System performance
Learn to prioritise You can tweak some settings for your PC by going to the Control Panel and double-clicking the System icon. Under the Advanced tab, click the Settings button to display options for appearance and virtual memory. Visual Effects can be changed to prioritise performance over appearance, while the Advanced tab allows you to modify Windows so that it prioritises programs, as well as to set a higher limit for virtual memory – where Windows uses the hard drive as a cache. This can be useful for programs that need to swap a lot of data in and out of RAM.
Turn off the service Windows tries to pre-empt all your requirements by loading as many applets or services as it can, to control everything from networking to file transfers, storage and media devices. But
if you don't use these services, they will simply slow down your PC.
Access Windows services from the Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services. Some services, such as Messenger – this is not the same as MSN or Windows Messenger – or Application Layer Gateway (for internet sharing through a modem) – aren't especially useful. This doesn't stop them starting automatically, however. Double click the services you don't require and change the Startup type to Manual or Disabled.
To control which services run, use the Services tool. Click Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Services. The services listed will depend on your computer's configuration. In XP and Vista, a short description appears on the left when you select a service. If you don't see the description, select the Extended tab at the bottom. In Windows 2000, choose View, Details and look for a Details column that explains each item. Disable all the tools you don't use.
If you never send out faxes from your PC, double-click the Fax service in the list to open its Properties dialog box. Next to ‘Startup type', choose Manual or Disabled. The former prevents the service from starting with Windows but keeps it available for when it's needed.
If the description in the Services tool doesn't help to identify a given tool, search Windows' ‘Help and Support' listings (look for a shortcut on your Start menu).
For a thorough description of services, along with suggestions on which you can safely disable (sorted by Windows version), consult www.blackviper.com.
Making changes to services can cause problems, so set a System Restore point or back up your Windows Registry. Even after this precaution, be careful about which services you disable.
Never shut down a service you don't understand, and don't disable several services at once. Instead, turn one off and see whether your system runs okay without it for a while before disabling any others.
Under the settings tab adjust the resolution to match your screen
Speed things up
Access Vista's performance tools Although Vista makes most system information easier to find, many of the tools that will put your PC into overdrive remain buried. A new Control Panel applet in Vista offers tools for analysing and revving up your system.
Click Start, Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Performance Information and Tools, then click the links on the left to access the tools you need. Be sure not to neglect the various options that lurk behind the ‘Advanced tools' link.
Note: Few of these tools are new to Vista. XP users can access most of them by following the steps listed here.
Access hidden performance apps Some elements of the Administrative Tools control panel can help speed your system and are worth having within easy reach. Put them on the Start menu by clicking Start, Properties. Click whichever Customise button is selectable.
If you use the Classic Start menu, tick Display Administrative Tools in the ‘Advanced Start menu options' list. If you use the default Start menu, click Advanced. Under ‘Start menu items', find System Administrative Tools and select whether to display it on the All Programs menu or on both the All Programs and Start menus. Click ok twice.
Mind your memory Poor performance may signal problems with your system RAM. Vista will prompt you to use its Memory Diagnostic Tool if it detects a problem with your PC's RAM, but you can usefully run this utility at any time. Choose Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Memory Diagnostic Tool. (Click Continue if prompted by User Account Control.)
Next click the first option, 'Restart now and check for problems (recommended)'.
Having rebooted, your PC presents a text-based screen. Press F1 for more options or choose the Basic, Standard or Extended test. Tab through test sections. If your PC gives no indication of problems, choose the Basic test with the defaults for the Cache and Pass Count. Press F10 to start the test.
After the test, your PC will reboot and Vista will display the results; showing a pop-up in the system tray if it's problem-free. If it reports errors, replace the memory modules.
Faster displays If your PC isn't fitted with a particularly fast video card, or shares RAM with the main system memory, adjusting the display can help to speed things up. Double-click the Display icon
in the Control Panel.
Setting themes or background images takes up valuable memory and is a common cause of stuttering refresh rates when you move windows around. Under the Themes and Desktop tabs, set your PC to Windows Classic and remove any desktop graphics.
Windows XP and Vista add shadows and other visual effects to make icons and text easier to use, but this can inadvertently slow down your system. Double click the System icon and, under the Advanced tab (in XP) or Advanced system settings option (in Vista), you'll see a range of options for fading menus, sliding open boxes and adding shadows and styles. Simply deselect these to improve performance.
The right resolution For stable performance, ensure that the resolution of your PC matches that of your monitor. To adjust this, click on the Settings tab and alter the screen resolution settings. Click Apply to implement changes. Windows will test your settings for a few seconds, at which point you can switch back if you don't want the new resolution.
Clean up the desktop… Icons for shortcuts and files may not make much of a hit in terms of processor performance, but an untidy desktop makes work more difficult. To remove unused items, click the Display icon in Control Panel, select the Desktop tab, then click Customize Desktop, Clean Desktop Now. This places unwanted icons in a folder.
…but keep icons to hand If you don't already use them, you can add customisable toolbars to store often-used program icons. Right-click on the main Windows toolbar and select Toolbars, New Toolbar. Then simply drag-and-drop on to your new program launcher the icons you want to use.
Auto archive Storing hundreds of emails in your folders will slow down your email client, but you don't necessarily want to delete them. Archive them instead. Go to File, Archive, and choose a date – everything before this date will be moved to the folder you specify under Archive File.
Get the bin to back off Windows allocates a tenth of your hard disk space to the Recycle Bin, topping out at 4GB. Reserving some space for file recoveries is helpful, of course, but 10 percent is overkill. Change this by right-clicking the Recycle Bin icon, select Properties then adjust the slider.
Make everyday computing faster One thing that's guaranteed to turn your once-vigorous PC into an aged, wheezing husk is bloatware. Each generation of software is easier to use than ever before, and offers features that could only be dreamed of a few years ago, but these functions come at a price. And that price is performance.
Make Office faster When running common applications such as Word and Excel, there are countless aids that can become a hindrance if they slow your PC to a crawl. Constant spell- and grammar-checking may be worth the price, but do you really need animated text in Word or feedback in Excel? Head to the Tools, Options menu and deselect those bits and pieces you don't require.
Under Tools, AutoCorrect Options, you can also modify features that come into play as you type, ultimately slowing down your system. It's here that you can turn off such things as automatic internet links, autocomplete options or smart tags. We suggest you pay particular attention to the Save Autorecover Info box under Save.
It's a good idea to have this enabled as you can recover lost work if necessary, but saving every 10 minutes makes your files larger and slows you down while you're working.
Here's another tip to speed up launch times for Word and, with a little modification, other applications. If the program is loading a large number of templates and add-ins that aren't necessary, go to C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP and move the files to C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. You can select these files via Tools, Templates and Add-ins when you need them.
Speedier photo processing While Office is the most used set of applications after email and a web browser, image editing is a common task for many users. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements allow high-quality previews in their browsers, or render vector files which you can change by going to Edit, Preferences. But they will also load plug-ins during startup. To disable these, locate the Plug-ins folder and insert a tilde (~) before any folder that you don't want to load.
Under Preferences, check your memory settings under Edit, Preferences, Memory & Image Cache. You can increase this to take up a large proportion of your system memory – but bear in mind that Photoshop will use only as much RAM as you have spare disk space. If there's only 150MB of disk space available, then you've got just 150MB RAM for image editing.
That may sound like a lot, but start adding filters and effects to a high-resolution image and you'll soon wish for an extra gig of RAM for speedier operation.
Use a second hard drive Photoshop is one of several programs that lets you specify a scratch disk – a temporary storage space for files as you work on them. This will typically be much faster than the C drive because the drive heads have to do less work when searching through system files. Rather than reserving a second disk for high-end processing, you can use one to store all your files and documents.
This also has the advantage of keeping your data safe if your main disk suffers a virus or other data disaster. While it's possible to make safer data backups with a partition on your main hard drive, this won't bring the advantage of improved performance.