NOTE:

1) Disk Defrag

Windows comes built in with a disk defrag utility. To utilize this, go to. Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter OR you could use the Windows Search function.




Click defrag on all drives you have. However if you have a Solid State Drive and are on Windows 7 or below, I recommend you not do this as it will defrag the SSD and this will not be good for it's life expectancy.

2) Turning off certain visual effects

To do this, go to Start > Right click computer > Advanced System Settings

Then click "Settings" under the performace tab.

Click "Custom" and un-tick "Enable Transparent Glass" and "Animate Windows when minimizing and maximizing. Feel free to copy my settings in the screenshot. These two in particular effect boot time and performance in general sometimes, my recommendation is to disable them. However if you like them don't bother with this.


3) Disable Page File (DON'T DO THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T GOT MORE THAN 8GB RAM)

To disable the page file, we go back to Advanced System Settings. Then Performance, just like before. But this time click the "advanced" tab.

Next, click the "Change" button under Virtual Memory.

Then un-tick the checkbox "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives"
And then click no paging file and hit "Set"
A reboot will be required for the changes to take affect.
What this will do is force all programs to cache to the RAM (usually some will use the Page File which is stored on your HDD) Which makes thing load alot faster.

4) Change Startup Options (Not recommended if you dual or triple boot)
To do this, go to Advanced System Settings again (Start > Right click computer > Advanced System Settings) then click "Settings" under Startup and recovery.

After you've done that, uncheck "Time to display list of operating systems" this will help to improve boot times.


5)Disable Startup Programs that you don't need
If you want to do this, go to Start then search "msconfig" (with out quotation marks) it should look like this.
Go to the "startup" Tab and uncheck anything you don't want starting with your Computer.
Just as a note, I wouldn't screw with anything from Microsoft, Intel, AMD or anything vital to your computer.

6) Disable Certain Services
Search "services.msc"
It should look like this

To change the startup type of a service. Right click and hit "properties then switch from "Automatic" to "Manual.
You can do this to these services:
ActiveX Installer
Disk Defragmenter (Unless you don't like defragging yourself)
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Internet Connection Sharing
MS SCSI
Offline Files
Parental Controls
Net.TCP port sharing service
Program Compatibility Assistant Service
Remote Registry
Routing and Remote Access
SSDP Discovery
Windows Image Acquisition
Windows Search

7) Tweak Windows Behaviour
In this you will be tweaking how windows behaves in terms of how long it takes for the menu to appear when your mouse hovers over it, etc.

To do this go to search and type in "regedit" without quotations.

1st Registry Tweak:
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Then double click the file named "Menu Show Delay"

Change the value from 400 to 0

2nd Registry Tweak:
Nagivate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\
Then double click the file named "MouseHoverTime"

Change the value from 400 to 0

3rd Registry Tweak:
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\FileSystem
Double click the file named "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"

Change the value only to 1

Thanks guys for taking your time out to read my guide to tweaking Windows 7 and 8. I hope you found it useful.