The entity known as Windows has finally finished installing and now you’re faced with the daunting task of getting your system ready for gaming. This process obviously involves installing the latest drivers for your devices and your favorite games, but why stop there? A proper gaming system can really benefit from a few simple tweaks to really push the performance as high as it can go. And as an added bonus the system will be more stable and secure for it.

I’ve actually just reinstalled Windows 7 myself and have been going about the fresh installation trying to optimize it any way I can for the better part of the day. This left me with a few interesting techniques to get a much better performing system than on a plain fresh Windows installation and I’ll be sharing those with you in this guide.

Take a peak below and uncover six methods you might not have tried yet to improve your (non-)gaming performance!

Run Windows Update

The Windows Update tool runs automatically after installing Windows and should be spamming your screen with alerts, but just in case you’re not able to find it: it’s listed both in the Start menu under Programs and as an icon in your taskbar. It’s vital to install the important updates listed, but it’s also worth looking into the optional updates which often provide further security and performance enhancements.

Indeed, these Windows updates not only ensure a more secure system, but some also improve the performance, especially for Windows Vista users.

Defragment your drives

After installing all of your applications, drivers, games and updates it’s important to defragment each of your drives. Nearly everything that you’ve installed will be heavily fragmented at this point which results in a severe performance penalty as it takes longer for your system to access the required files to run any applications or games. Defragmentation takes care of all of that.

Windows comes with its own decent defragmentation tool, which can be accessed by going to Computer and right clicking on the drive (C, D, E, etc.) that you want to defragment. Go to the Extra tab, press Defragment Now and wait for it to finish. Then repeat this process for each of your other partitions until they’re all defragmented.

There are also 3rd-party defragmentation tools that tend to provide better results and extra features. I prefer to use the free tool Auslogics Disk Defrag, which can also defragment all partitions simultaneously.

Defragmenting after installing new games and major game updates is also a good practice. Anything new that you install on your system will invariably be fragmented to some degree and as your hard disk fills up this becomes an increasingly troubling problem. It’s entirely possible to have defragmentation be the only difference between a game being unplayable and it running smoothly.

Improving graphics performance/quality

The system you’ve assembled may have one of the best graphics cards on the market, but that’s not much good when the video card drivers are bottlenecking your graphics quality and performance by default. So it’s important to get into those driver settings and change things around to best suit your desires. Now I don’t actually have an ATi/AMD card at the moment so I’ll be covering this from a NVIDIA perspective. The basic idea is the same for ATi/AMD’s graphics cards however.

NVIDIA driver settings can be accessed by right-clicking the desktop and selecting NVIDIA control panel. There are two settings under 3D Settings that you’ll definitely want to change in order to boost your system’s performance. Power management mode should be set to performance so as to keep maximal graphics performance at all time. Similarly, you’ll probably want to set Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration to single display performance mode, because multiple display mode is only useful if you hook the system up to multiple screens.

Should you have a high powered beast of a video card, then you’ll also want to mess with the other 3D Settings. Set Anisotropic Filtering to 16x, Antialiasing Mode to override application settings and Antialiasing Setting to 4x or 8x. Also set Transparency to Supersampling, Ambient Occlusion to Quality and Texture Filtering to High Quality. Now the graphics of your games will look a lot better at the cost of a severe drop in performance. Antialiasing is the worst offender here so should performance become an issue then just set that back to application controlled and you should be fine.

Optimizing Energy Management

This is only an issue on notebooks, so if you’re setting up a desktop PC then you might as well skip on to the next point on the list.

If you’re going to be playing games on your notebook then you probably have a gaming notebook that’s hooked up to the grid at all times. In that case it’s vital to change the default energy management settings, because they severely restrict performance and can even disable crucial system components. So I’ll guide you through the process of setting this up so that your laptop can perform at its optimal capacity.

Right click on the battery icon in your taskbar and select energy management, then open the drop-down menu and select high-performance. Change its settings and ignore the first few settings that pop up. Head into advanced setting instead, because that’s where things get interesting.

It’s vital to disable both Selective USB Interruption (USB Settings) and Link State Power Management (PCI Express). The rest you can setup however you please although I recommend to increase the hard disk shutdown timer to something a little more reasonable like 60 minutes. At its default setting it would cut off any hard disk activity 20 minutes in, which includes any downloads, like Steam games, you may have running while you’re away from your notebook.

Shut down unnecessary services

There are many system services that are automatically activated, but aren’t really needed for anything by a majority of users. If you’re a gamer or simply interested in getting the best performance possible out of your system, then you’ll want to disable as many such services as possible for the best boot times and lowest possible Windows footprint on your system resources.

These services can be accessed by typing services.msc in the search box and pressing enter. It’s possible to disable services in the list by right clicking on the intended service, opening the properties window and setting the service to disabled.

* Bluetooth Support Service. Only required if you have any bluetooth devices, such as a smartphone, communicating with your PC, utterly useless in any other situation.
* Distributed Link Tracking Client. This service keeps files and folders hosted on other PCs but linked to on your PC up-to-date. Only useful if you use such network shortcuts, which means you’ll probably just want to disable it.
* Parental Controls. If you have no need to control the activity of children on your system (e.g.: you don’t have any) then you should disable this service.
* Remote Access/Remote Desktop services. These are only useful if you intend to have your PC active at home and connect to it from someplace else. If not then they’re a security risk and best disabled.
* Remote Registry. A huge security risk and not something anyone is likely to every use so disable this straight away!
* Tablet PC Input Service. This is used to connect tablet input devices to your system, which is something only designers use. Required if you have a tablet, useless otherwise.
* Windows Media Center services. These services are only useful if you use Windows Media Center, which is highly unlikely, especially if you’re a gamer.
* Windows Media Player Network Sharing. This is only useful if you want to share media you’re watching in Windows Media Player over the network. Of course no one actually does this and Windows Media Player sucks, so you might as well disable this.
* Windows Search. This is a service that indexes the files on your computer for faster searching. It’s still possible to use search with this service disabled, it just takes – a lot – longer. The key point to note here is that it is a major system hog and the search function is something that you’re liable to use only sparingly.

Turn off Windows Firewall

Windows Firewall is a nice touch if you don’t have an alternative software firewall installation or a hardware firewall in your router, but both cases are highly unlikely nowadays. Windows Firewall isn’t quite the most secure software firewall available, but it is one of the most annoying to get properly configured with its incessant warning the moment you try to go online in any game. Disabling this is only a good idea if you have some other form of firewall to protect your system, because it does leave your internet ports wide open.

If you have a hardware firewall in your router or some other software firewall then you should disable Windows Firewall by going to the Control Panel and into System and Security. The Windows Firewall option leads you to a panel which allows you to disable the service. This will improve system boot times and your multiplayer gaming experience.

source: http://gamedrone.net/2010/07/14/6-tweaks-to-optimize-a-fresh-windows-installation/

If you are the type of person that restarts your computer all the time, you are probably really worried about speeding up your bootup time. Unless you get paid to watch the Windows boot screen. I wonder how well that would pay…

Windows Vista provides a simple method to delay the startup of a service so that you can boot more quickly. The service will still eventually be started, but in the background after you are already at the desktop.

Delaying Service Startup

Open up Services by typing services into the start menu search box, or you can look in the administrative tools section of control panel.

Here’s the tricky part: finding the right services to delay. You shouldn’t try and delay the services that deal with internal Windows functions or networking, but there are plenty of less important items like the Cisco VPN client required by my employer, or services installed by your printer.

Once you find the service you want to delay, right-click on it and choose Properties (or just double-click it)

Now change the “Startup type” drop-down to “Automatic (Delayed Start)”, close the dialog and then go on to the next item.

In some cases this can significantly improve the initial bootup time. I’d recommend starting with additional services installed by applications. You’ll have best luck if you only make one change at a time, and keep track of what you change in case you break something!

source: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/start-your-computer-more-quickly-by-delaying-the-startup-of-a-service-in-vista/

Although most of the Windows operating system tasks can be performed through the graphical user interface (or GUI) you can still find many important tasks and operations that require a Command Prompt window. Running CMD.exe from the run command is quick, but you sometimes find that you are required to slowly change your folder path from the default CMD window to a different location on your computer, or even in network shares.

A super fast trick that will enable you to quickly open a CMD window to a specific location is by adding a “Open Command Prompt Here” to the Explorer context menu. That way all you have to do is to open Windows Explorer, find the required folder and right-click it. One of the context menus appearing is the “Open Command Prompt Here” option.

In older Windows operating systems you had to manually add the “Open Command Prompt Here” to the Explorer context menu. Read Add Command Prompt Here Shortcut to Windows Explorer for more info.

Here comes Windows Vista and ads this very useful shortcut to the DEFAULT installation inside Windows Explorer’s context menu!

1. Open a Windows Explorer windows, browse to the required folder.
2. Right-click that folder in the right pane of the Windows Explorer window. Note that you do NOT have the “Open Command Prompt Here” option.

3. Now, hold the SHIFT key while you right-click the folder. Behold!

Note: As in most cases, Microsoft has only gone part of the way with this cool feature. It’s silly but this context menu add-on in only available when you right-click on the folder in the right pane, and not in the left pane or in a My Computer window…

A cool feature of this context menu add-on is that in case of a network share it will automatically and silently map a drive to that share, and disconnect the mapped drive when the Command Prompt closes.

source:
http://www.petri.co.il/quickly_open_command_prompt_here_in_windows_vista.htm

Windows Vista has the built-in ability to automatically reduce the potential of security breeches in the system. It does that by automatically enabling a feature called User Account Control (or UAC for short). The UAC forces users that are part of the local administrators group to run like they were regular users with no administrative privileges.

Whenever a user that is a member of the local administrators group (or even a member of the Domain Admins group if the computer is part of an Active Directory domain) tries to perform a task that requires administrative privileges, the operating system halts the operation and prompts the user to acknowledge it prior to running the task.

Note the little shield icon next to some of the items in the above screenshot. These items, if clicked upon, will invoke the UAC prompt, and the following message is displayed:

In case the user is not a member of the local administrators group and he or she tries to perform a task that requires such privileges, they are prompted to enter the valid credentials of an administrator (similar to the Run As command in existing Windows XP/2003):

Although UAC clearly improves the security on Windows Vista, under some scenarios you might want to disable it, for example when giving demos in front of an audience (demos that are not security related, for example). Some home users might be tempted to disable UAC because of the additional mouse clicking it brings into their system, however I urge them not to immediately do so, and try to get used to it instead.

source:
http://www.petri.co.il/what%27s_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

In this article I will show you how the Windows Vista Active Directory search tool works.

I wish that I could have seen the look on my face the first time that someone at Microsoft told me that Vista was going to contain a special applet that would allow users to search the Active Directory. I was in utter horror. My initial thought turned to complex LDAP queries. The next thing that I thought of was all of the information within the Active Directory that users have no business accessing (things like SIDs, security groups, application assignments, etc.). Panic then gave way to wondering how I could disable this search feature in an effort to keep it out of the users’ hands. Now that Vista is in beta testing though, I have had a first hand look at this tool and I can tell you that it is a very practical, useful, and non threatening tool.

Before I Begin

Before I show you the Active Directory search tool though, I want to mention one thing. You have probably heard the computer related acronym GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) at one time or another. The GIGO principle holds very true when it comes to the Active Directory search tool. When you create objects in the Active Directory, you usually have the chance to enter information related to a number of the object’s attributes. For example, if you are creating a user object, you must enter all of the usual information such as the username and password, but you can also enter other information such as the user’s address and phone number.

The reason why the GIGO principle applies here is that if you have entered lots of object attribute information and you keep that information up to date, then the Active Directory search tool will be an invaluable resource to your users. If on the other hand, you are the type of administrator that only enters the minimum required information when creating an Active Directory object, then the Active Directory search tool will be basically useless.

With that said, let’s take a look at the Active Directory search tool. You can access this tool by opening the Control Panel and clicking the Network and Internet link followed by the Network Center link and the Browse the Network link. You will now see a screen reminiscent of Windows 3.11 that displays the computers within the domain, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A: The network screen contains the Search Active Directory link

If you look at the top of this window, you will notice that there is an icon labeled Search Active Directory. Click this link and Windows will launch the Active Directory search tool, shown in Figure B.

Figure B: This is what the Active Directory search tool looks like

The search screen is very simple and well organized. At the top, you will see the Find drop down list. By default this list is designed to allow the user to search for users, contacts and groups, however users also have the option of searching for computers, printers, shared folders, or performing custom searches.

If you look just to the right of the Find drop down list, you will see that by default the tool is configured to search the entire Active Directory. The In drop down list gives you the option of searching an individual domain.

Users can perform a simple Active Directory query by simply entering a name or a description for the object that they are searching for and clicking the Find Now button. For example, if I were to enter the name of one of my users and click Find Now, Vista would return a list of user, contact and group objects that matched my query, as shown in Figure C. I could then double click on the object to view its attributes, as shown in Figure D.

Figure C: Vista displays all of the users, contacts, and groups that match your query

Figure D: When you double click on a found object, Vista displays the object’s attributes

If Figure D seemed a little anti-climatic, it’s because of the GIGO principle that I talked about earlier. User1 is just a test account on my domain, so there aren’t many attributes associated with it. As such, there really isn’t much for the search results to display. That’s why it’s important to actually fill out the extended attributes when you create a user object. Had the extended attributes been filled in, the user’s full contact information would be displayed.

If you still aren’t convinced of the need for or usefulness of filling in extended attributes for your Active Directory objects, the Advanced Search feature may change your mind. The Advanced tab, shown in Figure E, allows you to select a field, a condition, and a value for the search.

Figure E: This is the Active Directory Search tool’s Advanced tab

The Field drop down list allows you to search for a specific attribute type. For example, if you wanted to search for users in a specific city, you could select the User option from the Field drop down list, and then select the City attribute, as shown in Figure F.

Figure F: The Advanced search allows you to run queries against individual Active Directory attributes

The condition drop down list basically allows you to select an operator for the function. For example you could select things like Starts with, ends with is, is not, etc. Finally, the Value allows you to enter your search criteria. For example if you wanted to search for all of the users in the Miami office, you could select Users | City from the Field drop down list. Set the Condition to is (Exactly), and set the Value field to Miami.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Active Directory search tool brings the power of the Active Directory to the database. Users can extract information from the Active Directory without having to use complex LDAP queries.

source:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Introducing-Windows-Vistas-Active-Directory-Search-Tool.html

Windows Vista has the built-in ability to automatically reduce the potential of security breaches in the system. It does that by automatically enabling a feature called User Account Control (or UAC for short). The UAC forces users that are part of the local administrators group to run like they were regular users with no administrative privileges.

Although UAC clearly improves the security on Windows Vista, under some scenarios you might want to disable it, for example when giving demos in front of an audience (demos that are not security related, for example). Some home users might be tempted to disable UAC because of the additional mouse clicking it brings into their system, however I urge them not to immediately do so, and try to get used to it instead.

Anyway, if required, you can disable UAC by using one of the following methods:

Method #1 – Using MSCONFIG

1. Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.
2. Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find “Disable UAC” . Click on that line.

3. Press the Launch button.
4. A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.
5. Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

You can re-enable UAC by selecting the “Enable UAC” line and then clicking on the Launch button.

*Recommended: Speed up Vista boot times by reducing the number of programs that load at startup. Control your Vista startup list with this Vista app

Method #2 – Using Regedit

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. In Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Locate the following value (DWORD): EnableLUA and give it a value of 0.

Note: As always, before making changes to your registry you should always make sure you have a valid backup. In cases where you’re supposed to delete or modify keys or values from the registry it is possible to first export that key or value(s) to a .REG file before performing the changes.
4. Close Registry Editor. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

In order to re-enable UAC just change the above value to 1.

Method #3 – Using Group Policy

This can be done via Local Group Policy or via Active Directory-based GPO, which is much more suited for large networks where one would like to disable UAC for many computers at once.

If using Local Group Policy you’ll need to open the Group Policy Editor (Start > Run > gpedit.msc) from your Vista computer.

If using in AD-based GPO, open Group Policy Management Console (Start > Run > gpmc.msc) from a Vista computer that is a member of the domain. In the GPMC window, browse to the required GPO that is linked to the OU or domain where the Vista computers are located, then edit it.

1. In the Group Policy Editor window, browse to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options.

2 .In the right pane scroll to find the User Access Control policies (they’re down at the bottom of the window). You need to configure the following policies:

3. You’ll need to reboot your computers.

Method #4 – Using Control Panel

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Under User Account and Family settings click on the “Add or remove user account”.

3. Click on one of the user accounts, for example you can use the Guest account.
4. Under the user account click on the “Go to the main User Account page” link.

5. Under “Make changes to your user account” click on the “Change security settings” link.

6. In the “Turn on User Account Control (UAC) to make your computer more secure” click to unselect the “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”. Click on the Ok button.

7. You will be prompted to reboot your computer. Do so when ready.

In order to re-enable UAC just select the above checkbox and reboot.

source:
http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

The stuff that makes the upgrade worthwhile

From Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista, the Windows operating system has taken many giant leaps. And while Vista received a lukewarm reception from some users, Windows 7 is likely to be remembered for addressing those criticisms.

In fact, there aren’t many changes to the overall look of Windows 7 when compared to Windows Vista. Instead, Microsoft seems to have paid attention to the feedback it received and created an OS that is not only stable, but also very capable.

So what is new in Windows 7? Here are 18 cool things Windows 7 does that Vista doesn’t.

1. Shake ‘em away

Ever had 10 Notepad, two Powerpoint and 50 Outlook windows open? Want to minimise all of them except the most important one? In Windows 7, you can grab the top of the window and shake it about to scare away all of the other open windows. Simple.

2. Jumplists

Jumplists are a new feature that give you the option to view a list of recently accessed files by application, even when the application isn’t open, by right-clicking on the application’s icon in the taskbar. It also allows you to quickly access a favourite playlist without opening your media player. Jumplists can also be found integrated into the Start Menu.

3. A step forward in previewing

In Vista, hovering over a minimised window on the taskbar would provide a preview of the window. In Windows 7, a similar preview pops up which also gives the option to close a window (within the preview), along with a full-size ‘peek’. You can also press Win + T to scroll along previews in the taskbar.

4. Snap into place

Simply drag your window to the left or right edge of the desktop to snap and resize the window to one half of the screen. Drag the window to the top to maximise it. A pretty neat idea made neater by the use of the keyboard shortcuts (Win + respective arrow keys). No longer do you have to frustratingly position the mouse at the edge of the window to resize it.

5. XP Mode

This time, you do not have to slap your head that same way when Vista would not run an XP application. For those XP applications that do not work under Windows 7, you can download XP Mode free from the Microsoft website and run XP applications in an emulated XP environment in Windows 7. Imagine Parallels on Mac OS X without the need to fish out money on an extra OS.

6. An easier and quicker way to adjust multiple displays

Do you constantly connect your computer to different external monitors or projectors, especially at work? Try Win + P, and duplicating or extending your display to the other monitor takes just a second. Win + P presents you with an Alt + Tab style menu, which is ideal if you give a lot of presentations at work on your laptop.

7. A personalised Stage for your device

With the new ‘Device and Printers’ button on the Start Menu, devices which are connected to your computer can have their own Stage. This Device Stage presents supported devices with a photo-realistic render and a link to the vendor’s website, along with other updates and useful information (such as firmware updates and manuals).

8. (Almost) eliminate the notification area!

What, I can even get rid of the clock and volume icons? Yes. Click the arrow that gives access to the overflow icons in the notification area and click ‘customise’. Select each icon and click ‘hide icon and notifications’ to remove it. Clean.

9. Problem Steps Recorder

The ‘Problem Steps Recorder’ lets you record a particular problem you are having with your PC so you can send it to someone who may be able to help. Click ‘Record’, and a screenshot is taken with every mouse click, allowing comments to be added in between if required. These screenshots (and comments, if any) are placed in a well-formatted HTML document that is placed inside a zipped folder on your desktop – ideal to be attached to an email.

10. A brand new Magnifier tool

If you are, or someone you know, is visually impaired, then the Windows 7 Magnifier provides two options for providing a bigger display. One of which is using the traditional dock (which took up a lot of the screen) and the other being a rectangular lens that is stuck to the cursor (meaning there is no loss of workspace).

11. A new way to preview your music files

Opening and listening to an MP3 is a lot more snappier with Windows 7 due to its new smaller preview player, presenting you with album art, basic music functionality and a link to the full-blown Windows Media Player. This is an obvious attempt to mimic the preview feature of Mac OS X, but it is very well executed.

12. Homegroup Networking

In Vista (or, frankly, any Windows OS), creating a shared folder over a network at home could be a bit of a pain. In Windows 7, using the ‘Homegroup’ wizard, check the default folders you would like to share. This will give you a passcode that will have to be entered in another computer on the same network to share the files. Sounds too good to be true? There is a catch: only a Windows 7 computer can join a Homegroup.

13. Stream Music directly to another computer

If you do create a Homegroup, Windows Media Player allows you to stream music directly to another computer. So, instead of listening to music through your measly laptop speakers, you can wirelessly stream to the 7.1 Surround Sound Speakers of your PC in your living room, without stepping away from your laptop. Sweet.

14. Action Center

The Action Center is the new Security Center for Windows 7, along with other notifications such as updates and access to the improved troubleshooting and recovery using restore point facilities. Basically, it is everything windows usually annoys you with, rolled into one place with one icon in the notification bar. If you find the alerts irritating, you can check out this tip to make the Windows 7 Action Center less annoying.

15. Pin just about anything to the new Windows Taskbar

Imagine a blank Mac OS X Dock with the start menu, the notifications bar and the improved ‘Show Desktop’ button added to it. Drag just about anything on to it and the associated application will place itself on the translucent taskbar, with an option to open the file in the Jumplist.

16. Improved Touch Navigation

Windows 7 has much improved touch navigation. The larger taskbar with squarer icons makes it a lot easier to navigate with your fingers, and Macbook-like multi-touch gestures on various applications could change the way you interact with windows. Subtle enhancements such as a larger Start Menu appearing when Touchscreen hardware is detected also help.

17. Native ISO Burner

There are those times when you inevitably have to burn an ISO file (such as when you have to copy a downloaded Windows 7 beta or RC) to a DVD. With Windows 7 you do not need to download third-party software (some of which are pretty confusing to use). Double-clicking on an ISO file will take you to a window that allows you to change the disc burner drive. Click ‘Burn’. After a while, your disc is ready. Simple.

18. Native calibration tools

If you tend to hook up your computer to an HDTV or care about getting the highest quality from your monitor, then the in-built basic and easy-to-use calibration tools built into Windows 7 will please you.

source: http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/18-cool-things-windows-7-does-that-vista-doesn-t-628892