Helpful Tips

[mrsk565]

Here is some useful tips, By Using These Tips You Can Save Alot of RAM and Have A Smooth Fast System

1. Turn off Windows Update. You can get the updates you need, but after that it is wise to turn this off. It uses RAM alot and can also give you pointless updates. over 300 can slow a system down (300 being a rough number, I know theres alot of updates just like vista had). They can Also Install Silently without you knowing.

2. Turn off Windows Features you don't Use. Under Programs and Features you'll find this on the left hand side. Turn Off as many of them you don't use and you will see a slight increase in speed.

3. Defragment Windows Even if only 1% is fragmented, Take no chances of system slowdown due to fragmented files.

4. Use Disk Cleanup Tool. Its a great way is free extra space.

5. Services. You will see a button in the task manager under the services tab that takes you right to the services. This way you can stop and disable those you don't Use, But be aware that if you don't know what some services do then don't take a chance on turning them off. Risks making your OS Inoperable. TURN OFF WINDOWS UPDATE AND DISABLE IT HERE TOO OR IT MAY RESTART ITSELF AUTOMATICLY.

6. Clean your Browser Everyday for Best Internet Speed and Load times.

7. Sleep or Hibernate you PC when not using It. Saves time rather then starting and shutting down all the time.

8. Some programs work better in XP compatibility mode, I've had programs crash win 7 so I ran then in XP compat. mode and never had any problems since then.

If anything think of you computer as like a kid or a pet. Taking care of it is most Important and knowing what makes it tick is Important too. Google win 7 services to gain knowledge of them and make sure you have the right specs to run programs you would like to. In doing this on a Full version of Windows 7 Ultimate I bought, I was able to Cut my RAM usage down to 420MB roughly. I loaded down my laptop with programs and after that and I'm at around 600MB but thats only because I have alot of Multi-Media sevices running and sidebar, rocketdock ect. Hope this can be Helpful to alot of people starting out with Windows 7. Anyone with more Tips is Welcome to Post too.

Edited March 13, 2012 by mrsk565

[CoffeeFiend]

1. Turn off Windows Update. You can get the updates you need, but after that it is wise to turn this off. It uses RAM alot and can also give you pointless updates. over 300 can slow a system down (300 being a rough number, I know theres alot of updates just like vista had). They can Also Install Silently without you knowing.

Complete nonsense. Its ram usage is very minimal when idling (peak private bytes of its process is at 2.1MB on this box), updates don't actually slow down Win7, and you just made people's computers insecure and very much vulnerable to malware. Really, REALLY bad advice here!

2. Turn off Windows Features you don't Use. Under Programs and Features you'll find this on the left hand side. Turn Off as many of them you don't use and you will see a slight increase in speed.

A lot of features only use disk space and consume no other resources unless started manually e.g. games, media features, etc. Most of it won't make any noticeable change.

3. Defragment Windows Even if only 1% is fragmented, Take no chances of system slowdown due to fragmented files.

That's a pointless waste of time, a SSD life shortener, and it's already automated out of the box so there's no need to touch anything.

4. Use Disk Cleanup Tool. Its a great way is free extra space.

Or one of the many similar tools that doesn't actually suck (ccleaner, ncleaner, fcleaner, etc) and schedule it to run automatically.

5. Services. You will see a button in the task manager under the services tab that takes you right to the services. This way you can stop and disable those you don't Use, But be aware that if you don't know what some services do then don't take a chance on turning them off. Risks making your OS Inoperable.

People that know what they should or shouldn't touch already know this place. Not that it does anywhere near as much difference as it did back then either (mainly it'll boot a few milisecs quicker, then if not used it'll get paged to disk anyway)

6. Clean your Browser Everyday for Best Internet Speed and Load times.

You're really just clearing the browser cache. If anything it'll slow things down by having to re-download files that were cached previously.

7. Sleep or Hibernate you PC when not using It

...which is how it's already configured out of the box i.e. do nothing.

8. Some programs work better in XP compatibility mode

Old programs often needed this, even with prior versions of Windows. Nothing new here.

[MagicAndre1981]

3. Defragment Windows Even if only 1% is fragmented, Take no chances of system slowdown due to fragmented files.

no, this is nonsense and only causes dramatically IO traffic and improves NOTHING. Let Windows defrag the HDD when the PC is idle:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx

4. Use Disk Cleanup Tool. Its a great way is free extra space.

yes, this is the only good advance., Use the taskscheduler to run it once per week:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/10705/how-to-schedule-disk-cleanup-in-windows-7-vista/

[Tripredacus]

1. Turn off Windows Update. You can get the updates you need, but after that it is wise to turn this off. It uses RAM alot and can also give you pointless updates. over 300 can slow a system down (300 being a rough number, I know theres alot of updates just like vista had). They can Also Install Silently without you knowing.

I'd say the best advice I could give someone who knows how to use their computer well enough to know about Updates, is to set it to Check for updates but don't install them.

As far as the other "tips" it seems you are targetting these to someone who is not using enough RAM or a large HDD. 4GB RAM and an 80GB HDD is all I use and I don't see any of these problems. FWIW, I never set any of my PCs to go to sleep, but I will set display and HDD sleep on non-servers.

[mrsk565]

If you go back to the days of XP you will see how much turning unused services off really helps. I cut my XP's RAM from around 75 down to 50 or even 35 with the right knowledge on what does what.

I have 3gigs of memory now on my win 7 pc, but I don't let the usage go above 30% when Idle. Right now its at 20%. I am strict on RAM usage even if I have plenty I never like wasting it. This is what works for me

I do have firewall and Microsoft security essentials for protection, and have disabled Windows Defender. I just go about doing my tips everyday and maintaining my pc, and it runs fast and reliable. Thats all I need is something I can use quick, and not be bothered by alot of nonsence the system might throw at me. Action center is turned off too and I don't use file-sharing or any public folders, I have deleted them. I cover every angle to make sure I'm secure. IT is my job, it is a must that I know Windows systems and keep my customers happy. I target RAM and CPU usage so that more is made availible to the user for what they need to do while still effectively having enough for the system.

9. Get a good Security program to protect yourself. Firewalls can help somewhat but its not enough. I have Microsoft Security Essentials. But you can your own favorite if you want to.

[Mr Snrub]

Of your 9 listed recommendations, I agree with only:

4. Use Disk Cleanup Tool

7. Sleep or Hibernate you PC when not using It.

9. Get a good Security program to protect yourself.

Having more processes running but not doing anything will not consume any CPU time, and will eventually get its working set trimmed so it doesn't consume physical memory if something else requires it.

Defragmentation is highly overrated in my experience, with the exception of files used for startup - which are automatically defragged & relocated over time by the system itself.

I suspect most people run regular defrags to get a warm fuzzy feeling when it says it is done, or the disk is 0% fragmented, but have never performed any tests to prove it made any difference.

Turning off services, especially Windows Update, is a really bad idea - you may think that the services are not "needed" because you don't know what they do, or don't notice any immediate impact of turning them off, but those that are running are either required or not a big overhead or security risk.

At least there was nothing there about relocating or resizing the pagefile

[MagicAndre1981]

I just go about doing my tips everyday and maintaining my pc, and it runs fast and reliable.

what about your Sp1 issue (high cpu usage)? :whistle: :whistle:

[mrsk565]

Don't use it, Don't need it. Seems pointless to get a service pack when the systems runs just perfect without it. Hence the words (SERVICE PACK) to service people having issues. Well I don't have issues.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Sure becaues all of those security, compatability and driver updates are totally useless right?

Please think:

Some of your tips are actually dragging people BACKWARDS...