Make your computer blazingly fast

[fedrorpet]

Ways to make your computer blazingly fast:


There are probably a lot of great tweaks and performance hacks that I’ve missed here, so feel free to chime in with comments! Enjoy!

1. Defragment your computer hard disk using free tools like SmartDefrag.

2. You should also defragment your Windows pagefile and registry.

3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive.

4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of programs.

5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.

6. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file performance.

7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way to increase performance.

8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual effects in Windows, you can turn them off by going to Performance Options.

9. You can optimize the Windows boot time using a free program called Bootvis from Microsoft.

10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.

11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.

12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to remove spyware.

13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka junk software) from your new PC using PC Decrapifier.

14. Disable unnecessary Windows services, settings, and programs that slow down your computer.

15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs

16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista

17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse.

18. Delete temporary and unused files on your computer using a free program like CCleaner. It can also fix issues with your registry.

19. Delete your Internet browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk space.

20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance.

21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up Windows boot time.

22. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup.

23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM.

24. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance.

25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly backup your Windows machine using third party software.

26. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive.

27. Turn off default disk performance monitors on Windows XP to increase performance.

28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine.

29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your computer by allowing it to make sure that no one process can completely overtake the CPU.

30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in My Computer by disabling search for network files and printers.

31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache.

32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to increase display speed.

33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.

34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as OpenDNS.

35. Improve Vista performance by using ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB drive as a caching mechanism.

36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which converts it into simple text.

37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable unnecessary services in Vista safely.

38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators, which are programs that try to prefetch and cache the sites you are going to visit.

39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the configuration settings and by installing an add-on called FasterFox.

40. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware.

41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista.

42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to speed up Windows XP.

43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.

44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of RAM.

45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM.

46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait time to kill hung applications.

47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for best performance” on the Performance tab in System Properties.

48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure that you partition your hard drives correctly to maximize performance.

49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry or system files.

50. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead of the host operating system. Check out Sun openxVM.

51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing the paging file slows down shutdown.

52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system.

53. Update all of your drivers in Windows, including chipset and motherboard drivers to their latest versions.

54. Every once in a while run the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility.

55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.

56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.

57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95 to check for bad memory on your PC.

58. Determine your BIOS version and check the manufactures website to see if you need to update your BIOS.

59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse, keyboard and computer fans of dust and other buildup.

60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200 RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.

61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot time.

62. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don’t want to install virus protection, use some of the free online virus scanners.

63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows taskbar and from your Internet browser.

64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re not really using it for anything important. All those gadgets take up memory and processing power.

65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by enabling the advanced write caching features.

66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create your own keyboard shortcuts.

67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows Vista to increase computer performance.

68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your processor.

69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting unnecessary items.

70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they “normally” help your computer work better.

71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or other errors on your hard drive by using the ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.

72. If you are not using some of the hardware on your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, USB ports, IR ports, Firewire, etc, then go into your BIOS and disable them so that they do not use any power and do not have to be loaded during boot up.

73. If you have never used the Recent Documents feature in Windows, then disable it completely as a long list can affect PC performance.

74. One basic tweak that can help in performance is to disable error reporting in Windows XP

75. If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you should use the Windows Classic theme under Display Properties.

76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS by running the following command: fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1. It will speed up the file creation process.

77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread out the files between the folders.

78. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This will help speed up opening of files.

79. If you have more than one disk in your PC, you can increase performance by moving your paging file to the second drive and formatting the volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.

80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a program, and then clicking on Turn Windows features on and off. You can turn off Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC components, DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.

81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus program to help protect against viruses, etc. Make sure to use an anti-virus program that does not hog up all of your computer resources.

82. Completely uninstall programs and applications using a program like Revo Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants left behind by normal uninstalls.

83. If you know what you are doing, you can install several hard drives into your machine and set them up in RAID 0, RAID 5, or other RAID configurations.

84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to 2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that instead of a USB port since Firewire is faster than USB right now.

85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that may be hidden in Device Manager that you no longer use.

86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go with Windows XP. Switching to Mac or Linux is also an option.

87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to backup your data, but it is the best way to get your computer back to peak performance.

88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by increasing the number of max connections per server in the registry.

89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents, you can increase the download speeds by tweaking the settings.

90. If you have a desktop background, make sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to find a really small texture and to tile it.

91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows (right-click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are both the same number.

92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia, you can do it much faster on Vista by adding them to the Vista Start Menu Instant Search box.

93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC that was previously used, make sure to check the BIOS for optimal settings such as enabled CPU caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer modes, memory timings, etc. You can also enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.

94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the properties of the SCSI drive in Windows.

95. If you have a machine with an older network card, make sure to enable the onboard processor for the network card, which will offload tasks from the CPU.

96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can disable the Welcome Center splash screen that always pops up.

97. If you already have anti-spyware software installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.

98. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you can force Windows to see and use all of the RAM by enabling PAE.


I’m sure I have missed out on lots of performance tweaks, tips, hacks, etc, so feel free to post comments to add to the list! Enjoy!

[Luke122]

Some very good tips, and a few I never even thought of!

Welcome to TBCS!

[Kayin]

Just remember defragging a SSD will kill it. You've been warned.

[Zephik]

Woo, that's a long list!

Best way in my opinion; Save your information and grab an install/restore disc. Nothing like a completely fresh start to make everything feel like new again.

[rendermandan]

Yeah, there is a lot of good tips in that list, however a lot of them are pretty repetitive, and some of them are really no help, such as the ones that say, "Adjust settings". Well, what settings in particlular? That would be a much more helpfull list.
Also for example, 40. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware.
That is not really a tweek or hack is it?

I'm not trying to bash your list in any way, it just could be a little condensed and refined imo.

Welcome to TBCS by the way.

[Collinstheclown]

Something tells me this is spam... but a very odd spam if it is...

10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.
15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs
17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse.

A few that don't seem right, I havn't gone through the whole list though. The OP may have just forgotten to hyperlink though.




-[colop=red]CollinstheClown[/color]

[Oneslowz28]

I think the OP is a spam bot who forgot to hyperlink. His sig says nothing more than "ginsing" and he mentions a lot of specific programs. With that said, noone give him any neg rep or anything because this is purely my opinion and I have no proof.

[gaz_the_chav]

I think the OP is a spam bot who forgot to hyperlink. His sig says nothing more than "ginsing" and he mentions a lot of specific programs. With that said, noone give him any neg rep or anything because this is purely my opinion and I have no proof.

Agree

[x88x]

This is very odd first post...it feels almost automatically generated..except for the lack of links...hmm...idk, I'll give the benefit of the doubt for the moment. If you're real, welcome to TBCS!


There are a few odd points here though:

3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive.

You can use CCleaner to actually clear up the temp files/etc.

4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of programs.

This is actually rather deceiving (not necessarily on the part of the poster), because stuff is still loading, just in a different order; so if you have a bunch or programs that you actually want to run on startup, you're still gonna have the same amount of time before you're able to be useful.

..thus #5, I suppose..

5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.

6. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file performance.

The page file is gonna cause fragmentation whether it's dynamically sized or not. Personally I like to set the size manually just so I know it always has more than enough space. Only using the page file on a drive other than the system HDD is a good point, however if you have more than 4GB of RAM, you're never really gonna use the page file right now, so you might get more of a performance boost by just disabling it. (Especially if you have SSD(s))

7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way to increase performance.

This will marginally increase performance when adding things because it doesn't have to index them, but if you then have to search through stuff later, it greatly increases search times. Personally I would recommend disabling it on your OS drive, but enabling it on storage drives.

10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.

This is a very good point, and one that is far too often glossed over. CCleaner does this very well too.

11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.

Giant was bought by MS and is now Windows Defender. Another great program for cleaning spyware is Spybot Search & Destroy.

16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista

I don't think this will actually make your computer run faster, you just won't be bothered by all the "Are you sure?" verifications.

22. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup.
23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM.

24. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance.

?? If you have to worry about these, you have bigger problems.

26. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive.

Different HDD, yes. Different partition, no. In fact, moving it to a different partition on the same HDD might even decrease performance slightly since the head will have to move over to the other partition to read stuff for that.

28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine.

I'm not sure where exactly you're going with this. If you mean closing unused ports in your firewall software...yes, that's a good idea, but it's not gonna improve your boot times any.

31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache.

Same as with the drive indexing. It saves time the first time you load a folder, but then every time you load the folder it will have to rebuild the cache in RAM instead of reading them from the cache.

34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as OpenDNS.

They made you need a free account to find the IPs on their website for some reason..still a great service (and miles faster than any ISP's DNS servers I've seen), just a little annoying to deal with if you don't want to register. For those who don't know:
primary: 208.67.222.222
secondary: 208.67.220.220

35. Improve Vista performance by using ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB drive as a caching mechanism.

++ on this...unless you use an SSD, in which case it will actually slow you down

36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which converts it into simple text.

Interesting...you have a link for this? The only 'Finch' I'm aware of is the CLI version of Pidgin.

41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista.

I love this program; so much more versatile than the normal Windows file moving utility. Linky

45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM.

Personally I would adjust that to 1GB minimum for XP and 2GB minimum for Vista.

49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry or system files.

a) Expensive.
b) Adding a virtualization layer will never improve the performance of anything running on that layer.

50. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead of the host operating system. Check out Sun openxVM.

The desktop version is called Virtualbox. And 3.1 added multiple snapshot trees! YAY!

52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system.

Again..if you have to worry about this, you have bigger problems

57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95 to check for bad memory on your PC.

Both good programs, but neither is what you make it sound like. Memtest86 is a great memory testing utility, but it's a live-disc that you have to boot into (it's also included on most Linux install discs). Prime95 is for stress-testing your CPU, not for testing your RAM.

60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200 RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.

SATA, yes. SAS, no. Don't get me wrong, SAS drives are awesome, but not at the price-point for a home user. You're better off getting an SSD or two.

61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot time.

Pretty sure it's the other way around. Cable Select is just what it sounds like; the BIOS has to negotiate the status of all the drives, instead of the drives simply telling the BIOS what they are (ie, when you set master/slave configurations). Always set the HDD you use more as master, as iirc the master channel gets priority. ..also, back to..If you have to worry about this, you have bigger problems

77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread out the files between the folders.

Well, yes and no. Yes, a folder with fewer files in it will load faster than a folder with lots of files in it, but a larger directory tree will take marginally longer to load as well, and it will almost definitely take you longer to browse through multiple folders to find what you want.

78. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This will help speed up opening of files.

I highly recommend this for storage drives, but not for OS drives. The reason for this is that on OS drive you'll end up with lots of wasted space because of all the tiny files. I think on my fileserver's storage array I'm actually using either 64KB or 128KB (I forget which) blocks (also, ext4, not NTFS ).

87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to backup your data, but it is the best way to get your computer back to peak performance.

This is really just a temporary measure. It only feels faster because you got rid of all the cruft you built up. IMO it's better to properly clean an install instead of blowing it away (though tbh, I used to regularly reinstall about every 6 months, so take that as you may ).

88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by using Firefox/Chrome/Opera instead.

Fixed that for ya

90. If you have a desktop background, make sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to find a really small texture and to tile it.

Actually, the fastest method is to use a solid color background. I'm not sure how much this really increases performance though. I feel like this is another point where if you have to worry about this, you have bigger problems.


Also, lots of repeated entries and lots and lots of entries with good suggestions but no info about how to go about doing them. Overall though, several very good suggestions.

[mDust]

This is...good suggestions.

Damn dude...+rep