Quick Aero Glass Speed Tip

The transparent glass effect in Windows 7 looks very nice but on some computers that have underpowered video adapters users will see a performance hit when running the transparent glass effect.  Animations are slow and choppy and simple tasks like moving around windows on your screen is not very smooth. One way to speed up Windows 7 and keep the benefits of Aero, such as animations, flip 3D and taskbar thumbnails, is to disable glass transparency.This helps significantly on my Windows 7 netbook that does has a weak integrated graphics chip.

    1. Click on the desktop and select Personalize.

    2. Click Windows Color.

    3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

    4. Click Save changes.

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Improve Sync Performance In iTunes For Windows

On my PC the longest part of the sync process in iTunes with my iPhone or iPad is the device backup. Taking up to an hour at times I can live without a backup. Especially since I jailbreak my devices which makes ever restoring a backup after an OS upgrade a bad idea.

There are two methods to disable the device backup feature. First, I'm going to show you the manual tweak.

Manual Method
Apple made it very difficult to disable the automatic device backup feature manually by burying the setting deep in a configuration file. In order to make the change you will need a good XML text editor. I suggest using the free Notepad++ that you can download here.

First, make sure iTunes is closed and create a backup of the iTunes Preferences file located in C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\ called iTunesPrefs.xml.

Open up C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunesPrefs.xml in your text editor and go to the <key>User Preferences</key> section.

Then copy and paste the code below just after the <dict> node of the User Preferences section as shown below.

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

Save the file and start iTunes. The device backup should now be skipped when syncing.

Automated Method

If you want a fully automated approach there is a free app called iPhone Backup Switch that you can download from here.

Just run the utility and when iTunes is closed click the Disable iPhone Backup in iTunes button.

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Improve SATA Hard Disk Performance (Convert From IDE to AHCI)

Every hard drive in a modern computer is connected to the system through a storage controller. This controller typically can communicate with the hard drive via a number of different interface protocols. For maximum compatibility many computers are configured in the BIOS to use the older IDE interface protocol to communicate with modern SATA hard drives. This setting is acceptable for the average computer user but IDE lacks support for new technologies such as native command queuing (NCQ) and hot-plugging hard drives (add or remove drives without restarting the computers).

Intel invented a new storage controller interface known as AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) that supports these new technologies with modern SATA hard drives. If you have a hard drive that supports NCQ, it is worth a try to see if your disk performance improves with your workload.

The main problem preventing users from changing the storage interface protocol from IDE to AHCI in the past has been blue screens that could only be cured by undoing the BIOS change or reinstalling Windows. The cause of the problem is the mass storage driver installed when Windows was first setup. Since IDE was enabled at install only the IDE storage driver was configured in Windows. With the AHCI driver missing, Windows cannot read from the hard drive and throws a BSOD with error code 0x0000005B.

Now there is an easy solution that will allow you to switch between IDE and AHCI in the bios and Windows will boot without any problems. The key is to enable the AHCI driver in Windows before you make the setting change in the BIOS.

For most users this will work:

    1. Open Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci.

    2. Right click on the Start registry DWORD and select Modify.

    3. Set the value to 0 and click OK.

    4. Now the Start setting should be set to 0.

    5. Reboot and enable the AHCI setting in your BIOS.

If you are using a RAID adapter or other interface try the following:

    1. Open up Registry Editor and naviage to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV OR HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor.

    2. Repeat the steps above.

Not all users will see a major performance improvement with AHCI and a SATA hard drive but NCQ can be very helpful under the right workload. Post your experience and setup in the comments below.

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Improve Responsiveness By Disabling Min/Max Animations

The minimize and maximize window animations that first debuted in Windows Vista were an improvement over the effect in Windows XP. While this new effect had a high “cool factor” (especially with the slow motion key) it eventually wore off and created an unnecessary delay when switching between windows. 

Disabling the effect will instantly make your computer feel more responsive and faster. Give it a try and see for yourself:

    1. Click on the Start Button and type in SystemPropertiesPerformance and hit Enter.

    2. On the Visual Effects tab locate and remove the check from Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing.

    3. Click OK.

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Improve Old Application Disk Performance

Do you have old programs that have slow disk performance on Windows Vista or Windows 7? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk by enabling what I call compatibility mode for your file system.  This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by changing how write caching works. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let's get started:

    1. Click on the Start Button and key in Device Manager and hit Enter.

    2. Expand Disk Drives.

    3. Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.

    4. On the Policies tab:

        Windows Vista: Check Enable advanced performance
        Windows 7: Check Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device.

    5. Hit OK and close Device Manager.

Read about the interesting history of this feature on Windows Confidential.

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How To: Detect What Process Is Thrashing Your Hard Drive

Every once in a while you notice that your hard drive is working extra hard for what seems like no reason.  A background process has taken your hard drive hostage, forcing it to thrash loudly as it struggles to keep up with the high rate of reads and writes.  Your computer responds slowly as the process overloads the physical limitations of your drive. What are you to do?

The solution is simple, although a little tricky at times: identify and stop the process that is killing your drive.  There are two methods and tools that you can use to identify the process.

Method 1

    1. Click on the Start Button and key in perfmon.exe /res and hit Enter. This should launch the Resource Monitor on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

    2. On the overview screen click on the Disk section down arrow to see a list of all processes and the files they are writing or reading from your drives.

    3. Click on the Read, Write or Total headings to sort all disk operations to identify which process and file is currently using the disk the most.

Method 2

    1. Visit Microsoft’s Sysinternals web site and download Process Explorer.

    2. After you have started Process Explorer, click on the View menubar item and then Select Columns.

    3. Click on the Process I/O tab and check:

        - Reads

        - Read Bytes

        - Writes

        - Write Bytes

    4. Hit OK.

    5. You will now see the new columns listed for each process. To identify what process is killing your hard drive, just look for the process with the highest number of Reads or Bytes.

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Fix Broken And Slow Tab Issues In Internet Explorer 8

Some users that upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 experience issues with tabs not working properly or taking a very long time to load.  It seems for most users the issue can be attributed to a problem with actxprxy.dll not installing properly during the upgrade.  If you have a similar problem with IE8, fixing the issue is as simple as a running one command.

Just open up an administrative level command prompt and type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and hit Enter. Reboot your computer and your tab issue should be resolved.

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Boost Your Performance With ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost helps your computer by giving it more high-speed memory.  If your computer is running low on RAM then it has to kick a lot of applications out of high-speed physical memory to the paging file on your hard drive.  This usually results in a big hit in performance and increased activity on your hard drive. ReadyBoost helps this situation by giving Windows an alternative to having to stick data into the slow paging file on your hard drive. Instead, ReadyBoost uses a USB storage device that is faster than a hard disk. This results in a performance boost because Windows will have a high speed alternative than using the slow paging file on your hard drive.

In order for ReadyBoost to work, it requires a USB storage device that meets minimum performance and space requirements:

    - The device must be at least 64 MB

    - The device must be USB 2.0

    - It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s

    - It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

If you are unsure if your USB storage device meets these requirements, just give it a try anyways. To get started using ReadyBoost, follow these steps:

    1. Plug in USB storage device.

    2. Go to Computer and right click on the removable storage device and select Properties.

    3. If your device is compatible, you will see a ReadyBoost tab. Click on that.

    4. Select Use this device and select the amount of space on it you want to dedicate for the ReadyBoost system file.

    5. Click OK and you are finished.

If you have more questions about ReadyBoost, check out Tom Archer's blog.  He has a great FAQ about ReadyBoost posted.

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Analyze Energy Efficiency

Windows 7 and Server 2008 include a hidden power efficiency diagnostic report that can help make your computer more energy efficient.  The report is generated through the powercfg utility and monitors your computer for 60 seconds.  Power settings, hardware and what you computer is doing is all monitored to identify power waste.  Once completed, the report will show errors, warnings and general information about the power efficiency capabilities of your hardware and what is preventing it from operating efficiently.

Generating the report requires access to an administrative level Command Prompt. Click on the Start Button, type in cmd, hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then hit Enter.  That will start an administrative level command prompt.

Next, type in powercfg /energy and hit enter. 

After the report is generated the file is placed in c:\windows\system32\.  Before you can open the report with a browser, copy the file to your desktop first. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer seem to have issues opening files from the System32 folder. 

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Optimize Solid State Drives In Windows 7

Windows 7 is designed to automatically turn off certain features such as Disk Defrag and Superfetch on drives it detects as solid state disks (SSD). To be sure I like to disable the components globally so I know I will not be putting extra stress on my SSD and decreasing its life. Many believe you should also disable the paging file but I don’t recommend that. I’ll get into more detail on why later.

Before we get started it is important to understand that if you have a mixture of SSD and traditional drives in your computer this tweak will disable Superfetch and Disk defragmenter for all hard drives.

Both Disk Defragmenter and Superfetch are system services that can be disabled to prevent them from running. Follow these steps to disable them on your computer:

    1. Click on the Start Button, type in services.msc and hit Enter.

    2. Scroll through the list and locate Disk Defragmenter, right click on it and select Properties.

    3. Change the Startup type to Disabled.

    4. Click Stop if the service is running.

    5. Then, click OK to save the changes.

    6. Next, scroll down to the Superfetch service, right click on it and select Properties.

    7. Change the Startup type to Disabled.

    8. Click Stop if the service is running.

    9. Then, click OK to save the changes.

Many sites on the web also tell SSD users to disable the paging file because it allegedly wears down the disk too much. While the paging file is an active file on your computer it is not written to as much as you would suspect. According to Microsoft, reads to the paging file outnumber writes by about 40 to 1.  Additionally, Microsoft recommends placing the paging file on a SSD claiming, “there are few files better than the pagefile to place on a SSD.”

Setting the SSD concerns aside, disabling the paging file on a computer with less than 3 or 4 GB of ram will result in poor performance. You may even create out of memory errors depending on what applications you use. Overall, it is just not worth disabling.

Check out the Engineering 7 Blog to learn more about solid state disks and Windows 7.

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Fine Tune Windows 7 On Netbooks

According to a report by DisplayBank in 2008 over 14.9 million netbooks were sold with that number expected to almost double in 2009. Netbooks have become a great secondary PC when you want a very portable and low cost way to do basic computing. Many ship with Windows XP home edition but that is just not as fun and helpful to use as Windows 7.

Like many of you I loaded Windows 7 on my netbook and it performed just OK.  It provided a huge performance improvement over Windows Vista but was not as snappy as I wanted.  The key to speeding up Windows 7 on a netbook with limited resources is to turn off and disable features that you don’t need. After all, it’s a netbook and there are many Windows components that will never be used. Additionally, disabling un-needed components will extend your battery life since fewer processes will be using the CPU running in the background.

Fine Tune Visual Settings

The Windows 7 eye candy is the main cause of GUI slowness. While my netbook has a decent graphics card that can display Aero Glass it can be choppy at times. Follow these steps to improve the performance of the interface:

Click on the Start Button and type in adjust the appearance and hit Enter. This will load the Visual Effects performance options.

On this screen I suggest disabling the following settings by removing the check:

    - Animate controls and elements inside windows
    - Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
    - Enable transparent glass
    - Fade or slide menus into view
    - Fade or slide ToolTips into view
    - Fade out menu items after clicking
    - Show shadows under windows (this may be worth the performance hit for some)
    - Show thumbnails instead of icons
    - Show translucent selection rectangle
    - Show window contents while dragging
    - Slide open combo boxes

Click OK when you are finished.

Remove Startup Programs

Nothing wastes resources more is startup programs that you don’t need. Click on the Start Button and type in msconfig and hit Enter.

When the System Configuration utility is loaded click on the Startup tab.

Remove the check next to any applications you don’t need and click OK.

Disable Services

Now it’s time to trim the Windows services running in the background of your computer.

Click on the Start Button and type in services.msc and hit Enter.

When the Services management console is shown you can stop and disable services by selecting the service, right clicking and selecting Properties. Then change the Startup type to Disabled and hit the Stop button. Finally click OK to return to the Services management console.

I recommend disabling the following services on a netbook:

    - Block Level Backup Engine Service
    - Bonjour Service (from iTunes)
    - Certificate Propagation
    - Group Policy Client (if not on domain)
    - HomeGroup Listener
    - HomeGroup Provider
    - Offline Files
    - Portable Device Enumerator Service
    - Security Center*
    - Software Protection (make sure you activate Windows first)
    - SSDP Discovery
    - Windows Defender*
    - Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
    - Windows Search

Keep in mind that if you use any of these services or applications that depend on them they will no longer function. E.g. if you are a homegroup user don’t disable the Homegroup Provider.

* Make sure you use other security software if you disable these services.

Install More RAM

There is really no good substitute to having plenty of ram in a computer. You can use ReadyBoost but with memory prices so cheap why not just buy more. I purchased a 2GB chip for my netbook for $16 (hopefully the mail-in rebate will come through).

The popular Intel Atom processor netbooks use the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset that has a max of 2GB of ram supported. The amount of expansion slots or if your netbook even has one depends on the vendor and model of your netbook.

I suggest picking up a 2GB stick of PC2-5300 DDR2 at 667 Mhz on a 200 pin SO-DIMM. That is the type of memory required for the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset.

Installing is simple. Lenovo even has a video for the Ideapad S10.

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Clean And Optimize Your New Computer

When you buy a new computer it is often loaded with extra software that you just don’t need.  OEMs are paid by software companies to bundle trial versions in hopes that you will buy the full product. The preloaded junk is a waste of disk space, memory and can even hurt the performance of your new computer so it is a good idea to remove it all.

While it is possible to manually remove each extra piece of software on your computer there is a great free tool called PC Decrapifier that will automate the process.

To get started download the latest copy of PC Decrapifier.

After the software is downloaded on your computer just run the executable. There is no installer for this software.

Click Next on the Welcome, license and Warning screens.  Select if you are running the utility on a new computer and then click Next.



You will have the option to create a Restore Point that will allow you to revert your changes using Windows System Restore.



All of the programs that load automatically on startup will be displayed. Check the programs you want to remove and click Next.



Before any items are removed you will have to confirm the changes.



Next you will be shown all of the applications installed on your computer. Check the items you want to have uninstalled and click Next.



Once again you will have to confirm the changes before they are made.



Now PC Decrapifier will work through the list of applications and uninstall each software. Depending on the software you may see additional confirmation screens that you will need to click through to uninstall. Once completed your computer will be a lot cleaner and performing much better!

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