Improve Windows 7 Responsiveness and Boot Times

[Jut]

Hi, I've recently been noticing some sluggishness in my PC, running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Here are my pertinent specs:

- Intel Q6600 (OC'ed to 3.3 GHz)
- 4 GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR2-667 (OC'ed to 735 MHz)
- 160 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Primary Drive)
- 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (Secondary Drive)
- Inno3D GTX 460 768 MB (OC'ed to 820 MHz/1025 MHz)
- HEC Cougar 550W 80+ Bronze PSU

I've been wanting to speed up my boot times and application loading times, as I've noticed my system boots just about as fast as my older Lenovo Y310, which has inferior hardware specs (T5550 1.83 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB 5400 rpm HDD). My Compaq CQ36-110TX boots faster even if it's got similar hardware except for the slower hard drive (i5-430M, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB 5400 rpm HDD). I've also noticed that it now boots noticeably slower than when it was freshly installed. While before I could get to a useable desktop in about a minute, now, I take 100 seconds to reach the desktop and another 30 seconds to a minute to have the background apps load. I've also tried comparing application load times, and for example, my rig opens Photoshop CS5 about 5 seconds slower than it does in my Y310.

I've tried a few of the more common "speed-up-your-boot-time-tips" such as:

- Removing unnecessary programs
- Defragmenting hard drives
- Running disk cleanup
- Removing unwanted startup items in msconfig
- Setting to manual/disabling unwanted services such as Windows Media Player Network Sharing and Wireless Configuration
- Cleaning registry via Ccleaner
- Running a full system scan via MSE
- Freeing up disk space by deleting unnecessary files

Yet, despite all these supposed fixes, my system did not improve its boot times significantly, nor did it feel any snappier.

Are there any other actions that I could do to speed up my system through software fixes? An SSD would definitely help, but I'm looking at no-cost options here. Thanks!

 

[KillerBee]

Have you tried Autoruns? - it will show a lot more startup info than msconfig

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902

 

[SimMike2]

Sleep and hibernate work pretty good with Windows 7. This can dramatically speed up boot times. Why is your faster drive in the secondary position?

The mother of all tweaks is to get an SSD drive. This will blow anything else out of the water.

 

[beginner99]

The mother of all tweaks is to get an SSD drive. This will blow anything else out of the water.

This.

Or re-install windows (which obviously is a huge pain if you have many applications installed).

 

[Jut]

I'm aware that a fresh install will surely speed things up, but it's really gonna be a pain to do so for me as I've got a lot of installed apps and lots of settings that would take a long time to reinstall and reconfigure again.

I've downloaded the Autoruns program, and boy does it show a lot of startup items. Any guidelines on what not to disable? I'm sensing some of these are actually core system files. Right now I could identify some crap I don't need such as Microsoft Groove and Java Update Scheduler, but there's still a lot more.

 

[KillerBee]

I know exactly what you mean having a ton of extra stuff in the boot up...it just happens

Guess you could do a parallel install of Win7 on another partition (or shrink your current partition about 20G) and start comparing

 

[corkyg]

Run your system 24/7 and boot time goes away.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

True, but then your power bill increases also...

Run your system 24/7 and boot time goes away.

 

[corkyg]

True, but then your power bill increases also...

Not significantly. Turn off the monitor and peripherals. Just leave the main box running. I don't think it will make a significant difference, especially in the summer in Arizona.

 

[oynaz]

Are Arizona summers very cold?

 

[cabania]

Try this:
1. Run msconfig (in Start>Search)
2. Go to Startup tab and uncheck EVERYTHING (even the programs you do want to run at start; you can latly recheck doing the same procedure)
3. Go to Services tab and check below where Hide All MS Services
4. Uncheck EVERYTHING (even antivirus; you will recheck again after test)
5. OK and Restart
6. If now the start is fast again, start one by one rechecking what was unchecked in 2. and 3.
Good luck

 

[mechBgon]

1. Start > cleanmgr (right-click and Run As Administrator), and when Disk Cleanup appears, choose Clean up system files. Now use the More Options tab and clean out all but the most recent System Restore point, as long as you're OK with that.

2. Make a pizza. Ordering one is also acceptable.

3. follow this routine step-by-step: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140...oot-process-under-windows-vista-or-windows-7/ It takes a while, but hey, you have the pizza from Step 2 ()


Now time your startup again. Any good?

Oh, and bonus tips:

1. right-click cmd.exe and choose Run as Administrator to get an elevated command prompt

2. run this command: cleanmgr /sageset:1 and check alllllllll the checkboxes, including Service Pack cleanup.

3. now run cleanmgr /sagerun:1 and Disk Cleanup will do the stuff you picked in Step 2. If your Win7 was pre-SP1, those Service Pack files might be taking up some space if you haven't cleaned them out already.

If your motherboard's SATA controller isn't in AHCI mode in the motherboard BIOS, the drives might not be performing at their best either (a reinstall of Windows may be necessary if you switch the controller mode at this point). Also, you can go to Device Manager and hit the drives' Policies tab and opt to disable write-cache buffer flushing.

I'm aware that a fresh install will surely speed things up, but it's really gonna be a pain to do so for me as I've got a lot of installed apps and lots of settings that would take a long time to reinstall and reconfigure again.

If you decide to reinstall, use the Easy Transfer Wizard and it'll retain a fair amount of your settings and stuff.

 

[dawks]

Try this:
1. Run msconfig (in Start>Search)
2. Go to Startup tab and uncheck EVERYTHING (even the programs you do want to run at start; you can latly recheck doing the same procedure)
3. Go to Services tab and check below where Hide All MS Services
4. Uncheck EVERYTHING (even antivirus; you will recheck again after test)
5. OK and Restart
6. If now the start is fast again, start one by one rechecking what was unchecked in 2. and 3.
Good luck

Good first post! Welcome to the forums!

For the OP, you've done most of what you can, besides a full reinstall. Your boot is probably as fast as its gonna get... Any other 'tweaks' are just splitting hairs now.

Best advice, get and SSD. You'd be surprised at how incredibly fast SSD's are. The biggest bottleneck in computer performance these days is traditional spinning media. If you want to cut your boot times from 35-40 sec to 15-17 sec, go SSD. I can load photoshop in about 4seconds on my SSD.. more like 12 on my traditional spindle based desktop.

 

[Kristijonas]

Install and run full scans with:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

and

Spybot:S&D

and delete any malware they found. Then repeat once.

Do this after you fix your startup queue and after you've deleted unneeded files and programs

 

[gammaray]

+1 to SSD, i get into windows 7 64 rdy to work or surf the net in about 15 seconds after i start my computer.