New to Win7

Hi Guys,

I will soon be receiving my new lappie where I will be using Win7 for the first time. Do you know what I will need to do as a first-time user to optimize Win7 Home Premium x64?

Thanks!

 

-> Leave the OS in peace and ignore all those self-proclaimed gurus who claim to know an OS that no single person can know.

I.e. just use it.

What you may do:
Remove manufacturer bloat after evaluating whether you need it.

 

Thanks DetlevCM.

Got the part about bloatware. What about things like disabling/lowering UAC?

 

NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Leave UAC on - on maximum.

UAC won't protect your files, but it protects the system from unauthorized changes - once you have everything setup it should no longer appear.
For me the only time it occurs is when I run CCleaner.

-> if you have some software that causes a UAC prompt and need it every time, consider running it via a scheduled task (I could google where to find it)

Edit:
One more thing - if you have too much time on your hand, this guy is one of the few people who have a really in-depth understanding of the OS; still, even he doesn't work by himself:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/ - Mark Russinovich

A suite of tools to troubleshoot issues -> Sysinternals -> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-en/sysinternals/default

 

Got it! And thanks for the links!

 

You can speed up your boot by utilising the maximum amount of processors available for Windows to use. Open the Start Orb and in the search bar type in "MSConfig". In the Boot tab, go to Advanced Options and under Number of Processors choose the highest figure available and then click OK.

If you find the Windows 7 Taskbar a bit odd and chunky then right click on the taskbar and click Properties. Under Taskbar Appearance check on "Use Small Icons" and Taskbar Buttons as "Combine when Taskbar is Full" then confirm. It should go back to the Vista style taskbar if you prefer that.

 

And the same myth again... -> Windows will by DEFAULT use all processors when booting up.
That option is there to reduce the amount of cores you use when troubleshooting.

Taskbar - good point.

 

Besides removing any bloatware, Windows 7 is already pretty damn well optimized from the get go.

 

Nothing. Leave well anough alone.

 

There are some "optimizations" you can do in W7 for performance:
- run "msconfig" and disable unnecessary startup programs
- disable hard drive indexing (note: this will improve HD performance at the expense of search response time)
- run Device Manager and enable write-caching for your hard disk.

Note however that these tweaks are not necessary as W7 is lean and pretty good at managing on its own.

 

Thanks all for the tips! It looks like the general consensus is to leave it alone

 

Agreed - there's really not much to be done to "optimize" Win7. It's a damn good system. You should definitely get rid of whatever unnecessary bloatware exists. There are plenty of tweaks that you can make to Win7. Just google for them. Once you've experienced the system, you can read over some tweaks and get an idea for what you might like, if any apply to you. I, personally, have mine set to bypass logging in, since I'm the only user. It might save about .5sec, by why not? Really, no other "tweaks" that I'm using and I LOVE my Windows 7.

 

Bog - you should know that Indexing will only cause a performance hit at the very start when the index is created. Once it's there you will no longer notice it's running.

 

For those of us who prefer to do our searches from the Start Menu, indexing is a must have. It's neither a resource hog, nor a space hog, and the benefits far outweigh any potential detriments, of which I can think of none.

 

Guy don't be worried as a new user of W7. Last month I have also installed it in my lappy first time and do nothing special for it.. It was a fantastic OS by its own features and nothing more is required for it.