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#41
The simple fact is no program exists that will speed up and trim down windows 7 as effectively as some good manual tweaking of the registry, services and startup programs, followed by a thorough HDD cleanup and a defrag using a 3rd party defragmenter. If you don't have a bit of experience and a system that you're willing to practice on and risk breaking the OS from time to time in trying to find the best possible setup, you're better off just leaving it as is.
LOL! Some people just can't leave well enough alone! I know I'm one of them! I learn the most when trying to recover from a "tweak" I found on a forum such as this! There is no difference from the "Hot rodder" who is trying to squeeze an ounce of performance from a vehicle that has been on the drawing boards for years than a "Gamer" to whom 3/4 seconds means a lot! Been there (shouldn't have been) done that! I love 7 and it loves me and even when I do something "creative" it is forgiving!! So my take is have fun and backup often!! You're going to need it
When you can reduce the base memory load by 40-50% and the number of running processes at startup to under 40 on a system built mainly for running multiple VMs.. it makes a big difference, even when you have 8 GB to work with
if you have a lot of spare time, try this:
Make a system image right after installing windows, before installing any updates, then update and install drivers and every program you're planning to use and run them all simultaneously until the page fault count starts to skyrocket and the system bogs down. Whatever windows recommends for a pagefile size when that happens, add 50% to it and set a fixed pagefile right after wiping the HDD and restoring from the system image.. It's not necessary on SSDs, but having a contiguous pagefile that will never be fragmented makes a big difference a year or so down the road
Configuring more SysRestore points space in System Protection is always a good idea - if you have the HD space to spare and especially if you're feeling tweaky.