Optimise your System with 5 simple tricks
Little -Known Tips to Boost Performance.
Tuning Windows perormance isn't a seary task, but learning what features to tune and how, can be very difficult for the novice and even the power Windows user. In this article, i've collected together seven of my favourite tips to speed-up your PC.
Turn off Visual Effects for Improved Desktop Performance.
By default both Windows XP and Vista come with flashy visual effects and desktops that eat into your PC's performance. In order to save resources for the actual applications you use, most of these effects can be turned off. This is especially useful if you have an old, low-spec PC that is at the bottom of the range your Windows version supports. To turn off visual effects folow these steps:
Windows Vista
The new aero desktop thene in Windows Vista provides many catching visual effects, but can degrade performance, especially on PC's that only just meet the Vista system requirements. It can also cause problems when you try to run some older applications. To disable Aero:
1. Click Start > Control Panel > Personalization.
2. Click on the Window Color and Appearance link.
3. Select the link Open Classic Appearence Properties for more colour options.
4. From the drop-down list select the Windows Classic Theme.
5. Click OK for the new theme to be applied.
Windows XP
Xp users can revert their desktop to the Windoes Classic interface as follows:
1. Click Start > Control Panel > System.
2. Click on the Advanced tab, and click Settings under the Performance heading.
3. Select the option Adjust for best performance, then click Apply > OK > OK.
Vista sidebar
The Windows Vista sidebar bring together a number of tools, such as a calendar and clock, and displays them permanently on the side of your desktop. Not only dose this take up screen space, it also uses system resources, and many Vista users find that they rarly make use of the sidebar tools anyway. If you feel that the sidebar adds little use to your Vista desktop, you can safely disable it as follows:
1. Right-click on the sidebar and choose properties.
2. Untick the option Start Sidebar when Windows Starts.
3. Click Apply > OK. Next time Windows restarts the sidebar will not be loaded.
Graphics performance
If you have a PC with a separate graphics card then it should be able to display full 32-bit graphics without affecting the performance of your main PC processor. This is because most standalone graphics cards contain a dedicated graphics processor chip called a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and their own RAM (Random Access Memory) dedicated to displaying graphics on your screen.
On some laptops and lower end PC's there is no dedicated graphics RAM and the main system Ram is used for graphics processing. If you have a system without dedicated graphics RAM you can gain a performance boost by downgrading your system's graphics from 32-bit to 16 bit (your system will be able to display around 65000 colours in 16-bit mode, rather than the 16 million available in 32-bit colour). To do so:
1. Click Start > Control Panel > Display ( Start > Control Panel > Personalizations > Display in Windows Vista).
2. Click on the Settings tab, and from the color quality drop-down list select Medium (16-bit).
3. Click OK.
Boost Vista Memory Power with Readyboost
Windows Vista conrains a new feature called Readyboost which allows you to use a USB memory stick or flash memory card to augment your PC's internal RAM and boost performance. It is of course much easier to plug a memory stick into your PC's USB port than it is to take your PC apart and install new memory modules.
In order to be able to use your USB memory stick or flash card with Readyboost, it must meet the following criteria:
1. It must be USB 2.0 compatible and connected to a USB 2.2 port on your PC.
2. The device throughput during 4K random reads should be around 2.5 to 3.5 MB/s (check this with the manufacturer).
3. The device thoughput during 512K random wrights should be around 1.75 to 2.5 MB/s (check this with the manufacturer).
4. The maximum size of memory stick: 4GB.
5. It must have a capacity of at least 256 MB with at least 235 MB of free space.
6. You are only able to use one Readyboost device at a time.
For a low-end performance boost i recommend a 1:1 ratio of flash memory to system memory. For a higher performance boost i recommend a 2.5:1 ratio. So for example, if you have a 512 MB of system RAM you could use a 512 MB memory stick for a low-end performance boost or a 1280 MB stick for a higher performance boost.
Tip:
You must ensure that you have the right amount of free space available on the drive, especially if you use it to save data too. If possible you should use a dedicated Readyboost drive that stays connected to your PC at all times.
In order to enable Readyboost, flooow these steps:
1. Connect the USB drive to a port on your PC ( Not via a USB hub).
2. Open My Computer and right-click on the drive's icon, then select Properties.
3. Click on the Readyboost tab and select Use this devise. Adjust the slider to he amount of memory you want to devote to Readyboost ( on a dedicated drive select all).
4. Click OK.
Turn off Windoes File Indexing
By default both Vista and XP will index the contents of your hard drive to allow you to quickly search for files and folders. The indexing service runs in the background examining the contents of your hard drive. If you rarly use the windows search facilities then you can safely turn off the indexing service. If you do this serches will still work but will be slower. To turn off serch indexing:
Windows Vista
1. Click Start > Control Panel > Indexing Options.
2. Click on the Modify button.
3. Untick all of the indexing options and click OK.
Tip:
If you only use Vista serch for a specific type of serch, for example ,to serch through your emails in outlook, you can leave the appropriate category selected in step 3 while disabling indexing options that you rarely use.
Windows XP
1. Open My Computer, right click on your C: drive and choose Properties.
2. Untick the option Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching and click OK.
3. Repeat steps 1-2 for each hard drive on your system.
If in future you decide that you do want to start using Windows serch then reverse the above steps.
Disable Performance Monitoring for a Smaller Registry
As Windows runs a great deal of data relating to system performance is written to the registry. This datya can then be used by tools such as system monitor to display performance infomation, and plot graphs showing how your system is performing. If you never use such analysis tools then you can disable performance data recording, in order to save registry space and speed up your system.
First of all backup your registry by creating a System Restore point:
Windows Vista
1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
2. Select Open System Protection and click Next.
3. Enter a name for the restore point and click Create.
4. Click close.
Windows XP
1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
2. Select Create a Restoer Point and click Next.
3. Enter a name for the restoer point and click Create.
4. Click Close.
To disable all performance counters, tweak the registry as follows:
1. Press the windows key + R, on your keyboard, type REGEDIT and press Enter.
2. Navigate to the following registry key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Perflib
3. Right-Click in the right-hand pane and click New > DWORD Value.
4. Name the new DWORD Value: DisablePerformanceCounters and press Enter.
5. Double-click DisablePerformanceCounters and set the value data field to 1.
6. Click OK and close the Registry Editor. Re-Boot your system for the changes to take effect.
Tip:
To re-enable performance logging, set the DisablePerformanceCounters Value to 0.
Optimise your XP System's Virtual Memory
When Windows XP runs out of System RAM, because there are more applications open than can fit into the available memory, for example, it uses so calles virtual memory, which is actually a file on your hard disk. While this means that your system can keep running without having to close applications, it dose slow it down as reading and wrighting to the hard drive is much slower than reading and wrighting to RAM.
You can check your system's use of virtual memory (also called page file) as follows:
1. press the windows key + R, on your keyboard, type TASKMGR and press Enter.
2. Click on the Performance tab.
3. Check on the Page File Usage History graph for spikes in the usage of virtual memory as you use your PC.
Ideally if Windows makes heavy use of virtual memory on your hard disk you should add more RAM, although this isn't always possible or practical. If you have two hard disks connected to your system you can move the page file from your system disk (the one containing Windows) to your second disk in order to improve performance.
This is based on the assumption that your second hard drive is used much less than your system disk (which contains Windows and your applications ), and so reads and writes to the page file do not have to compete for disk access with reads and writes to programsand applications - reads and writes to separate disk should not interfere with access to your page file disk.
To utilise your second disk,follow these steps;
1. Click Start > Control Panel > System.
2. Click on the Advanced tab, and click Settings under the Performance heading.
3. Click on the Advanced tab and click Change.
4. Select your second hard disk from the disk list and then select Custom Size.
5. In the Initial Size and Maximun Size fields enter 1.5 times the amount of RAM installed in your system measured in megabytes. For example, if you have 1GB of RAM you would enter 1024 x 1.5 =1536 (1 GB = 1024 MB)
6. Click set.
7. Next, select your system hard drive (usually C:), select No paging file and click set.
8. Click OK > OK .
By default, Windows will create it's own paging file which will grow and shrink to fit the amount of virtual memory it needs at a given time. By manually setting the initial and maximum sizes for the virtual memory file to the same value you are stopping Windows from constantly resizing the file, and hence squeezing a little more performance from the virtual memory system.
Windows performance boosting is a daunting task, but with the right knowledge and advise you can make your system run faster. In this article, i have introduced five little-known optimisation strategies to give you a faster PC for free. Now you can put off that expensive upgrade to a new machine - your old one is perfecly capable after all...
