'Boot' tab. Click advanced options.
Under 'Number of Processors', tick the box, and in the drop-down menu, choose the maximum number you have (I got an Dual Core so it's 2 for me, newer PCs got 4 -obviously, you can only select it if you have a dual-core/quad-core).

Make sure 'Maximum Memory' is unticked so Windows uses the maximum there is without limitations.

Here's a picture guide:


Part 2:
If you only have one single Windows 7 installation on your PC, you can easily speed up the boot time by changing the boot timeout to 0 or a low value like 1. Here’s how.

By default, the Windows 7 boot manager is starting the “default” operating system after 30 seconds without keyboard input. If you change this value to 0, it will automatically start the default system without giving you a choice to select an entry. This is useful if you have only 1 OS, but even if you have multiple OS’s (multi-boot) you can take advantage of this. Simply change the default boot entry to your most commonly used OS and change the boot timeout to 1, so that you can still change the selection by simply hitting a key on boot up continuously.

1. Open an elevated command prompt (Type cmd in the 'Search for programs and files' bar at the bottom of the start menu, right-click and choose run as Administrator)

2. Enter bcdedit /timeout 0 (replace 0 with the number of seconds that you want the boot selection screen to appear before the default entry is used)


Restart your computer when done!

2) Increase your PC speed by adding Virtual Memory! (NON SSD!)

Spoiler:

DO NOT USE THIS PART IF YOU HAVE AN SSD HARD DISK!!

Here is a way to increase the Virtual memory or Page file on your Windows 7 Computer :

-Go to Control Panel>System
-Click on Advanced System Setting on the left tab
-In the Performance Tab click on Settings
-Again click on Advanced > click on Change in the Virtual Memory section

Here's a picture guide:


Now we're going to increase your virtual memory to increase your PC speed especially on heavy tasks. You should now have this window open:


Untick "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives"

Underneath there's a list of all the drives you got, C, D... I have only 1 partition so I only got C. You can split your vmem over several drives if you wish to divide the space. Remember to check the empty drive space in each drive before you set anything.

Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.

Check the Recommended value at the bottom. That should be your starting point for your virtual memory.

If you have enough disk space, and you like to be generous (like me) you should set it your virtual mem in increments of gigabytes (x1024mb). I suggest you use 2gb over the recommended value for the maximum. You can set more if you're generous but remember it's your disk space you're taking away.

Use a calculator to multiply 4x1024=4096MB! Dont just set round values (1000).

For example, you have Recommend: 4096MB
Set Initial: 4096MB
Maximum: 6138MB
Click SET

The Maximum size shouldn't be over 3 times the amount of RAM installed on your computer.

Restart your computer when done!

3) Get Auslogics Boostspeed! (v5.2)

Spoiler:

I've been using this program for over 5years now and it's proven to be the BEST Windows-booster there is.

Here's the latest version (pre-activated, virus-free, just install and run!). My own upload:

Code:

http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/0VKSEEGQ/Auslogics_BoostSpeed_5.2.0.0_Retail-PreAct-November_1.rar_links

This is Auslogics Homepage (the "Advanced Tools" tab)


There's a list of all tasks/sub-programs you can run here. I'll make a guide to the most important ones. There's also 4 tabs on top. Make sure you click around to check out what the program has to offer (dont mess up things!).

Let's do this!

Part1: Optimize your PC's Services

Spoiler:

First go to the "System Advisor" tab on top.


You'll have a scan running for all the unnecessary services that can be disabled. There's a description for each. Disable almost everything except indexing service and any other you might use.

Then go back to the "Advanced Tools" tab. Under System Tweaks, choose "Optimize Services". On new windows choose "Home Computer with Networking" and confirm.

Part2: Manage startup programs

Spoiler:

Under Software Control choose Startup Programs. This shows a list of all running programs/services that start when your PC boots. The more, the slower. It's usually safe to disable non-windows programs, even Office and such. You can re-enable them if you turned off smthn you needed. You can always restart and test! Use common sense and experimentation

Part3: Defragment & Optimize your Hard Disks

Spoiler:

DO NOT DEFRAG YOU SSD DRIVE!
Under Disk Maintenance choose Defragment. It'll open up a new window showing all your Hard Disks (including external HDD and Flash USB if connected and SD/memory cards).


Click on Analyze to see if your HDD needs to be defragmented (red boxes).
You can run either a normal defragmentation or a defragmentation+optimization (moves windows boot-up sectors for faster startup). Use the option you want depending on your need.

PS: It takes TIME and RESOURCES to defragment your HDD. I recommend you do it when your PC is idle or you have some free time. Dont use many programs while running it cuz it'll slow down your PC!

Under Disk Maintenance choose "Repair disk" to scan for errors on your HDD. If your PC seems to freeze it's normal. Wait till it finishes.

Part4: Repair & Defragment your Registry

Spoiler:

Under Registry Maintenance select Repair. Tick the following boxes:


Run it and then solve the problems! :D

Go back Registry Maintenance select Defragment.
Click analyze, wait for the result, schedule a defrag when you boot up your PC next time (dont freak out when it does it lol).

Reboot when done!

Part5: Clean Up your PC from Junk

Spoiler:

Under Disk Maintenance choose Cleanup.
Tick those boxes:

Run and solve the problems to clean up junk!

-Type cmd in the 'Disk Cleanup' bar at the bottom of the start menu, right-click and choose run as Administrator). It'll run a scan and you can choose to delete junk files.

Follow this guide to remove Shadow Copy and old restore points:

Part6:


Part7: Removed Unwanted Programs

Spoiler:

Under Software Control you have Installed Software. Open it to check all the programs you have installed, sorted by name, size, time of installation, last used...You can also Ctrl+F to find them fast. Remove old/unused/uneeded programs to free up space!

After you've done all this:
Now you only have to do a routine check-up every two weeks or so. You can use the "System Scan" tab to perform most actions for you. Remember to defragment+optimize once a month at least!

A small tip: Under Settings (top bar) > Advanced > Check all the boxes.

4) Increase your PC Shutdown Speed!

Spoiler:

1. Open the registry editor (enter regedit into search field)
2. Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol”
3. Lower the value (12000 is the default value = 12 seconds) to a value of your choice (I recommend 5000 for a starter).

5)Use GameBooster (v3.0) to Optimize your PC's gaming Performance!

Spoiler:

“GameBooster” is used to turn off all those unnecessary when you want that extra performance when you game or use graphics-intensive programs (photophop/3D...). You can temporarily stop all services (that are not required) while you play. Best of all, you can even edit the services list with just a couple clicks and add more services to get even more performance.

Download it here (my up, tested, scanned, PREMIUM):

Code:

http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/1NZXHRTU/IObit_Gamebooster_v.3_Premium.rar_links

Install, Run, Press the Configure (small button under the big START BOOST button) and you can edit the services you which to close (there's a description for each).




When you're ready to GAME, simply press the START BOOST and you're good to go! When you're done you can revert to normal mode
Enjoy!

6)Speed Up Windows 7 Using ReadyBoost

Spoiler:

So, what you can do is to get more RAM. However, we don’t want to buy anything new, because we’re on a low budget. Although, I am sure that you own an USB-stick , right?

Can ReadyBoost really help me to boost my performance?

Is the performance boost notable? Well, it might be a bit early to comment on that, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is a good choice for low-end systems and systems with less RAM. On systems with more RAM than 1GB it will be only notable if you run some resource-hungry programs or programs that run a lot of small, random I/Os.

You might want to read this Q&A about readyboost first

Code:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

Since Windows Vista there is a little feature, that most people do NOT use effectively. To be honest with you, I haven’t used it myself and I might run into errors while I try to show it to you. The feature is called ReadyBoost and can give you up to 6% more performance. This depends on the amount of RAM you have. Low-End system with less RAM will see a great performance increase and many applications will load faster. Since Windows 7 there is no longer a memory limit of 4GB and you can use several devices for ReadyBoost.

1. Plugin your USB-stick
2. Move all your files on that stick into a folder on your hard drive to make room.
3. Open My Computer, do a right-click on your drive (usb, SD, whatever) and select properties.
4. Open the tab ReadyBoost and pick Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. Click on Apply.
5. Repeat the steps 1-4 for all other devices (unlimited)



Ok, so we added a ReadyBoost device. Let’s see what it looks like:


On the drive you can find a cache file now that should be pretty big. I still had some other files on the stick, because this is my MP3-player.


Check if ReadyBoost is working

What’s next? Right, did it really improve my performance or is a USB-stick (not even USB2.0) insufficient? First of all, I did a check to see if the ReadyBoost drive is working.

1. Goto “Start” – Enter “Performance” into the search field
2. Click on “Performance Monitor”
3. Add “ReadyBoost Cache”

[IMG][/IMG]

What type of drives should I choose for this? USB Flash? SD Card?

Spoiler:

According to Tom Archer (link), your card is supposed to have the following requirements:
2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes.

Next, I downloaded a tool called “Crystal Disk Mark”, which is pretty cool to speed test your sd cards, flash drives and any other disk. In the meantime, I added my USB2.0 Card Reader, one 2GB CF Card and one 2GB SD Card (lucky me), because I was pretty sure that my MP3-Player wouldn’t perform very well.


Download Crystal Disk Mark (free)

Code:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

Unfortunately, the results were very close to the requirements, but still below:
Benchmark of my 2GB CF Card


Next, I tested my SD Card. I supposed it would be a lot slower – how wrong I was!
Benchmark of my 2GB SD Card


Last but not least, I tested my 1TB HDD to compare the three drives:
Benchmark of my 1TB HDD (Seagate 31000)


Conclusion? The SD card is performing really well and is my best choice for a ReadyBoost drive. Considering that I only have 2GB of RAM (dual channel), I think that this can increase my browsing speed. I usually have a lot of open tabs in firefox and as you might know firefox is eating a lot of resources, therefore I’m pretty happy about this setup now.

Q: Aren’t Hard Disks faster than flash? My HDD has 80MB/sec throughput.
A: Hard drives are great for large sequential I/O. For those situations, ReadyBoost gets out of the way. We concentrate on improving the performance of small, random I/Os, like paging to and from disk.

Source:

Code:

http://windows7themes.net/speed-up-windows-7.html#ready%20boost

7)Optimize your graphics/gaming performace!

Spoiler:

Coming Soon!

8)Optimize your External HDD/Flash Drives! (NON SSD!)

Spoiler:

You can make faster file transfers on your HDD/USB/FlashDrives/others by enabling “Write caching”.

When you enable this option, the devices will provide the highest possible performance and that you intend to remove from the system infrequently. If you choose this option and the device is disconnected from the system before all of the data is written to it (such as if you remove a USB flash drive), you could lose data.
If the power supplied to the device fails for any reason (be it disconnect without removing from system first) any data still in the cache (that the computer system believes is safely stored) could be lost.

So, how do you do this?

Go to Start –> Control Panel. In the search box, type Device Manager. Open Device Manager. Expand Disk drives –> Right click the drive name and click on Properties. Click Policies page and uncheck Write-caching policy. Repeat this for ALL your Hard Disks, Flash, and others.

Here's a picture-tutorial I made:
[IMG]http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q131/Nanobreaker91/enablecache.jpg

ALWAYS REMOVE YOUR HDD/FLASHDRIVE SAFELY FROM THE SYSTEM TRAY ICON!! YOU CAN LOSE DATA, CORRUPT YOUR HARD DISK!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!![/IMG]

9)Optimize SSD Drives

Spoiler:

Those are still experimental tweaks, as SSD technology is still new!! Do those tweaks on your own responsibility!!

Solid State Drives DO NOT require defragmentation. You can damage your hard drive and shorten the life span!

SSD write performance greatly depends on free data blocks! This is important to remember – the more data you put on a SSD the slower it will get. In fact, most manufacturers recommend to only use 70-80% of the disk space available on a SSD.

DO NOT DEFRAG YOU SSD DRIVE! In fact, if you continuously defragment a SSD drive you can decrease its lifespan. Here’s how you disable disk defragmentation in Windows 7:

Disable Disk Defragmenter Service

1. Click on Start
2. Enter services.msc into the search field and hit enter
3. Find Disk Defragmenter and right-click on it, then click on Properties
4. From the Startup dropdown menu select Disabled
5. Click on Apply
6. Done, defragmentation is now disabled

Here's a picture tutorial:


Enable TRIM in Windows 7 for SSD Drives!

#What is TRIM?

In computing, a TRIM command allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally. Source: Wiki

So, if you delete a file and it is no longer being used, TRIM tells your SDD to get get rid of the data blocks. Otherwise, if TRIM is not enabled you’d have a lot of garbage data blocks which can eventually slow down your SSD and therefore your overall performance. If you want to speed up Windows 7, you really should have TRIM commands enabled. Sounds like something you are interested in? Read on.

Enable or Disable TRIM

1. Open up an elevated command prompt (run cmd with right-click => Run as Admin)

2. Enter fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0 to enable TRIM in Windows 7.

If you want to disable it simply change the 0 to a 1.


3. By default, I believe that Windows 7 is using TRIM commands. So, often you don’t have to change this setting and enable TRIM manually. You can check if TRIM is running on your PC by entering fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify.

What to read more on SSD optimization? Check out this website:

Code:

http://ssdtechnologyforum.com/,

Source:

Code:

http://windows7themes.net/disable-disk-defragmentation-windows-7-ssd.html

MORE TO COME SOON!

interesting read. I use my 8gb flash drive for more ram and speed and the tuneup utilities ready boost and works like a charm.

Originally Posted by ireggae

interesting read. I use my 8gb flash drive for more ram and speed and the tuneup utilities ready boost and works like a charm.

Yup, I'm going to include that next in my guide (I took me a good 4hours to write this, format, add pics and more) as soon as I get more free time. I wanted to make it fully software-based, but ReadyBoost is a great windows utility!

yeah but im used to my tools, well good job on it.

Good job man! excellent thread!!

This is great, I love it!

nice
good info and well explained
thanks +rep

Excellent thread Venomusx !!

This thread is beast going to try it on windows 7

Thanks everyone for the great responses I'll update it soon with as much info I can gather. But this is the big core of it, I wanted to make as complete as I could first time so you can benefit the most from it

@Monarcas: I tested it on Win7.