How To Make Your PC Run More Smoothly

[jasfife]

How To Make Your PC Faster

Seen this little guide to making your PC faster / run more smoothly and I thought I'd share it...




Overview

This is a tutorial on how to make your PC faster. It’s a mixture of options, tweaks and maintenance, some of which are absolutely essential to keeping your operating system at its best. It is focused around Windows 7 and Vista but most of it still applies to XP.

Part 1 – Essential Maintenance – General

Programs & Adware
Temporary Files
Defragmenting
Drivers & Updates

Part 2 – Tips & Tweaks

Change The Power Plan
Enable Write Caching
Disable Indexing
Disable The Page File
Disable System Restore
Enable TRIM (SSDs only)

Part 3 – Optimization & Miscellaneous

Services & Start-Up Programs
Disable The Aero Theme
Disable Unneeded Visual Effects
TCP/IP
Better Gaming
Browsers
Disable User Account Control (UAC)
See Your Restart Time

Read more: How to make your PC faster


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[Mr.Scott]

Most of that is common knowledge for a semi advanced user. There are a few myths in those recommendations though.

[DrGuns4Hands]

I'm still of the opinion if it's slowing down it's probably Win rot so time to back up the important stuff and reformat.

[DarkFox]

maybe we should reccomend that to be a sticky in the genearl area... a "read this first" lol..., along with a link to google maybe.

DrGuns,
I'm of the opinion that if your installs of window keep degrading to the point where you reformat often, your doing something wrong.... I'm on a original install of win 7, before that was like 3 years of vista, before that like 4 years of XP across 3 different arrays.

[apw63]

If you are running SSDs do not run defrag.

Andy

[kwiksilver]

Disabling aero theme is not always good. In fact it can really ruin battery life in a laptop since it offloads alot to the GPU using aero.

[Burn660]

these two use to hold some value back in the days when we ran 1-2gb of ram but with pc's now and even something from the C2D days it's a moot point.
Disable The Aero Theme
Disable Unneeded Visual Effects

maybe not the aero theme part in XP but themes in general.

[FX5200]

I usually HATE any sort of "optimization program", but I've been using Gamebooster 3 for the past day or 2, and it actually seems fairly decent. Seems light, and its mildly useful for tweaking random small things.

[kwiksilver]

Originally Posted by Burn660

these two use to hold some value back in the days when we ran 1-2gb of ram but with pc's now and even something from the C2D days it's a moot point.
Disable The Aero Theme
Disable Unneeded Visual Effects

maybe not the aero theme part in XP but themes in general.

*looks at system with 16GB of ram* Yup not a problem.

[jasfife]

Originally Posted by Mr.Scott

Most of that is common knowledge for a semi advanced user. There are a few myths in those recommendations though.

Yeah, you're right mate, a lot of this is common knowledge to semi-advanced users but I reckon it will help a lot of the less experienced members, especially the types of users who ask questions like "why is my computer slower than it used to be?".

Originally Posted by DrGuns4Hands

I'm still of the opinion if it's slowing down it's probably Win rot so time to back up the important stuff and reformat.

Reformatting with a fresh install is bit extreme is it not? Generally a newer OS that is properly maintained should continue to run smoothly. Like DarkFox said, "if your installs of window keep degrading to the point where you reformat often, your doing something wrong".

Originally Posted by DarkFox

maybe we should reccomend that to be a sticky in the genearl area... a "read this first" lol..., along with a link to google maybe.

DrGuns,
I'm of the opinion that if your installs of window keep degrading to the point where you reformat often, your doing something wrong.... I'm on a original install of win 7, before that was like 3 years of vista, before that like 4 years of XP across 3 different arrays.

It's surprising how many users don't know how to look after their OS, so it would certainly be useful as a sticky.

I'm the same mate, I'm still on the original Win7 install, before that was around 2-3 years of Vista. I did reinstall XP every 12 months or so, but there wasn't really any need to...

Originally Posted by apw63

If you are running SSDs do not run defrag.

Andy

Yeah, you're mate. It does actually say in post "If you don’t use an SSD, you should be doing this frequently"

Originally Posted by kwiksilver

Disabling aero theme is not always good. In fact it can really ruin battery life in a laptop since it offloads alot to the GPU using aero.

Are you sure? Where are you getting that info from? As far as I'm aware, turning off aero will improve batter power, not by much, maybe just a few minutes, but still...

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by FX5200

I usually HATE any sort of "optimization program", but I've been using Gamebooster 3 for the past day or 2, and it actually seems fairly decent. Seems light, and its mildly useful for tweaking random small things.

Yeah, same here! I downloaded it just to see what it was like, and I like how it quickly disables/ere-enables all non-essential services without you having to actually use Computer Management or the MMC. I haven't benchmarked with it yet but I think I'll be keeping it...

[FX5200]

Nevermind you guys, that program is a piece of crap. All was great until my first restart. Thin things went to **** :/ I've spent the past 20 mins repairing damages, missing files, ect... It cancels some very useful services like windows genuine checker and the AUDIO service :/ The hell...

[DarkTower87]

Originally Posted by FX5200

Nevermind you guys, that program is a piece of crap. All was great until my first restart. Thin things went to **** :/ I've spent the past 20 mins repairing damages, missing files, ect... It cancels some very useful services like windows genuine checker and the AUDIO service :/ The hell...

I've never had a problem with gamebooster before. Did you turn off gaming mode before restarting?

[DarkFox]

I would never add and application to simplify applications. Does that make much sense? I would rather find specific issues and fix them, or disable things I never use permanently, but would be rather hesitant to hit "go" on a program.

[jasfife]

Originally Posted by FX5200

Nevermind you guys, that program is a piece of crap. All was great until my first restart. Thin things went to **** :/ I've spent the past 20 mins repairing damages, missing files, ect... It cancels some very useful services like windows genuine checker and the AUDIO service :/ The hell...

Hmm, I'm also interested to know if you had GB enabled when you restarted? Sounds like you did...

I've never had any problems with it.

Originally Posted by DarkFox

I would never add and application to simplify applications. Does that make much sense? I would rather find specific issues and fix them, or disable things I never use permanently, but would be rather hesitant to hit "go" on a program.

Yeah, I'm exactly the same mate. It only disables non-essential services though, nothing dangerous. Its usefulness lies in its ability to disable services that you would use normally but not during gaming, quickly.

[Rockman99]

I not too long ago started using profiles not sure if this applies newer OS's or not but it works well with XP. I have 3 default, normal, gaming these have to do with services running as there are some you don't need to have running.
The 1st profile is default it is how XP is set by default I never change that
Normal has some services disabled, and Gaming is only the services required for Windows to run. I used Black Viper's recommendations: http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/

[johnerz]

Black Viper has been providing good info for years

but imho with a recent powerfull pc more than 4gb of ram there should not be any reason to delve to deep

If however you are benching looking for the very last frame then yes its worth the effort

[AdamV]

Originally Posted by DarkFox

I would never add and application to simplify applications. Does that make much sense? I would rather find specific issues and fix them, or disable things I never use permanently, but would be rather hesitant to hit "go" on a program.

this post makes sense to me.

I have to many programs slowing down my computer....I KNOW! ill add ANOTHER program to fix my issues