Adjust Windows 7 Desktop For Speed

The easiest and quickest way to increase performance, short of changing your power option, is through adjusting your desktop appearance and ability to display Windows Aero features. Although these may not be as visually appealing, many claim these can provide a great performance boost when needed.


a. Trading Appearance for Performance

Windows 7 has done a great deal to improve upon the look and feel of its graphical environment and a large amount of resources are used to ensure this ‘premium’ appearance. One of the best boosts we can give Windows 7 comes from disabling visual effects to maximize performance.

1. Go to System Properties by pressing WinKey + Pause/Break (top right corner of keyboard);
2. Click on Advanced System Settings, Advanced and then Settings; and
3. Click the radio button for Best Performance.

Windows greatest strength in this option is that it is completely user friendly in that you can customize it to best suit your needs or let Windows decide what is best as it sees fit.


b. A Different Way of Seeing Your Desktop

• Disable Aero by right clicking on your Desktop, select Personalize and then scroll to a non-Aero theme.
• Toss the Transparency by right clicking the Desktop, select Personalize, Window Colour and uncheck Enable Transparency.
• Remove Desktop Gadgets that can be slowing your system by deleting them individually by clicking the X that appears in their upper right corner or by right clicking the Desktop, View and un-checking Show Desktop Gadgets.
• Adjust Resolution by right clicking Desktop, selecting Screen Resolution and then selecting the screen that suits you needs. You can also go into Advanced Options, Monitor and change it from 32 Bit to 16 Bit if need be.

When you perform these changes, your system, of course, will lose some of its curb appeal and shine but the performance may be considerably greater, depending on whether you have a newer and streamlined or older and less equipped system.


c. Speed Up Menu Appearance Time

This little ad on is exactly as it sounds. It is the time that elapses when you select a menu until it actually pops up. We need to dig into the registry for this one so, if you are not comfortable with this, move along to the next tweak.

1. Press WinKey + ‘R’ and type ‘Regedit’ which brings you into the Registry Editor;
2. Follow HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop and look to the right until you find MenuShowDelay which will display a number representing the number of milliseconds until the menu pops up. You can change it to a number ranging from 1 to 4000; and
3. From here, simply click OK and then exit by pressing the red X top right of the screen.

See… now that wasn’t so hard now was it? You will need to log off and log on before this little tweak works. Get ready for it!


d. Turn on a Desktop Slideshow

One of the great features of Windows 7 at the ability to set your desktop as a slide show which allows you to choose the folder with your favorite pictures or backgrounds, how long between intervals and also the choice to shuffle. My wife loves this as our pictures are in the thousands and span several years of our family life. They display at random on the desktop which she thoroughly enjoys.

Simply right click on your Desktop and choose Personalize. Select Desktop Background and browse to find select pictures. I put all my favorites into a specific folder and select the folder. Once complete, right click again on your Desktop, you will see a selection for Next Desktop Background just in case you don’t like the present one too much.