How To Speed Up Windows 7 PC: Optimize Your Computer For Better Performance

Sometimes you may find yourself in an annoying situation where you need to do something urgently on your computer, and it just freezes. Over time, Windows 7 PC slow down and require regular maintenance to regain the original speed and performance. You can clean unwanted junk files, temp files, and other residuals that bogs down the entire performance. Additionally, you need to ensure that your hard drive isn’t stuffed with needless data and programs.

But, wouldn’t it better to update Windows to the latest version? Well, here are some reasons why some people do not consider the same! 

Problems With Hardware Upgrade

Hardware upgrade will cost you money, and there are still chances that it wouldn’t solve your problem. To speed up your Windows 7 PC, you can go for complete computer optimization. 

What Is Computer Optimization?

Computer optimization is a dedicated process to make effective alterations & modifications to the system so that all the existing resources work efficiently and deliver maximum performance.

Why Do You Need To Optimize Your Computer?

Here are some potential reasons which arise the need to optimize your Windows computer now & then so that you can effectively speed Windows 7 PC and other OS versions.

• Like other machines, computers also demand regular maintenance for both hardware & software.
• If you keep your PC well-optimized, then it will never ditch you when you require it the most. Make sure you keep your Windows 7 PC free from unwanted junk & temp files.
• Frequent PC optimization lowers the risk of sudden system crashes or getting your system infected with threats.
• If your computer is well-optimized, you can undoubtedly expect the best experience ever.

A perfectly optimized computer not only saves your time and effort to achieve maximum productivity, but it even saves you a penny. As you don’t need to invest in a new computer system, you can make your old Windows 7 PC run faster and smoother.

In this article, we’ll explore the best tips and tricks to speed up computers and achieve peak performance.

Best Tips To Make Windows 7 PC Run Faster & Smoother In 2023

Here are some of the most effective optimization tips and tricks to maintain your computer & make it run like a new one.

1. Speed Up & Optimize Windows 7 With Advanced System Optimizer (Recommended)

When it comes to running a third-party application to speed up your Windows computer, then there are lots of applications, but Advanced System Optimizer by Systweak Software is the best-suited app for this purpose. You can download and install this product from the given button.

Here are some key features of this product.

• Like an efficient System Cleaner, first, it creates a restore point and then deeply cleans your system to make it free from temp files, caches, logs, and other junk files.
• Its Game Optimization feature dedicates your hardware resources to your game, which allows you to enjoy your favorite game at their fullest.
• The application checks for the available updates for drivers on your computer and keeps them updating from time to time. Drivers are responsible for the smooth functioning of hardware attached to your computer.
• Being a good System Protector protects your computer by monitoring every activity on it.

This is how you can speed up your Windows 7 PC using Advanced System Optimizer!

2. Change Visual Effects Settings:

If performance is the priority and not the fancy effects, you can immediately minimize some visual effects from Windows. It will make your interface lighter and will hog less memory and other system resources.

To configure the best visual effects for the best performance, follow these steps.

1. Go to the Control Panel.

2. Choose “Performance information and tools’’.

3. Click on “Adjust visual effects,” and you will see a window like this.

4. Choose the option ‘Adjust for best performance.’ Click “apply” followed by the “Ok” button. If asked to restart your computer, do it to implement the changes successfully.

You will see your OS will now have a basic look & feel, and you will notice that things are getting loaded faster than before.

Proceeding further, you can set a Windows classic theme instead of windows Aero themes. For this, right-click on the desktop and click the “personalize” option. You will find themes here; just scroll down and choose the Windows classic theme.

This will give your Windows a basic interface and thus eats fewer system resources than before. Hopefully, this tactic helps you to make your Windows 7 run faster & smoother.

3. Change The Size Of Virtual Memory:

Memory consumption of Windows 7 is higher than Windows XP but lesser than Windows Vista. If your computer usage is heavier and you need to run multiple programs at once, you should try increasing virtual memory.

Virtual memory works with your computer’s RAM (Random access memory).  Increasing virtual memory will allocate more resources to be used as virtual memory. By upgrading it, you can make sure that all the programs and operating systems are working smoothly. So, here’s how you can increase the virtual memory size on your Windows 7 computer & speed up overall performance.

1. Right-click on My Computer, Go to Properties. Click the Advanced tab and click on the setting button under ‘Performance.’

2. In performance options > click on the “Advanced” tab & you will see virtual memory here.

3. The next screen under custom size > enter the amount you want to allocate for virtual memory (paging file) depending on your hard disk size and physical memory. Make sure it’s not less than the system recommended size. Normally recommended virtual memory is 1.5 of physical RAM. For example, for 3GB RAM, the virtual memory size is 4605 MB. So, enter 4605MB in the Initial size and Maximum Size fields.

4. Now click on the Set button; you may need to restart the computer.

You’ll surely observe a noticeable performance boost on your Windows 7 computer.

4. Disable Windows Search In Windows 7:

In Windows 7, indexing is added to improve the speed of Windows search speed. When you look for a file or a folder on your PC, the results appear immediately if the same file you are looking for is already indexed. If you use a third-party indexing program, then two programs hold indexing data, which eventually slows the computer.

Search results are meant to appear quickly from the indexing cache. If there are multiple programs in use, you will see a noticeable difference in your machine’s performance.

Here is how you can disable indexing & speed up computer Windows 7?

1. Open the Control Panel > Indexing Options.

2. Click on the Modify button.

3. Remove the location you do not want to be indexed by clicking the check box.

4. You can also disable Windows search by going to computer management from the Start menu. Now disable “Windows search” from service and applications.

Did this help you to make Windows 7 faster & smoother? If yes, then do let us know your experience in the comments section below!

5. Enable Write Caching on Windows

With this respective option, your Operating System will flush the changed data to the hard disk when system is idle. This ensures, that performance is not affected when computer is in use. To do this, all you have to do is: 

STEP 1: Press the Windows key and while holding it, simply hit the Pause/Break key. 

STEP 2: In the next window that appears on your screen, click on the Device Manager. Here, you need to expand the Disk drives. From the drop-down list, you can see the hard drive. Simply, right-click on the same and select Properties. 

STEP 3: Navigate to the Policies tab and check the box next to “Enable write caching on the device” option. 

Additionally, you can even check the box next to “Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device” option and hit the OK button to save the changes!

6. Lighten Your Web Browser

If you’re someone who uses web browsers a lot, it can consume a lot of memory. Hence, causing your overall device to run slow and behave sluggishly. So, cleaning the unnecessary and unwanted browser extensions or add-ons is a good idea to retrieve the original performance. To do so, navigate to the web browser’s “Extensions” or “Add-ons Manager” and filter out the plugins you no longer need. 

Additionally, you may consider enabling the “click-to-play” plugins. This allows users to conserve download bandwidth, improve page load times, reduce CPU usage and extend overall battery life of your device. Moreover, it will prevent the Flash files and other content from using the CPU time. 

7. Remove Unwanted Programs & Services From Startup:

Another simple trick to speed up your Windows 7 Computer is to remove unwanted programs and services. When you turn on Windows, many services and applications automatically launch at the Windows login. Usually, PCs do not take a long to get started, but these programs or applications make the boot-up process slow & sluggish. This increases the overall start-up time, so it is better to minimize the number of startup programs.

Here’s how you can stop programs from getting launched automatically on the Startup?

1. Press Windows and R key on your keyboard to launch the Run window.

2. Type msconfig in the run dialog box & hit the Enter button.

3. It will open system configuration settings for you. Now go to the Startup tab.

4. From here, simply uncheck programs that you do not want to get started automatically on startup and disable them.

Now you will experience that your Windows 7 computer is getting started very soon, and it becomes ready to use in just a few minutes. Hopefully, it makes a significant improvement in your system!

8. Defragmenting Your Hard Drive:

Defragmentation works well to speed up your Windows 7 PC. It is like organizing data in an allocated space. You can understand this with a simple example of a bookshelf. If you arrange books properly on the bookshelf, then it will be easier for you to find them out and they will take less space too. When you have lots of data on your computer, it is recommended to Run Defragmenter now and then to make Windows 7 faster.

The process of defragmentation is straightforward if you use a dedicated Defragmentation tool on your Windows PC. To figure out the options, you can check out our detailed guide here!

9. Perform Disk Clean Up:

Disk cleanup does not mean to delete files from your computer. It is just a simple process of removing unnecessary junk or temporary files. This makes more storage space on the available drives and helps speed up your Windows 7 computer.

To perform disk cleanup, you can go to My computer > right-click on any of the drives you want to perform the cleanup as you click on the “Disk Cleanup” option. This will start the disk cleanup process. You can choose what you want to include in the cleanup process (Like temporary files, setup log history, temporary Internet files & more). You can proceed further with the cleanup process. Again, it depends on the drive’s size and how much time will be taken by the Disk cleanup process to optimize your Windows 7 computer and reclaim the maximum performance.

10. Kill Unwanted Programs And Processes:

On your computer, several programs run in the background without your knowledge. Sometimes these programs do not show any trace in the foreground but keep on consuming resources. To close all such programs and services, you can use the inbuilt Windows Task Manager.

This is how you can kill all the unwanted Windows apps and processes that are making your Windows 7 run super slow.

1. Right-click on the taskbar (Strip at the bottom of the desktop).

2. Choose the option to Start Task Manager. Here you will find applications, processes, and services tabs.

3. Go to the Applications tab to find the list of the programs running on your computer & consuming resources. Choose any of the software you hardly use & select it to choose the “End task” option.

4. Similarly, you can go to the Process tab to kill unwanted processes. Here you need to be very careful because if you close any system-related process, it will result in an unexpected shutdown.

You can use this method when your system faces frequent crashes or shutdowns. Similarly, it is an effective workaround to improve Windows 7 speed.

11. Check For Updates:

Only updating the operating system is not enough to speed up your Windows 7 system; you should keep checking for the latest driver updates too and other software installed. Sometimes you may not get a notification when there is an update available for your operating system or any installed programs. You should manually check for updates from time to time.

12. Change Power Settings To Maximum Performance:

Visual effects settings but power settings can also help you boost your Windows 7 computer’s speed. Saving power is a good habit, but if you need the best performance out of your computer, you should change your computer’s power settings.

To configure power settings for the best performance, follow these steps below:

1. Open Control Panel and search for the Power options.

2. On the left-hand pane, click on the “Create a power plan” option.

3. Now choose the “Best performance” option.

That’s all! Now your computer’s power settings are tuned to deliver the best performance but remember it may use more power now. You are all set to make your Windows 7 computer faster than ever before!

13. Use Performance Troubleshooter:

Another thing that can be done to optimize windows 7 PCs is to run a Performance Troubleshooter. With some of the amazing tools, Windows 7 is also equipped with performance Troubleshooters. To access it, type “troubleshooting” in the Control Panel search box. Next, you’ll see the choice “Check for performance issues.”  Probably the last option. At this point, you need to Run the Troubleshooter, and it may find the root cause of your slowdown. You may find more than one issue, so click any of them and click the Next button to continue. This will surely speed up Windows 7 computers significantly!

Hopefully, all these tips & tricks will solve your issue with less effort. It is always better to choose optimization before thinking about upgrading the hardware. Apart from this, you can also try cleaning your CPU fan as it accumulates dust, which is highly responsible for causing the processor to overheat, diminishing performance.

Frequently Asked Questions: Speed Up Windows 7 PC!

Q1. What Makes My Windows 7 PC Run Slow?

Well, there are plenty of reasons which makes Windows 7 run slow & sluggish:

• Needless Windows programs & software running on your system.
• Your system storage is packed with duplicates & similar-looking photos, videos, music files & documents.
• There can be changes that a program might be experiencing a memory leak.
• Outdated drivers and software can also be responsible for frequent slowdowns.
• Unnecessary running startup items can also result in degraded performance.

Q2. How Can I Clean Duplicate Files & Speed Up Windows 7 PC?

If you free your Windows 7 PC from all the needless duplicate photos, videos, documents, music files, archives, and other multimedia data that you can enhance overall performance in no time. To automatically find and delete exact & similar looking files, all you have to do is:

• Install & launch Duplicate Files Fixer.
• From the Home Screen, add the files or entire folders that contain numerous duplicate files.
• Click on Start Scan now button to begin the sorting process.
• Depending on the amount of data, Duplicate Files Fixer can take time. However, the duplicate cleaner is relatively fast and reliable to detect accurate duplicates.
• Go through the same data list and click on the Auto-Mark button to let the software select all the duplicate images, videos, audios & other files on your behalf.
• Click on the Delete Marked button to get rid of all the duplicates in one-go and make Windows 7 faster & smoother than ever.

Q3. Which Is The Best & Quickest Way To Speed Up Windows 7 & Other Versions?

Try using Advanced System Optimizer to maintain your PC and retain its powerful performance for a long. The all-in-one optimization utility proffers all the modules required to clear caches, logs, history, cookies, unwanted temp files, update drivers, game booster, clean duplicates, repair registry files, and whatnot. Its single scan holds strong potential to give your Windows 7 a noticeable performance boost.