Cutting the Taskbar down to size leaves more screen space for of your applications. Right-click the Taskbar, Select Properties and then check ‘Use Small Icons’ to make it happen.
Tip 22. HALT RUNAWAY PROGRAMS
If a Program is grabbing all your processor time and slowing everything down, but you can‘t close it, hit [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Esc] to launch Task Manager. Click Processes, then select ‘Show processes from all users’. Click the CPU column header, and find the app using the most processor time. Right-click the program, then select Set Affinity, clear all but one of your processor core boxes, and it won‘t be able to use them. Your PC will speed up.
Tip 23. REMOVE SURPLUS SOFTWARE
Uninstalling unwanted programs can speed up your PC. But which ones should go? Launch the ‘Uninstall a Program’ applet in Control Panel, and click the ‘Installed on’ column header to sort your programs by the date that you installed them. (Don‘t see Installed On? Right-click a column header, and check the Installed On box – if necessary, click More to locate it.) You can see programs you installed long ago. If there are any you‘ve forgotten about that you no longer use or need, uninstall them and you’ll also have more storage space to play with too.
Tip 24. UNINSTALL EASILY
If the uninstaller fails, boot into Safe Mode and try again.
Tip 25. START IE FASTER
If Internet Explorer seems slow to launch, fire up the browser, click Tools > ‘Manage Add-ons’, and click Toolbars & Extensions. This displays all of your add-ons, along with a Load Time figure that shows how long they took to launch. If you spot one that‘s wasting time that you don’t need, uninstall it, or click the extension and hit Disable.
Tip 26. POWER UP
The Windows 7 Power Options can make a real difference to system speed. Go to Control Panel > ‘Hardware and Sound’ > Power Options, and ensure that you have High Performance selected.
Tip 27. BOOT QUICKLY
Install multiple versions of Windows on a PC and you get a menu asking which one you‘d like to launch. By default this waits up to 30 seconds before selecting the default choice, but if that‘s too long, launch MSCONFIG.EXE, click the Boot tab and set the Timeout figure to, say, 10 seconds instead.
Tip 28. FREE UP HARD DRIVE SPACE
If you‘re running short of hard drive space, Windows Disk Cleanup can help. Click Start, type ‘Disk’ and click Disk Cleanup. Choose the drive you‘d like to clean and click OK. Disk Cleanup displays files it thinks you can delete. By default, only a few are selected, so check the boxes next to anything else you don‘t need and click OK > Delete.
Tip 29. REMOVE OLD PICTURES
Fix a photo in Windows Live Photo Gallery and it keeps the original forever; great if you need to undo it, but otherwise a waste of space. To tweak this, launch Photo Gallery, click File > Options, and set ‘Move originals to Recycle Bin after’ to, say, one month.
Tip 30. SAVE RESOURCES
If you‘ve installed an anti-virus package, then you don‘t need Windows Defender. Click Start, type ‘Defender’ and click Windows Defender to fire up the program. Click Tools > Options > Administrator and clear the Use This Program box, then click Save to turn off Defender.
Tip 31. SPOT HIDDEN WINDOWS
Sometimes programs display a message asking you to do something, but it‘s under another window and you don‘t see it. You‘re waiting for the program, it‘s waiting for you, so nothing happens. The window is made visible after 200 seconds, but you can shorten the delay. Launch REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, double-click ‘ForegroundLockTimeout’ and select Decimal. Change the value to 30,000 milliseconds (30 seconds) and see how this works.
Tip 32. BROWSE MENUS AT SPEED
A Registry edit can shorten the pause before Windows menus expand, speeding up navigation. Launch REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Desktop, double-click MenuShowDelay, and select Decimal. Now change the default to something a little snappier – 200 (which is 0.2 seconds) works for us.
Tip 33. DISABLE AERO (TEMPORARILY)
When you‘re running a program that requires all your RAM, you can give it a little extra by automatically (and temporarily) turning off Aero. Browse to the executable file or its shortcut, right-click it, select Properties > Compatibility and check ‘Disable desktop composition’. Run the program and Aero is turned off, then restored when the program is shut down.
Tip 34. FIND UNWANTED SERVICES
Many applications install Windows services, which run all the time, consuming valuable system resources. To view these services, run MSCONFIG.EXE, click Services and check ‘Hide all Microsoft services’. Don‘t disable anything unless you know what you‘re doing, because it can be dangerous. But if you recognise apps that are still installed, and you no longer use them, uninstall them.
Tip 35. USE ONE DEFRAG TOOL ONLY
If you‘ve installed a third-party defrag tool, disable the Windows version, because it may still be running, wasting time and resources. To turn it off, click Start, type ‘Defrag’, click Disk Defragmenter and select Configure Schedule. Clear the Run on a schedule’ box.
Tip 36. COMMAND LINE SPEED-UP
Drag and drop a file on the Windows 7 command window and the full name appears automatically.
Tip 37. DISABLE AERO (ALWAYS)
If you‘re running Windows 7 on a low-powered PC, you can improve its performance a little by turning off the Aero interface. Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise, scroll to Basic and High Contrast Themes and click Windows 7 Basic. If you miss the old look, return to the Personalise dialog and choose an Aero Theme.
Tip 38. SOLVE SLOW STARTS
If Windows 7 is taking a long time to launch or shut down, Event Viewer may tell you which program or driver is responsible. Click Start, type ‘Eventvwr.msc’ and press [Return], then expand the Applications and Services Logs section, and browse to Microsoft\Windows\DiagnosticPerformance\Operational. Scroll the events list on your PC to see if Windows which app or service is to blame.
Tip 39. FIX THIS ODD BOOT BUG
Is your Windows 7 desktop background a solid colour? Then it may mean your PC takes 30 seconds longer than usual to boot. Change your background to an image to restore normal start-up performance, or install a hotfix from Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977346).
Tip 40. SAVE DRIVE SPACE
Windows 7 keeps files on your last 50 crashes. If you‘ll never look at this data, though, it‘s a waste of precious drive space. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl, and set MiniDumpsCount to 5. Windows now keeps the last five dumps, so you have some info if you need to diagnose crashes but you also gain a little drive space.
The next 20 tips will be available soon
