 | Microsoft Windows |
 | Component : Operating System |
 | Symptom : Degraded Performance |
Many people face the issue of degraded performance on their windows systems. Indeed, as time goes by, more and more applications are stacked on top of the operating system, slowly cluttering up all resources.
This small post aims at giving a first set of inputs to release your system resources and help get your system running a bit faster.
Before removing or disabling anything, it's important to make sure you are facing performance issues that are related to your system resources. We will go through different steps to analyse this and see how to fix the issue.
1. Analyzing the resource consumption through the task scheduler
This first step aims at defining if you are close to a resource bottleneck and if you have anything you can easily recover on your system. Right click in the task bar (the long bar in the bottom of your screen) and click on Start Task Manager :
A window will open with several tabs, the default one listing the processes running on your system
Click on the Performance tab and see how the figures stabilize. After rebooting a healthy Windows 7 system and letting is stabilize 2 to 3 minutes, you should have an average CPU (Central Processing Unit = the Processor) useage below 10% of average useageand memory should not exceed 1,8 GB
2. Disabling unwanted programs at system startup
This section is usually the "quick win" to reduce resource consumption on your system. Many programs that you may have installed are loaded when your system starts up and they are not necessary (loads of automatic stuff looking for updates or starting background processes).In order to reach the right menu, click on the start button and type msconfig and then hit Enter key.
A window named System Configuration should open. Click on the Startup tab in order to see the list of programs that are started when the operating system starts up :
You can order the list of programs loaded at startup by cliking on the 2nd column (Manufacturer). Unless you know exactly what the program corresponds to, be sure you don't remove programs that are required to get your computer to start :
- Mandatory programs (Manufacturer = Microsoft Corporation) : these are usually all the native system processes required to run your system
- Chipset, Video, Sound and Network drivers or tools (Manufacturer usually in the following list : nVidia, ATI, Intel, AMD, Realtek,...)
As a first cleanup, it is worth simply removing basic tools for which you are sure they are not critical for your system (Adobe Update, Google Update, Java Update, Skype, MSN, Microsoft Office, Webcam stuff...). To remove these, just uncheck the box on the left and click the Apply and then the OK button. The system will propose to restart but this is not mandatory. However, the impact of the change will only be noticeable when you restart
WARNING : Do not disable a program you don't know about as you are not capable of assessing the impact of the change
3. Disabling other services
After disabling startup programs, you can also disable some services. The difference between a startup program and a service is the following :- The startup program is fired up when the system starts but usually should end (this could be true for example to check for a new version of a software when your system starts). You will quickly realize that many startup programs don't fire up and go but remain running in the background
- A service is something that is constantly running in the background, waiting for an event to handle (firewall looking for a connection attempt to analyse, anti virus...)
We will now see how to disable a service. Click on the start menu and type services then hit Enter key. The following window will load up :
If you feel even more confident, you can disable it completely (meaning it will no longer be capable or restarting). In order to do this, select the service you want to disable, Right Click on the service and go in its Properties menu. Here again you can stop the service by pressing the Stop button but you can also alter the service Start Type and set it to Disabled as shown on the screen capture below :
WARNING : Do not disable a service you don't know about as you are not capable of assessing the impact of the change. You could compromise your system and prevent it from starting up (or disable network connectivity for example)
