Quick-fire cleanup/speedup guide for XP/Vista/Win7 users

Sometimes you don't have time to crank every motor, to search every nook, to analyse every process. This guide is here to help you speed up your machine without wasting your time.

Before you begin

All changes to an operating system, particularly if you're inexperienced, have the potential to cause harm. Having said that I've run the following procedures on hundreds of machines without error. But there's no guarantee that you'll be as awesome as me at doing it, so it pays to be careful. So, you need to back up your system partition, either onto another hard drive or an external hard drive.

There are many methods to do so, personally I recommend using Hirem's Boot CD (download and burn image to a CD using any cd burning program which can burn images, or Infrarecorder if you don't already have one of these).

Download, burn to CD and reboot with the cd in the cd drive. Your computer should boot up the Hirem Boot CD - if it doesn't, you may need to change settings in your bios so that your CD/DVD drive is first in the boot chain. Once booted into Hirem's Boot CD, navigate the menu and look for "DriveImage XML". Use DriveImageXML to make a backup of your system partition to another hard drive. Again, if you don't know what your system partition is, you shouldn't be following this guide. Get someone else to do it for you.

Now with that precautionary measure out of the way, let's get down to it!!!

Step One: Prep

  1. Download and run Norman Malware cleaner (free). Use this to do a normal scan of your computer. If it finds and cleans any malware, make sure it's removed by rebooting and running the cleaner again on Full mode. If the malware is still there, download and run Malware Bytes Free and run the cleaner on that. Then reboot and run the Norman Malware cleaner on Full mode again. If the malware is still there, you need to either figure out how to get rid of it by researching the specific malware itself, or get someone else to do it for you. A system restore will not help most of the time because often malware affects the restore files too. Your computer must be malware/virus-free before you proceed, even if that means a complete reinstall of the operating system.
  2. Boot to Windows, open control panel
  3. (Vista/Win7) Search for "UAC" in the search box. Disable UAC. Reboot computer. Open control panel. You will hate yourself if you do not do this.
  4. (Vista/Win7) In left hand pane, click on 'Classic Control Panel View".
  5. Go to System -> System Restore. Disable system restore on all drives. This will delete all past restore points.
  6. Go to System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory -> Change -> Set minimum size to 1534 and maximum size to 3000MB. If there is more than one hard drive (not partition, hard drive) in the machine, remove the pagefile on the C: (system partition) and put it on the second hard drive.

Step two: delete stuff

  1. Go through and back up old projects and data onto CD, DVD or external hard drive. Get rid of personal stuff that doesn't need to be on the hard drive anymore. If backing up onto DVD, (a) be careful when touching the underside of DVDrs as they can be made unusable extremely easily, (b) select a good media - either verbatim or taiyo yuden are pretty good bets, (c) backup onto two DVDs using two different brands of media - most dvd drives will have more difficulty reading at least one brand/type of media, and the chances of losing data on DVD is far, far higher than other mediums. It is cheap though.
  2. Download and run PC decrapifier. Remove any software you know you don't use. If you're running a Norton, Mcafee or AVG antivirus, remove those as well (these are performance and resource hogs and will be replaced later on). If a program asks to reboot, deny it. Continue uninstalling all the applications until finished, then reboot.
  3. Run PC decrapifier again. Some applications may be persistent, and may not have removed themselves the first time. Remove these by going into the control panel, then (XP) Add/remove programs (Programs under Vista/Win7), and uninstall the application from there. There may also be some applications here which did not show up in PC decrapifier. Remove these here.
  4. Staying in the Programs section of the control panel, click on 'Turn off/on Windows features'. Uninstall all the windows features you don't use, including (Vista/Win7): Indexing Service, Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC Optional Components, Windows DFS Replication Service, Windows Fax & Scan (Do not disable if you use a modem for faxing), Windows Meeting Space (Do not disable if you use the Live Meeting Service). If internet explorer is visible, install a better and more secure browser (internet explorer is a massive target for malware) like Chrome or Firefox, then uninstall Internet Explorer.
  5. Download and run Ccleaner Slim. In particular tick the boxes for "Hotfix uninstallers" (XP) and "Old prefetch data". Also run the registry cleaner in this program.
  6. Download and run Auslogics Registry Cleaner.
  7. Download and run NTREGOPT. This may show some errors on Win7 or Vista, but don't worry, these don't cause any problems. If it doesn't run, don't stress, this isn't a critical step, though useful.
  8. Reboot.

Step three: disable stuff

  1. (Vista/Win7) Disable windows defender - which merely doubles-up the same labour that your antivirus software does, without doing a good job. Go into control panel, search for 'defender', go to Tools -> Options -> Administrator Options, and uncheck the "Use Windows Defender" (Vista) or "Use this program" (Win7) box. Reboot.
  2. Disable useless/performance-hungry windows services. You can do this by following a services guide like Black Viper's (use the "Tweaked" settings). If you want to keeps things simple, the worst offenders (main things you need to disable) are: (XP) Themes, Java quickstarter, Indexing service or (Vista/Win7) Themes, Java quickstarter, Windows Search, Windows Defender, Superfetch, Readyboost. Access settings for these by going control panel -> administrative tools -> services. Disabling themes will change the appearance of your windows, and it may not look as 'pretty', but will use less memory and CPU and cause fewer problems. (please note windows Aero, which this disables, does NOT speed up windows or reduce CPU load - that much is a myth and is refuted by all performance tests).
  3. Download and run Starter. Disable programs starting that you know aren't necessary, in particular any "quickstarter" applications ie. java quickstarter, quicktime starter, office quickstarter etc etc etc.
  4. Disable windows sounds. (XP) Go to control panel -> sound and audio devices -> sounds. (Vista/Win7) Type 'sounds' in the search box. Change the sound scheme to 'No sounds'.
  5. Control panel -> system -> advanced -> performance -> settings -> Visual effects and change to "adjust for best performance". Then tick "Smooth edges of screen fonts" and hit ok.
  6. Change your power settings:
    (XP) Control panel -> power options -> power schemes and change to "Always on" (this will be changed later).
    (Vista/Win 7) Control panel -> Power options and change to "High performance", then click on 'change plan settings' and change the setting for 'put the computer to sleep' to "Never" (this will be changed back later).
  7. Disable automatic defragging (we'll replace this with something better):
    (XP) Download and run Tweakui XP. Under 'General', untick everything including "Optimize hard drive when idle".
    (Vista/Win 7): Go to control panel, type 'defrag' in search box, click on the option presented under Administrative tools, elevate as needed, and untick "Run on a Schedule". Open task scheduler from Control Panel. In the left pane Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Defrag. Disable one or both of the two tasks for Defrag.

Step three-point-five: SSD??

If you have an SSD drive installed on your computer, download and run SSDtweaker. Use the 'AUTO-TWEAK' setting. This runs on XP, Vista and Win 7. Also, DO NOT run the mydefrag software below in step four on your SSD drive. If you have any other drives installed which aren't SSD drives, then download and run mydefrag on them, but DO NOT install the scheduled tasks. Just run a 'Data disk monthly' on them every six months or so, followed by a 'Data disk weekly' maybe every month. If you know how to do so, you can set this up in your Automatic scheduled tasks.

Step four: defragmentation time...

Start by downloading and installing Mydefrag. Do not install the screensaver. Do install the scheduled tasks. Now, run Mydefrag and run "System Disk Monthly" on your system partition (usually "C:"). Once finished, close and run the application again, and if you have any other partitions visible ("E:", F:" etc) that aren't CD/DVD or flash drives, run "Data disk monthly" on them. Monthly defrags can take some time, so you might want to leave them to run overnight...

Step five: re-enable stuff

  1. If you removed a virus scanner earlier, it's time to install one. Download and run the installer for either Microsoft Security Essentials or Avira free. These are consistently rated highly by the independent AV-comparitives some of the highest-scoring antivirus packages available, despite being free, both in terms of performance (they don't affect computer speed much) and positive virus detection ratios. Install on default settings, and let it update itself and then scan your system. For Avira, you don't need to register it (untick registration box at bottom when prompted).
  2. Change your power settings (again). (XP) Control panel -> power options -> power schemes and change to "Home/Office" or "Laptop" (if you have a laptop). (Vista/Win 7) Control panel -> Power options and click on 'change plan settings'. Change the setting for 'put the computer to sleep' to "1 hour" (or shorter for a laptop).
  3. At this point, if you're comfortable with backing up your system partition using the Hirem Boot CD as mentioned in the first section, you can replace the automatic process of window's 'System Restore' with the manual process of making your own backups of your system partition on a regular basis. Now, while this saves CPU and disk space, it also takes time, and you have to be competent at it. If this is what you want to do, then start by making a backup of your new 'blank slate' optimized system. Keep this as a primary backup for if things go wrong/get cluttered in future. Alternatively, you can reenable system restore, which while it isn't as good as making your own backup (and is no way NEAR as useful in the event of a crash or malware), is convenient and automatic. If you re-enable System Restore, make sure you only re-enable it for the system partition and NO OTHERS.

Step six: drink some tea

Or coffee, whatever, I don't mind. Just keep yourself hydrated, okay? Congratulate yourself on how awesome you are, and pat yourself on the back. If you want further tips on how to optimize your OS, see the fully-detailed additional tips page. Musicians and people running DAWs may also want to check out the tips for DAWs page, or the partitioning for DAWs page. If you're wanting some interesting freeware check out the (useful) freeware list, and if you're into securing your data against destruction or corruption, take a gander toward the data safety guide. Feel better? I know I do.




All advice given without guarantee - use your brain - if anything dies/fries/stops/explodes, see a doctor (but don't talk to me).
Having said that, my contact email can be found here. If you think I've got something wrong you're welcome to tell me-
M@


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