99 ways to make yourcomputer fast
99 ways to make your computer fast
1. Defragment your computer hard disk using
free tools like SmartDefrag.
2. You should also defragment your Windows
pagefile and registry.
3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up
by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation
and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to
determine what is taking up space on your hard
drive.
4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup
Delayer, a free program that will speed up the
boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of
programs.
5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them
are useless and can be turned off. Use the
MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.
6. By default, the size of the paging file is
controlled by Windows, which can cause
defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be
on a different hard drive or partition than the boot
partition. Read here on the rules for best paging
file performance.
7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows
Search indexing service is turned on for all local
hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way
to increase performance.
8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual
effects in Windows, you can turn them off by
going to Performance Options.
9. You can optimize the Windows boot time
using a free program called Bootvis from
Microsoft.
10. Clean your registry by removing broken
shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths,
invalid installer references and more. Read about
the 10 best and free registry cleaners.
11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is
because of spyware. There are many programs
to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant
Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.
12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is
very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to
remove spyware.
13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka
junk software) from your new PC using PC
Decrapifier.
14. Disable unnecessary Windows services,
settings, and programs that slow down your
computer.
15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows
Vista settings using free programs
16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in
Windows Vista
17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can
copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate
quickly while browsing and more. Read here to
learn how to tweak your mouse.
18. Delete temporary and unused files on your
computer using a free program like CCleaner. It
can also fix issues with your registry.
19. Delete your Internet browsing history,
temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk
space.
20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to
improve performance.
21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up
Windows boot time.
22. Reduce the number of fonts that your
computer has to load up on startup.
23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from
memory to free up RAM.
24. Run DOS programs in separate memory
spaces for better performance.
25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly
backup your Windows machine using third party
software.
26. Move or change the location of your My
Documents folder so that it is on a separate
partition or hard drive.
27. Turn off default disk performance monitors
on Windows XP to increase performance.
28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused
ports on your Windows machine.
29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your
computer by allowing it to make sure that no one
process can completely overtake the CPU.
30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in
My Computer by disabling search for network
files and printers.
31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in
Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails
cache.
32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows
XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to
increase display speed.
33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and
the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.
34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an
external DNS server such as OpenDNS.
35. Improve Vista performance by using
ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can
use the free space on your USB drive as a
caching mechanism.
36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you
can browse web pages faster using a service
called Finch, which converts it into simple text.
37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable
unnecessary services in Vista safely.
38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators,
which are programs that try to prefetch and
cache the sites you are going to visit.
39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the
configuration settings and by installing an add-on
called FasterFox.
40. Learn how to build your own computer with
the fastest parts and best hardware.
41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up
file copying in Windows XP and Vista.
42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to
speed up Windows XP.
43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking
the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.
44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in
Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of
RAM.
45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with
less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of
RAM.
46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait
time to kill hung applications.
47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for
best performance” on the Performance tab in
System Properties.
48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure
that you partition your hard drives correctly to
maximize performance.
49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all
of your programs into a virtual layer that does
not affect the registry or system files.
50. Create and install virtual machines for free and
install junk program, games, etc into the virtual
machines instead of the host operating system.
Check out Sun openxVM.
51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown
unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing
the paging file slows down shutdown.
52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using
NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to
the NTFS file system.
53. Update all of your drivers in Windows,
including chipset and motherboard drivers to
their latest versions.
54. Every once in a while run the built-in
Windows Disk Cleanup utility.
55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE
ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.
56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from
the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.
57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95
to check for bad memory on your PC.
58. Determine your BIOS version and check the
manufactures website to see if you need to
update your BIOS.
59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse,
keyboard and computer fans of dust and other
buildup.
60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200
RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.
61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select
on your hard drive configuration can significantly
decrease your boot time.
62. Perform a virus scan on your computer
regularly. If you don’t want to install virus
protection, use some of the free online virus
scanners.
63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows
taskbar and from your Internet browser.
64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re
not really using it for anything important. All
those gadgets take up memory and processing
power.
65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running
Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by
enabling the advanced write caching features.
66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for
Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create
your own keyboard shortcuts.
67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows
Vista to increase computer performance.
68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind
taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your
processor.
69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by
typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting
unnecessary items.
70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows
Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they
“normally” help your computer work better.
71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or
other errors on your hard drive by using the
ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.
72. If you are not using some of the hardware on
your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive,
USB ports, IR ports, Firewire, etc, then go into
your BIOS and disable them so that they do not
use any power and do not have to be loaded
during boot up.
73. If you have never used the Recent
Documents feature in Windows, then disable it
completely as a long list can affect PC
performance.
74. One basic tweak that can help in performance
is to disable error reporting in Windows XP
75. If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you
should use the Windows Classic theme under
Display Properties.
76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS
by running the following command: fsutil
behavior set disable8dot3 1. It will speed up the
file creation process.
77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can
slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple
folders and spread out the files between the
folders.
78. If you have files that are generally large, you
might want to consider increasing the cluster size
on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This
will help speed up opening of files.
79. If you have more than one disk in your PC,
you can increase performance by moving your
paging file to the second drive and formatting the
volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.
80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by
going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a
program, and then clicking on Turn Windows
features on and off. You can turn off Remote
Differential Compression, Tablet PC components,
DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan,
Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.
81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus
program to help protect against viruses, etc.
Make sure to use an anti-virus program that does
not hog up all of your computer resources.
82. Completely uninstall programs and
applications using a program like Revo
Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants left behind
by normal uninstalls.
83. If you know what you are doing, you can
install several hard drives into your machine and
set them up in RAID 0, RAID 5, or other RAID
configurations.
84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to
2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that
instead of a USB port since Firewire is faster than
USB right now.
85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that
may be hidden in Device Manager that you no
longer use.
86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster
operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go
with Windows XP. Switching to Mac or Linux is
also an option.
87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC
is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to
backup your data, but it is the best way to get
your computer back to peak performance.
88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by
increasing the number of max connections per
server in the registry.
89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents,
you can increase the download speeds by
tweaking the settings.
90. If you have a desktop background, make
sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather
than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to
find a really small texture and to tile it.
91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows
(right-click on My Computer, Properties,
Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced,
Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are
both the same number.
92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia,
you can do it much faster on Vista by adding
them to the Vista Start Menu Instant Search box.
93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC
that was previously used, make sure to check the
BIOS for optimal settings such as enabled CPU
caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer
modes, memory timings, etc. You can also
enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.
94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write
cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the
properties of the SCSI drive in Windows.
95. If you have a machine with an older network
card, make sure to enable the onboard processor
for the network card, which will offload tasks
from the CPU.
96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can
disable the Welcome Center splash screen that
always pops up.
97. If you already have anti-spyware software
installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.
98. If you are running a 32-bit version of
Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you
can force Windows to see and use all of the RAM
by enabling PAE.
99. Buy a new computer!!! Pretty easy eh?
I’m sure I have missed out on lots of
performance tweaks, tips, hacks, etc, so feel free
to post comments to add to the list! Enjoy!
1. Defragment your computer hard disk using
free tools like SmartDefrag.
2. You should also defragment your Windows
pagefile and registry.
3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up
by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation
and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to
determine what is taking up space on your hard
drive.
4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup
Delayer, a free program that will speed up the
boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of
programs.
5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them
are useless and can be turned off. Use the
MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.
6. By default, the size of the paging file is
controlled by Windows, which can cause
defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be
on a different hard drive or partition than the boot
partition. Read here on the rules for best paging
file performance.
7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows
Search indexing service is turned on for all local
hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way
to increase performance.
8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual
effects in Windows, you can turn them off by
going to Performance Options.
9. You can optimize the Windows boot time
using a free program called Bootvis from
Microsoft.
10. Clean your registry by removing broken
shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths,
invalid installer references and more. Read about
the 10 best and free registry cleaners.
11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is
because of spyware. There are many programs
to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant
Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.
12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is
very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to
remove spyware.
13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka
junk software) from your new PC using PC
Decrapifier.
14. Disable unnecessary Windows services,
settings, and programs that slow down your
computer.
15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows
Vista settings using free programs
16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in
Windows Vista
17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can
copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate
quickly while browsing and more. Read here to
learn how to tweak your mouse.
18. Delete temporary and unused files on your
computer using a free program like CCleaner. It
can also fix issues with your registry.
19. Delete your Internet browsing history,
temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk
space.
20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to
improve performance.
21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up
Windows boot time.
22. Reduce the number of fonts that your
computer has to load up on startup.
23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from
memory to free up RAM.
24. Run DOS programs in separate memory
spaces for better performance.
25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly
backup your Windows machine using third party
software.
26. Move or change the location of your My
Documents folder so that it is on a separate
partition or hard drive.
27. Turn off default disk performance monitors
on Windows XP to increase performance.
28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused
ports on your Windows machine.
29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your
computer by allowing it to make sure that no one
process can completely overtake the CPU.
30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in
My Computer by disabling search for network
files and printers.
31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in
Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails
cache.
32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows
XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to
increase display speed.
33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and
the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.
34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an
external DNS server such as OpenDNS.
35. Improve Vista performance by using
ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can
use the free space on your USB drive as a
caching mechanism.
36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you
can browse web pages faster using a service
called Finch, which converts it into simple text.
37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable
unnecessary services in Vista safely.
38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators,
which are programs that try to prefetch and
cache the sites you are going to visit.
39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the
configuration settings and by installing an add-on
called FasterFox.
40. Learn how to build your own computer with
the fastest parts and best hardware.
41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up
file copying in Windows XP and Vista.
42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to
speed up Windows XP.
43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking
the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.
44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in
Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of
RAM.
45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with
less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of
RAM.
46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait
time to kill hung applications.
47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for
best performance” on the Performance tab in
System Properties.
48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure
that you partition your hard drives correctly to
maximize performance.
49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all
of your programs into a virtual layer that does
not affect the registry or system files.
50. Create and install virtual machines for free and
install junk program, games, etc into the virtual
machines instead of the host operating system.
Check out Sun openxVM.
51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown
unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing
the paging file slows down shutdown.
52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using
NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to
the NTFS file system.
53. Update all of your drivers in Windows,
including chipset and motherboard drivers to
their latest versions.
54. Every once in a while run the built-in
Windows Disk Cleanup utility.
55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE
ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.
56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from
the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.
57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95
to check for bad memory on your PC.
58. Determine your BIOS version and check the
manufactures website to see if you need to
update your BIOS.
59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse,
keyboard and computer fans of dust and other
buildup.
60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200
RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.
61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select
on your hard drive configuration can significantly
decrease your boot time.
62. Perform a virus scan on your computer
regularly. If you don’t want to install virus
protection, use some of the free online virus
scanners.
63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows
taskbar and from your Internet browser.
64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re
not really using it for anything important. All
those gadgets take up memory and processing
power.
65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running
Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by
enabling the advanced write caching features.
66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for
Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create
your own keyboard shortcuts.
67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows
Vista to increase computer performance.
68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind
taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your
processor.
69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by
typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting
unnecessary items.
70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows
Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they
“normally” help your computer work better.
71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or
other errors on your hard drive by using the
ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.
72. If you are not using some of the hardware on
your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive,
USB ports, IR ports, Firewire, etc, then go into
your BIOS and disable them so that they do not
use any power and do not have to be loaded
during boot up.
73. If you have never used the Recent
Documents feature in Windows, then disable it
completely as a long list can affect PC
performance.
74. One basic tweak that can help in performance
is to disable error reporting in Windows XP
75. If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you
should use the Windows Classic theme under
Display Properties.
76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS
by running the following command: fsutil
behavior set disable8dot3 1. It will speed up the
file creation process.
77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can
slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple
folders and spread out the files between the
folders.
78. If you have files that are generally large, you
might want to consider increasing the cluster size
on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This
will help speed up opening of files.
79. If you have more than one disk in your PC,
you can increase performance by moving your
paging file to the second drive and formatting the
volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.
80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by
going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a
program, and then clicking on Turn Windows
features on and off. You can turn off Remote
Differential Compression, Tablet PC components,
DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan,
Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.
81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus
program to help protect against viruses, etc.
Make sure to use an anti-virus program that does
not hog up all of your computer resources.
82. Completely uninstall programs and
applications using a program like Revo
Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants left behind
by normal uninstalls.
83. If you know what you are doing, you can
install several hard drives into your machine and
set them up in RAID 0, RAID 5, or other RAID
configurations.
84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to
2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that
instead of a USB port since Firewire is faster than
USB right now.
85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that
may be hidden in Device Manager that you no
longer use.
86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster
operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go
with Windows XP. Switching to Mac or Linux is
also an option.
87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC
is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to
backup your data, but it is the best way to get
your computer back to peak performance.
88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by
increasing the number of max connections per
server in the registry.
89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents,
you can increase the download speeds by
tweaking the settings.
90. If you have a desktop background, make
sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather
than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to
find a really small texture and to tile it.
91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows
(right-click on My Computer, Properties,
Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced,
Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are
both the same number.
92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia,
you can do it much faster on Vista by adding
them to the Vista Start Menu Instant Search box.
93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC
that was previously used, make sure to check the
BIOS for optimal settings such as enabled CPU
caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer
modes, memory timings, etc. You can also
enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.
94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write
cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the
properties of the SCSI drive in Windows.
95. If you have a machine with an older network
card, make sure to enable the onboard processor
for the network card, which will offload tasks
from the CPU.
96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can
disable the Welcome Center splash screen that
always pops up.
97. If you already have anti-spyware software
installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.
98. If you are running a 32-bit version of
Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you
can force Windows to see and use all of the RAM
by enabling PAE.
99. Buy a new computer!!! Pretty easy eh?
I’m sure I have missed out on lots of
performance tweaks, tips, hacks, etc, so feel free
to post comments to add to the list! Enjoy!
Category Article 99 ways to make yourcomputer fast
