I want to make sure there now that there are no lingering conflict with my Win7 machine. It was also recomended by the Virus Removal Team that I post on this forum section. I basically want to check my system for optimal settings, no conflicts, and stability/speed. I also have a bit of an issue with my Kensington Expert Mouse Trackball. I have read there are issue with the driver when used in Win7 (32bit or 64bit). If some one can also help me with this, I would be greatly appreciative.
I basically want to check my system for optimal settings, no conflicts, and stability/speed.
Operating System optimization is always subjective. What's good for me might not be good for you. You might like IE8 browser, but I say Opera or some other browser. It's all subjective and that goes for a lot of other regularly used programs that affect PC performance.
Operational system speed is hardware and Internet speed dependent so steer away from snake-oil in the guise of system "optimizers" and "internet speed-me-ups". Also avoid Registry cleaners too. All of them are far more likely to slow things down or worse, create problems.
In addition to Lee's excellent advice, there are manual optimisations and "tweaks" that you can apply to Windows 7.
Broadly speaking, there are three main types of "tweaks", all of which can be applied via existing Windows tools. No need to download any third-party applications.
1. The first type is a "system response" type tweak. You can tweak your system to be more responsive in two ways. The first is to get better hardware, as Lee had suggested, and the second is to reduce the impact of rendering the OS on your hardware. Usually the way you do that is by disabling Windows Aero and opting to go for the Windows Classic theme. To do this, right click your desktop and go to "Personalization". Scroll all the way to the bottom, and under the "Basic and High Contrast Themes" choose Windows Classic.
In addition to this, you could choose Windows "performance" setting. Go to your Start Menu, Control Panel and then System. On the far left click on "Advanced System Settings". In the Advanced tab click on the "Settings" button under Performance. Then select the "Adjust for best performance" option and click apply.
If you go to the Advanced tab in this window you'll see some further options regarding the performance of your computer. Ensure that under Processor Scheduling that it's selected for "Programs" and that under Virtual Memory that the paging file size is at least the size of your installed RAM. So if you have 2GB of RAM installed, the paging file should be 2024 MB. If it isn't, click "Change" and adjust the size by choosing "Custom size" and entering the relevant information in the "Initial Size" and the "Maximum Size" boxes.
2. The second is a "boot time" type tweak. This is simply achieved by reducing the amount of applications that start when Windows boots up. Go to your Start Menu , type "msconfig" in the search bar and hit enter. Go to the Startup Tab and deselect any applications you do not want to start when you boot up. Don't deselect any Microsoft applications just to be on the safe side. You will need to restart your computer for this to take effect.
3. The third is a "operating system resource usage" type tweak. This one is a little tricky is usually the sort of thing that "system optimizers" tend to target. The theory is that if you stop certain unwanted or unnecessary system processes/features from running less resources will be used by Windows. When people claim this, they usually use "Search Indexing" as their example. This process runs in the background and indexes your files so that searching them is quicker. Turning this feature off stops the indexing, which frees up some of your resources. But, what people tend to forget is that Search Indexing, and other resource hungry processes, are only ever set to run when the user isn't active. This may not have been the case in XP or Vista, but it certainly is in Windows 7.
For this reason alone, I suggest not disabling any Windows services unless you have a genuine reason to do so. Any performance increase by disabling Windows Services permanently will be negligible.
Hope that helps,
Nahumi
For Services (and other) Tweaks, see Black Viper's guide. http://www.blackviper.com/2010/12/17/black…configurations/ I recommend the "Safe" guide.
Make sure you leave System Restore operational, but you could comfortably reduce the restore point's storage space to about 2GB. (approx. 200MB=one storage point). Apart from System Restore, all Black Viper's system tweaks are excellent.
Cheers,
Lee
PS. (edit for more info.) http://www.blackviper.com/category/guides/windows-7/#two
Step-by-step tweak guide for:
Number One: User Account Control
Number Two: System Restore and Windows Search Features (don't use this tweak)
Number Three: Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop
Number Four: Aero (Themes)
Number Five: Updated Drivers
Number Six: Lighten System Tray (Action Center)
Number Seven: Add/Remove Programs
Number Eight: Services
These tweaks will of course depend on personal preferences.
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