Speed Up Windows 7 – Ultimate Guide To Make Windows 7 Blazing Fast!!!

Windows 7 is Engineered for speed. Special attention has been given by the Windows 7 team for making Windows 7 faster than the previous operating systems. Windows 7 is much faster than Windows Vista, but even then most of us don’t get satisfied with it. There are many who still have their old PC. Installing Windows 7 on them wont be as soothing as they work with with XP and Even with latest hardware’s installed some users still long for more performance. At least if we don’t make it lightning fast we can optimize Windows 7 to the maximum possible extent and enjoy the maximum performance we could squeeze out from it. So for all the extra performance lovers, let me present you wit this Ultimate Guide To Speed Up Windows 7.


So lets start The Ultimate Guide to Speed up Windows 7

1. Disabling the Search Indexing Feature in Windows 7

• Right Click the “Computer” Icon in the desktop and select “Manage”.
• Click “Services and Applications” in the “Computer Management” window.
• Click on “Services”.
• You can see a lot of services listed there. Look for “Windows Search” in that.
• Right Click on “Windows Search” from the list and choose “Properties”.
• The “Windows Search Properties Window” will open up. From “Startup type” click on the drop down menu and choose “Disabled”.
• Click “Apply” then “OK” and that’s it. The Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature is now disabled.

Most of the Windows 7 users do less searches in there system. The Search Indexing service in Windows 7 will index keeps track of the files so that they can be found quickly when asked at some other time. This feature is useful only if you perform frequent searches on your system.

For occasional file searchers the Search Indexing service in Windows 7 is a total resource hog. It unknowingly eats up your system resources. What you need from windows 7 is maximum performance from it then i would certainly recommend you to disable this resource hogging Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature.

To Disable the Search Indexing Feature in Windows 7

If you want to completely disable the search indexing feature in Windows 7 you can set the Search Indexing Service to Manual (See the above method about disabling unwanted services).


2. Disable the Aero Theme on Windows 7

• Right Click on your Desktop and select ” Personalize ” click the Window Color Tab.
• Uncheck the Box saying ” Enable Transparency ” and then click on ” Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.
• Then a window will open up. Apply a Standard or Basic theme from it. The Standard Windows 7 theme is more preferred.

The aero user interface certainly adds some ” Eyecandy ” to Windows 7 but certainly is a resource hog especially when, what you expect from windows 7 is more performance juice. Aero user interface squeezes your graphics or video card to its maximum. So why dont we just avoid the Windows 7 aero? if we care more about speed and performance in Windows 7. So Disabling the Aero in Windows 7 certainly adds an extra speed boost to it.

Disabling the aero theme alone in Windows 7 will really speed things up. You can know this by looking into the memory consumption when aero is turned on and off.



3. Disabling the Unwanted Visual Effects in Windows 7 to Speed Up more

• For this right click on ” Computer” and select “Properties” from the right click menu.
• Click on ” Advanced System Settings ” from the left pane to open up the ” System Properties ” window.
• Select the “Advanced” tab from it. Then Under ” Performance ” click ” Settings “. Choose ” Custom: ” Options From it.
• Now un tick all the options and select only the last four options (actually three only needed; you can un tick the second option from the last four). See the screen shot if you have any doubt.
• Now just logoff your system and turn logon.

Even though we have tuned off the aero effects in Windows 7 still there are many unwanted visual effects that can be safely disabled to speed up windows 7 even more.

4. Disabling the Unwanted Services to Speed up Windows 7

There are many services in windows 7 that we dont require for our daily use. There are some exceptional cases though. Services such as “print spooler” is only needed when we use a printer. If we use a printer only occasionally we can safely turn off that service in Windows 7 and turn it on only when we need to take a print.

I have previously prepared a List of services in Windows 7 that can be safely set to manual / disabled.

Disabling the unneeded services in Windows 7 can really speed up the system boot time.


5. Disable the User account control (UAC) Feature in Windows 7

• From the Control Panel open the ” User Accounts and Family Safety ” > User Account.
• Click the User Account Control settings link.
• Now just Drag the Slider towards “Never Notify”.
• Click “OK” and Reboot your system.

The User account control (UAC) feature in Windows 7 is very annoying though it says it can protect your computer from harmful virus activity etc. But if you are a daily user of your computer this windows 7 feature will be a total nuisance to you.

To Disable and Turnoff UAC in Windows 7

Disabling UAC is for advanced users only its not recommend doing it if not.


6. SetUp the Windows 7 Ready Boost Service for an Extra Speed Boost

• To configure the Ready Boost Feature in Windows 7 you need to have a High Speed Flash/USB or Pendrive with you which is ready boost compatible.
• After plugging you pendrive, open “Computer” > Right-click the on USB Drive/Pendrive > select “Ready Boost” tab > tick the “Use this device” checkbox.
• You can configure how much space on your USB drive/ Pendrive to be used as Ram.

The ready boost feature in Windows 7 will help you to use your flash drive or pendrive or USB drive as Ram there by improving the performance and speed of windows 7 greatly. You can certainly experience it when launching bulky applications such as Adobe Photoshop etc.


7. Turn off Unused Windows 7 Features

• Open up ” Programs and Features ” from Control Panel.
• Click the ” Turn Windows features on or off ” from the left pane.
• Now uncheck all the Feature that you don’t use in Windows 7 and restart the system for the changes to take effect.

There are many feature in windows 7 that we often don]t use. Disabling these unused features in Windows 7 will really help in speeding things up.


8. Disable the Windows 7 Sidebar (Actually the Gadgets)

• Right click on the sidebar and select ” Properties “.
• On the properties windows untick the check box showing ” Start sidebar when Windows Starts “
• From now on windows sidebar won’t start when windows 7 start up.

Disabling the window 7 sidebar is definitely help you to to gain a few seconds during start up time. There are many useful utilities such as the RocketDock etc. which are good application launchers.


9. Disable the Aero Peek and Aero Snap features in Windows 7

• Open the Windows 7 ” Control Panel ” and double-click on ” Ease of Access Center ” icon.
• Now click on the ” Make it easier to focus on tasks ” seen at the bottom in there
• Now untick the check box saying ” Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen ” .
• Right click on the Windows 7 taskbar and select ” Properties “.
• Now untick the ” Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop ” option from there.

Aero Snap will help you to maximize, minimize and resize the windows just by dragging and dropping it into the screen corners.

To disable Aero Snap Feature in Windows 7,

That will now disable the Aero Snap in Windows 7.

Now To Disable the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7

The Aero Peek feature in Windows 7 helps you to peek through all open windows by hiding all other windows and showing only the outlines of all windows. Aero Peek is similar to the ” Show Desktop ” Feature in XP and Vista.

If you have followed step 3 then Aero Peek will be automatically disabled. If not,

The aero peek feature will now be disabled in windows 7.


10. Most Essential Softwares To Speed Up Windows 7

• Wise Registry Cleaner
• CCleaner
• TCP Optimizer
• TeraCopy
• Startup Delayer

In order to maintain your Windows 7 Performance and keep it up in Top Shape there are some very essential software’s that can help us to Speed Windows 7. I will list some of them here. You can download these utilities. But i remind you that you need to run these utilities at least once in a week. Only if you do it regularly your Windows 7 will be in top shape every day.

You can read this post which i have prepared earlier about the Top 5 Tools To Speed Up Your PC.

http://www.computingunleashed.com/2009/05/top-5-tools-to-speed-up-your-pc-to.html There you can know more about these software i mentioned now.


11. Disable Unwanted Start Up Items and Speed Up Windows 7 Start Up

• Type ” msconfig ” in the “RUN” option from start menu press [Enter] to open up the System Configuration Utility.
• Now navigate to the “StartUp” tab.
• Untick the Entries which are not needed

This really matters when you have installed a lot of softwares on your PC. Many software such as AcdSee will run services such as device detector etc during the system start up. These are of no use actually for most windows users. So preventing such services from starting up during the start up of windows 7 can result in quicker start Ups. This will actually save some seconds during windows 7 start up.


12. Turn OFF Windows 7 Screen Saver and Wallpaper

• Right click on desktop and choose “Personalize”.
• Click the Screen Saver link ” From the Screen Saver drop down menu, Set it to “None” and click “Apply” and then “OK”.
• Now click on “Desktop Background” link.
• From the “Location” drop down menu select “Solid Colors” and pick one color and click “OK”.

In order to display the wallpaper and screen saver the system needs some memory. So by disabling those two we can save a few Mega Bytes of memory.

To Disable The Screen Saver and Wallpaper in Windows 7,

How to disable USB device AutoPlay feature

AutoPlay feature of the USB device on Windows can be quite dangerous. It is certainly more convenient to have Windows immediately pick-up the USB device once you plug it into the USB port. No matter how careful you are, it is quite possible that your USB device could pick up a virus or if you allow others to use your computer it is more probable that the USB device that they might be plugging into your computer could contain viruses and all sort of nasty things, who knows!

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With SpeedUpMyPC 2010, you will benefit from:

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New Backdoor Trojan Nukes Windows Boot Process

A new backdoor trojan can halt Windows even before the OS even completes the boot process.

Microsoft's Chun Feng said Friday that a new piece of malware capable of nuking the Windows boot process has been discovered. Rather than loading up the operating system, users are greeted with a black screen displaying a single-line, ASCI-based banner.

"A recently discovered backdoor sample (detected as Backdoor:Win32/Yonsole.A) can accept and execute a command from a remote server to modify the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the affected machine," Feng said. "The modification to the MBR is like the old "Stoned" virus for DOS. However, in this case, the MBR does nothing but display a banner in the center of the screen and freeze the PC. We detect the new MBR as Trojan:DOS/Yonsole.A."

Yonsole can infect popular, mainstream versions of Windows platforms--XP, Vista, and Windows 7--by dropping a DLL into C:\Windows\System32. The trojan can also dump a DLL into C:\Winnt\System32 on machines running Windows 2000 and NT. Yonsole was actually discovered earlier this month, so most anti-virus programs--including Microsoft Security Essentials--should already provide protection.

Handy Recovery – restore deleted files easily

Have you ever experienced sudden power failure while in the midst of typing a long important document or minutes of meeting for your company? Or worse, some nasty virus lurking around in your infected PC and your data is compromised? Well, fret no more. Handy Recovery is the ultimate solution to your problems.

Known as user-friendly data recovery software, Handy Recovery is designed to restore files accidentally deleted from your PC. The program can also recover files damaged by virus attacks, power failures and by corrupted software. On top of that, it can even recover files from deleted and formatted partitions. If for some reason, certain programs do not use Recycle Bin when deleting files, Handy Recovery can restore such files without any problems. It can also recover files moved to Recycle Bin after it has been emptied.

The good news is that Handy Recovery works under many versions of Windows operating system such as Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 OS. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32, NTFS/NTFS 5. It can also cater to do image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards. Moreover, it can recover compressed and encrypted files on NTFS drives.

The key features of Handy Recovery include recovering files from deleted and also formatted partitions; filtering files by name, mask, date and size; provide options to create disk images for deferred recovery and shows the probability of successful recovery for each file, amongst other functions.

Retailing for only USD39 for a single user license, Handy Recovery provides flexible discount program for volume purchase orders. Why not add this software to your list of compulsory programs that you cannot do without?

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Vixy.net – online download and convert YouTube flash video

Last year, I reviewed the Video Downloader which allows us to download online video but it does not convert flash video(FLV) to avi/mpeg video files. Here comes the Vixy.net.

Vixy.net is a online FLV converter that convert online flash video to common video file formats. It is handy because it does the conversion for us!

Review Vixy.net

I tested Vixy.net with a few online video URLs from YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe but only YouTube url is working. Also, it took a few times to successfully download and convert the YouTube video. I got a few timeouts and server busy errors.

The flash video conversion is quite fast. It took less than a minute to convert a 2 minutes YouTube video. I cannot comment on the download speed because of my lousy ISP broadband.

Anyway, Vixy.net is nice if you want to download YouTube video and do not know how to convert the flash video for your PC / iPod / PSP. But, I hope Vixy.net will support more online video websites, other than YouTube.

3 Steps to Find All Your Facebook Friends who are using Twitter

You have both Facebook and Twitter accounts. You want to find your Facebook friends who have Twitter accounts too. How? All you take is 3 simple steps.

1. Sign in your Facebook account at fb140.
2. Sign in your Twitter account.
3. You will get a list of Facebook friends who have Twitter account. Tick them and click on the “Follow these people!” button to follow them on Twitter. Done!

fb140 is a web application to find all your Facebook friends on Twitter. It looks at the website field of your Facebook friends’ profile to find friends who have listed their Twitter URL.

If your Facebook friends do not list their Twitter URL then fb140 cannot find them…

Among my 344 Facebook friends, only 6 have Twitter URL listed in their profile. I was expecting more.. maybe my friends are not keen to tweet?

How many of your Facebook friends are Twitter users too? Try fb140.