Tutorials

Speed Up Windows 7

Typically, when you get a brand new computer it seems like it’s lightning fast. Windows 7 is touted as being much faster than Windows Vista, too. A few months down the line, however, your computer may feel like it’s running much slower.

There are some basic steps you can follow to speed up Windows 7, though. Let’s look at some of the things that slow down your operating system and explore the solutions we have at our disposal.

How To Speed Up Windows 7

Disable The Aero Theme

Complex graphical visuals like the aero theme in Windows 7 are resource hungry. To turn off the aero theme, right click on the desktop and select Personalise. Click the Window Color button at the bottom.

In the Window Color and Appearance window that opens, make sure that Enable Transparency is unchecked. If you are unchecking it now, you’ll notice straight away that window borders solidify.

Defragment Your Hard Drive

The more you use your computer’s hard drive to store data, the more fragmented the data on the drive becomes. Although this doesn’t pose a major problem, it does slow down the process of reading the data if some of it is stored over here, another bit is stored ove there and the rest is stored underneath this sandwich. Data is read by your operating system quicker if it’s all in the same place.

To get all the data in the same place, and speed things up, you can defragment the drive.

Disabe Search Indexing In Windows 7

Click Start and then right click on Computer.

Click the arrow to expand Services and Applications in the left panel and then click on Services. In the list of services that is displayed in the main panel, find Windows Search. When you’ve found it, right click on it and select Properties. On the General tab, change the Startup type to be Disabled. Click Apply and then click OK to complete the task. The Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature is now disabled.

Note that disabling this feature will cause searches of your file system to become slower. However, most people will find that this disadvantage is outweighed by the otherwise speedier performance of their computer in general.

Add More RAM

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the “working” memory that your computer uses when running programs for you. The other kind of memory is on your hard drive and that is more static, although it does change. Generally speaking, the more RAM your computer has, the faster it will run.

The minimum amount of RAM you should consider if you are using Windows 7 is 1 GB, but if you intend to use lots of programs all at the same time, you really should be using 2 GB or more.

To optimise the way your computer uses its RAM, you can do the following:

  • close programs you no longer need. This will free up some RAM.
  • uninstall programs you just don’t use. Often they have little programs that monitor for updates, or quick launchers that reside in the tray. They all eat up resources and your system may run quicker if they’re gone.