Speed Up Windows - part 2.
(Adjusting System Performance settings)
Continuing with more suggestions of tweaks you can try in
Windows that may help to speed up your PC. Again, the instructions are for
use with Windows XP, but can probably be done in a similar way on other
versions of Windows. You will probably need to be logged onto a user account
with Administrator level access to do some of these tweaks.
* Adjusting the System Properties Performance
settings.
An easy way to access this built in utility is to click on "Start", then
right-click on
"My Computer", then select "Properties". The System Properties box should
appear.
Click on the "Advanced" tab. Now look for the Performance sections and click
on that "Settings" button. (See picture below of what this may look like)
On the "Visual Effects" section, you'll see a number of options:
- "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer". (often the default
setting).
- "Adjust for best appearance". (to have all of the visual effects options
active, but can cause a reduction in overall performance and speed)
- "Adjust for best performance". (Turns off all of the visual effects
settings. You'll get an overall faster performance and speed, but some
things may tend to look a bit too bland and unappealing in choosing this
option).
- "Custom". (You choose what effects to turn off or leave on. Try and choose
for a balance of having things look good visually as well as turning off
some options which will help a bit to improve performance and speed).
Personally, I chose the "Custom" option and probably have about half of the
items turned off, but some things I leave on because visually it's more
pleasing. So I suggest to experiment a bit with turning off some of these
options and see if you're happy with the results. If you make a change you
don't like, you can always go back and turn-on the various option(s) again
to your liking. Once you think you are happy with your choices, you can then
press the "Apply" button to see how things look, and then "OK" to accept the
new changes.
You could go in and adjust some of the other various System Properties
options, but perhaps I'll cover some of those other options in another post.
Just be careful about changing some settings you're not sure about as it
could have adverse results. You might consider making a System Restore
checkpoint before making any changes you're not sure about in case something
seems to cause problems. But you could probably most likely just change
things back to it's original setting via using the System Properties utility
in that case too.
- Recommended