Five quick Windows speedup tips

There's one thing all Windows users have in common: They all want the OS to run faster. Here are five ways to turn your tortoise PC into a hare.

Go the one-click route with the "best performance" option in the Visual Effects settings. In Windows XP, right-click My Computer, choose Properties > Advanced, click the Settings button under Performance, and then select the Visual Effects tab. In Vista, press the Windows key, type performance information, press Enter, and click Adjust Visual Effects in the left pane. In both OSes, you can choose Custom and deselect the options in the window below as you prefer, or simply select Adjust for best performance. When you're done, click OK twice.

Optimize Windows' performance by disabling unnecessary visual effects via this option in the Performance Options dialog.

Tell Internet Explorer not to save encrypted pages. Open Internet Explorer, click Tools > Internet Options > Advanced, scroll down the Settings window to the Security section, check "Do not save encrypted pages to disk," and click OK.

Set Internet Explorer not to save encrypted Web pages by choosing this option in its Settings dialog box under the Advanced tab.

Disconnect network drives you no longer use. Double-click My Computer (Computer in Vista, or simply press the Windows key, type "computer", and press Enter). Click Tools > Disconnect Network Drive, choose the drive you no longer use, and click OK. (If you use Vista and don't see the Tools menu in Computer, press Alt.)

Unload DLLs when the apps that use them close. When you close an application, Windows keeps the DLLs it uses open so that the program will reload faster should you choose to reopen it. You can keep these unneeded DLLs from cluttering things up by changing a Registry setting. Because making changes to the Registry can screw up your system, create a restore point first. With your Registry backup in place, press the Windows key (in Vista) or click Start > Run (in XP), type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate in the left pane to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer, right-click in the right pane, and choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the value AlwaysUnloadDLL, double-click it, give it a value of 1, click OK, and close the Registry Editor.

Disable Indexing Service. You may be happy with Windows' built-in search feature, but I prefer a third-party desktop-search utility, which I find to be faster and more accurate. If you rarely use Windows' own search tool, you can free up memory and processor cycles by disabling the resource-hogging Indexing Service that it relies on: Open Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet (Programs and Features in Vista). In XP, click Add/Remove Windows Components, and in Vista choose "Turn Windows features on or off" in the left pane. In both versions, uncheck Indexing Service, and click OK.

Speed up Windows XP and Vista by disabling the Indexing Service used by the OSes' built-in search feature.

Tomorrow: Sort messages in Gmail using instant folders.

[A_N_Onymous]

We are in 2008, aren't we. This is old stuff.

[mjm01010101]

"Tell Internet Explorer not to save encrypted pages. " This is a fairly bad tip. This may break a lot of sites for business users and secure sites. For our company alone two extranet sites depend on this being checked. This will not save you much performance wise.

"Unload DLLs when the apps that use them close. " The majority of people have more than enough memory to load applications, so this will make their systems SLOWER on those machines that have memory. Also this is a universal change.

A far better bet is to train users to hibernate/suspend as the startup time to use your PC will save minutes each time.

[doreilly]

Using hibernate/suspend was the subject of the first two posts of this blog in early December 2007.

As to IE saving encrypted pages, the point is to avoid loading up your Temporary Internet Files folder with big encrypted pages. I believe this would simply require that you log into the sites each time, which may take more time but is also more secure.

Unloading DLLs you are no longer using applies only if you don't frequently reopen applications after shutting them down. Otherwise I don't see how having the unneeded DLLs closed can slow down your system.

[Timcal]

Both of you hit it right on the head. Most of this is old stuff and the "unload DLLs" is not a speed helper as he pointed out. The "best performance" option is about the only thing that will really do much good. Like mjm01010101 said, " A far better bet is to train users to hibernate/suspend as the startup time to use your PC will save minutes each time." now that's a great idea and a good time saver to beat too.

[acbarabaal]

Actually unloading DLL's does save resources and therefore does speed up windows, while is is true that unloading th DLL's will sacrifice application load time, the article was not about that, it was about speeding up windows. Ditto for the encrypted pages, while some sites do require it to be ticked, having it unticked will give a marginal speed boost in the OS.

Training people to hibernate their system is a BAD idea, while it does save on load times, is is terrible for security as a system that is in hibernate is still online and the network still active. This can lead to a multitude of problems. In short, don't hibernate your system unless you don't care about your data security. Practice safe hex, when you've finished doing what you're doing, power down your system, or if you must hibernate your system, switch off your network.

[kjhishere]

Unload DLLs when the apps that use them close. ...

If you are using Win2k or later the registry entry referenced has no affect, more info here,

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....g/debugging.asp

and here,

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

[doreilly]

I stand corrected, though I'd like to know how to shorten the DLL-unload wait time to zero. Good ol' Microsoft.

(I couldn't follow the first truncated link.)

[wwhite]

Since "I prefer a third-party desktop-search utility, which I find to be faster and more accurate." just curious about which one. The "best performance" option was good for me.

[PCWizKid]

I remember these tips, they are correct, however I have some new tips and tweaks for XP and Vista posted here:

http://PCWizKid.blogpost.com

Cheers
PCWizKid