Windows 7 - Optimize Windows 7

From what I have read here one 7forums is that Readyboost is only good for laptops with limited RAM. However, I also see posts that contradict it.

Is it useful for PC's with more than 3GB of RAM?

Hello Jagooch, and welcome to Seven Forums.

It really depends on your needs, but usually Readyboost is not as helpful when you have over 3GB of RAM. It may help reduce HDD activity some by using the USB flash drive more instead, but that will most likely be about it.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Great tutorial Shawn.

Good tutorial. One suggestion I would add is to move media, program installers, driver installers and personal files to a separate partition or HDD from Windows 7 and programs, and to shrink the system partition to somewhere between 60-100 GB. This benefits you in two ways: You'll see better startup and shutdown times and overall performance (unless you're using a SSD) and more importantly, if you ever have a problem which can be more easily fixed by reinstalling windows.. well I doubt I need to explain that...

Thanks for the tips!

I guess the importance or registry cleaning is not being discussed in this thread. And also the optimizing technique of using disk check which should repair some bad sectors in the disk and somehow improve performance.

When using that tool, go to Computer>right click one of the drives (ex. C:)> choose Properties> hit the Tools tab> click the Check Now button.

Note: If the drive you are to perform disk check is being used such as the partition where your OS is saved, uncheck "Automatically fix file system errors" and check "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors". If you are doing disk check on the main partition, please close all your running desktop programs first.Then Start.

If the drive you are going to perform disk check is not curretly used such as an external hard drive or USB, you may leave the "Automatically fix file system errors" checkbox checked. Anyway, in Windows 7, you will be notified if the particular disk is currently in use.

The time this will take to complete will depend on the size of your drive.

Or you can select both boxes on your OS partition, and then reboot to let it do it's thing. That's what I always do.

Speaking of moving media. I have a folder on my D:\ drive [internal secondary drive] that I save alot of stuff on. So I make a path in the "send to" right click context menu, and use that. I don't know why, but the send to option is like 10 times faster than just regular moving, or copying files.

I might be able to add some to this...

First.. I always partition my hard disks. I set up about 15gb for the operating system and software (I don't carry a big program load, mostly just compilers and editors, with a couple of light weight graphics things tossed in). The second partion is about 100gb for project space; it's where most of the mess happens so defragging it is quick. The other 300 or so gb is an archive where I store static files like my music collection, completed projects, pictures etc. (Movies and the major music collection are on a NAS box.) I've found over the years that completely aside from being able to reinstall without losing my data, it's real easy to maintain a system like this.

For tweaks let me suggest you take a peek at the attached zip file... It's got a couple of pages of tweaks and a .reg file I've been putting together. When I did my final install the desktop machine, the reg tweak made a noticeable improvement in the system's behavior. (It also includes the "timestamp" tweak to let the drive spin down)

Finally... I run without a swap file, always have, and I gotta tell you it really does speed things up.

I always wipe my C:\ drive clean before a clean install [the ONLY way I ever install the OS] and let Windows partition the drive. Then I keep all files that aren't the programs I run on D:\ drive [a physical second disc]. This way I can reformat without losing anything. I also keep my program installation files on D:\ drive, so the reformat process is rather quick. I normally reformat about every 60-90 days, whether it needs it or not. It's not that time consuming, because like you, I think I use about 15GB's with the OS, and all my programs put together. A fresh install keeps the rig running fast, and clutter free.

I'll take a look at the .zip file you included here in a little bit, Bro.


Max