Windows 7 - Tweaks

Hello,
I did some performance tweaks such as set for best performance. Disabled a lot of eye candy settings etc. No registry tweaks. Disabled aero snap. Things are, for the most part, pretty dang fast. My question is about indexing. I turned it off because I don't use it. However, my wife does. I did this in XP and she could still use it. Does the same hold true for Windows 7 Ultimate?

I think you mean searching. You can search with indexing turned off but it will take much longer and may miss things. It really doesnt use many resources after the initial index.

Ken

Thanks, Ken
Sorry it took so long to respond.

Yes, when Win 7 is first installed,, you will notice the system may run, (sluggish??, but not really that bad) till the indexing is done, and updates are downloaded, then things start getting faster/smoother.

I always recommend leaving a 7 system on for at least 48 hours after the initial install and setup to allow things such as indexing and updates to download in the background and reboot it to allow the updates to install as needed. After that initial 48 hours, the system should run very nicely.

By that I mean,, change power settings so the system does not sleep or hibernate,, just let it turn off the display.

So I can turn indexing back on and not suffer a performance hit? Glad to see you are Hannitized.

Well,, you may see a slight hit, but it really is not as bad as you may think, and not forever or very long.
Win 7 handles everything much better than XP or Vista ever have.

I only have two gigs of memory and my pc is a couple of years old. I'ts moving along pretty fast right now and I want to keep it that way. This was a recommended tweak along with a few others like setting pc to best performance and turning off visual effects etc. I don't get into the registry tweaks much.

Download CCleaner and on the cleaner select prefetch data to help reduce startup times. I also use a program called Game Booster from Iobit. It helps release on average 100MB of RAM when in use. You can use a flash drive as "backup RAM" with ReadyBoost. This site has many things for you to learn about regarding useful and wasteful resources with Windows 7. I also do a few registry tweaks with all 7 machines I setup. Using regedit, edit these keys:

Setting value to 3:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Setting value to 2:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ FileSystem\NtfsMemoryUSage

Setting value to 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\LargeSystemCache

Reboot the computer after making the registry changes.

I hope that helps!

The netbook I run I upgraded to Vista and later 7 in-place, has only 2 gigs of RAM, has all of the visual effects enabled still runs faster than it originally did with XP. It's just how you maintain your computer and what tweaks you make to it that make it run well. Another program I use is IObit Smart Defrag, which defrags your HDD in real time without taking up many system resources.

Thanks for the advice. I already run CC and I use Auslogics defrag. It also has an auto defrag. I won't be getting into the registry much because those tweaks seem to lead to problems down the road (for me). As for the visual, I like instant as apposed to fading in and out. I have heard both sides of the prefetch issue, but would like to hear more about it. Thanks,
John