You can avoid it from slowing down your computer by following a few quick steps.

You can just goto edit/preferences/file handling and make sure it is set to never save image previews.

If you are using an operating system older than Windows 7 this is most likely your problem.  Once I finally upgraded to a new tower using Windows 7 (It came with 5G of RAM too) I have not had any speed issues despite leaving Photoshop running almost all the time.

Also you need to make sure that you are not loading a whole mess of programs at startup.  You can easily run msconfig and then choose the startup tab and uncheck anything that you are sure doesn’t need to start everytime your computer restarts.  Things like instant messengers automatically loading can really slow it down.

PS  I just joined PhotshopSecret.com and am loving it!  There are hours and hours of Photoshop training videos and I have learned more in an hour about how to use Photoshop than I have learned in the last year!

Enjoy!

Related articles

• Adobe Demonstrates Their New Photoshop Image Deblurring Technology, and More (laurashoe.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Many of us have finally gotten settled into Windows 7 and it is probably bogging down a bit by now for some people.  We get the question, How do I speedup Windows 7 at least a couple of times a day so we thought we would share this powerful article.

This article lays out 17 different ways to speedup Windows 7.  I know that seems a little crazy that there are that many different ways you can speedup windows 7.  If you have any questions just leave us a comment at the bottom of this page and we will be happy to help you.

Windows 7 is specially engineered for speed. It is built to be fast. Faster than any of its preceding Windows Operating Systems. While it may be faster than Windows Vista by a good sized margin, many users remain unsatisfied by the speed of Windows 7. Even with a fully updated hardware installation of Windows 7 you could still be longing for more speed. We aim to make your Windows 7 system run faster than you could remember it ever being.

If you are looking for a little extra speed and a performance, please follow through this guide to get Windows 7 to turbo speed! This guide can really get you the performance and speed up to where you want it.

First, you should be aware of the minimum requirements needed to operate on Windows 7:

1.) 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)

2.) 16GB of available disk space

3.) 1GB of main memory total

4.) A DVD – R/W drive

5.) Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory

Actually, the DX9 graphics card is not necessity because it is more for appearance features rather than performance features.

Let’s get straight into the guide so you can speed up that Windows 7 computer!

1.  Disable Any Unneeded Visual Effects

• To begin, right-click on the Computer icon on your Desktop and select “Properties” from the menu that appears
• Select “Advanced System Settings” from the left pane to view the System Properties Window
• Click the “Advanced” tab along the top of that window, then click “Settings” listed under “Performance”. Select “Custom:” options from there.
• In that window uncheck all the options and make sure that only the last 4 options are checked.

- Optionally you could only leave the last choices checked

• Lastly, log off of your system and log back in for changes to take effect

Turning off the aero effects in Windows 7 is a good start but you get even better results when you turn off many of the other unwanted visual effects.

2.  Turn off the User Account Control (UAC) Feature

• Open the Control Panel and select “User Accounts and Family Safety” then “User Account”.
• Select the User Account Control Settings link
• Simply click-and-drag the slider until it reaches “Never Notify”
• Click “OK” and restart your computer for changes to take effect

The UAC feature in Windows 7 is found annoying by many users especially those that are daily users of their computer.

3.  Disable Search Indexing Feature

• Right-click the Computer icon on your Desktop and select “Manage” from the menu that appears
• Select “Services and Applications” from the Computer Management Window and click “Services”
• You will then see a list of services available – locate the Windows Search on that screen
• Right-click “Windows Search” from that list and click “Properties”
• The Windows Search Properties window will appear
• Select “Disabled” from the drop-down menu for Startup Type
• Click “Apply” and “OK”

Now the startup feature for Search Indexing in Windows 7 has been disabled.

The Windows 7 Search Indexing feature was created so that the computer would keep records of the files that have previously been searched so items can be located quicker the next time you search them. This feature is really only useful if search for things very frequently and need them searched as fast as possible on your system after repeatedly requesting a search on that item.

If you only occasionally perform a system search for files, downloads, etc. then the Search Index Feature, especially when selected to run at system startup can eat away at memory and system resources without you even knowing it’s running.

If you would like to disable the Search Indexing Feature all together in Windows 7 you can by setting the Search Indexing Service to “Manual”. That is along with following the above steps under Disable Search Indexing Feature.

4.  Disable Unwanted Services

A lot of the features and services offered with Windows 7 operating systems are not necessary for everyday use. There are some; however, that are necessary and not safe to be turned off or disabled. But things like the Print Spooler are only needed when printed a document or picture. This is something that you can safely turn off on a regular basis and then turn on when going to print something. Below are 10 more things in Windows 7 that you can safely disable.

• Secondary Logon
• Windows Error Reporting Service
• Desktop Window Session Manager (leave on if you want aero effects)
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• Distributing Link Tracking Client
• Offline Files
• Diagnostic Policy Service
• Protected Storage
• IP Helper
• Application Experience

Without these always running you can really improve the speed on your Windows 7 system.

5.  Set Up the Ready Boost Service

• You will need a USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive that is Ready Boost compatible in order to configure the Ready Boost feature.
• After inserting the  USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive open it by going to Computer and right-click it and select “Ready Boost” from the options
• Check the “Use this Device” checkbox.
• You can choose how much space on your  USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive you would like used as RAM

Windows 7 offers the Ready Boost feature so that you can use your  USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive as extra RAM. This one step improves the speed and performance by a good margin.

6.  Disable the Sidebar

• Right-click on the sidebar and click “Properties” from the menu
• When the Properties window appears uncheck the box that says “Start Sidebar when Windows Starts”

Now the sidebar will not appear when you start your computer or log in to Windows. Disabling this feature will not only make your computer run faster in general but it will get you to a fast startup.

7.  Turn off the Thumbnail Preview Feature

• Open your Computer and select the “Organize” drop-down menu to select “Folder and Search Options”
• In the Files and Folders section select the View tab and check the box showing “Always Show Icons, Never Thumbnails”.

Displaying thumbnails of folders rather than icons can take up more space and time than just icons. So turning off the thumbnail preview option saves you both!

8.  Disable the Aero Theme

• Right-click any space on your Desktop and select “Personalize” from the menu that appears
• Open the Window Color tab
• Uncheck the box that says “Enable Transparency” and then select “Open Classic Appearance Properties for More Options”
• A new window will appear, select a Standard or Basic them from it. (Standard Windows 7 theme is a good choice)

If you are looking for aesthetics rather than performance you can keep the aero user interface. While it obviously adds luster to the appearance of things it also takes up a lot of space on the graphics and video cards. You can check this out yourself by viewing its memory consumption when aero theme is both on and off to see the difference.

9.  Disable Aero Peek and Aero Snap

• Go to your Control Panel of Windows 7 and double-click the “Ease of Access Center” icon.
• Select “Make It Easier to Focus on Tasks” listed near the bottom
• Uncheck the box that says “Prevent Windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen”
• Right-click on the Windows 7 taskbar and click “Properties” from the menu that appears
• Lastly, uncheck the box that says “User Aero Peek to Preview the Desktop”

Windows 7 has these new features designed to do things you already did in XP and Vista just in new ways. Aero Snap allows you to Maximize, Minimize and Resize your windows simply by dragging-and-dropping at screen corners.

Aero Peek is pretty much the same as the “Show Desktop” icon from Windows XP and Windows Vista. It hides all of your windows to show a clean desktop and icons.

10.  Disable Password Protection

Users that set up passwords to access their account in Windows 7 spend a few seconds every time they start up or log in to enter that password. If you are the only person who uses your computer my opinion is that you don’t really need this feature. I opt for getting on my account quickly. When I previously had a password set and someone wanted on my computer I would just give out the password anyway so it was completely useless and took extra time to log in every day.

11.  Disable Unwanted Startup Items

• Open the Windows button and type “msconfig” in the Run option of the start menu and press Enter
• This opens the System Configuration Utility window
• Select the Startup tab and uncheck all items that you do not need to run automatically when the computer starts up

This can drastically improve startup time and even running time if you have had a lot of things running when your computer starts. This often happens automatically when several things have been downloaded and installed onto your computer.

12.  Change your Power Plan to Maximum Performance

• Open your Control Panel and double-click the “Power Options” icon
• Scroll down to see the Show Additional Plans option and select “High Performance” power plan to activate it.
• Further tweaking can be done to this by selecting the Advanced Settings

13.  Turn off Unwanted Windows 7 Features

• Open your Control Panel and select “Programs and Features”
• Select the “Turn Windows features On or Off” from the left panel
• Uncheck all of the features that you do not use
• Restart your computer for the changes to take effect

There are several features that Windows 7 offers that many users don’t need or use often so by disabling them you are making more room for running time on things you do use frequently.

14.  Disable the Screen Saver and Wallpaper

• Right-click any blank space on your Desktop and select “Personalize” from the menu that appears
• Select the Screen Saver link
• From the Screen Saver drop-down menu select “None” then select “Apply” then “OK”
• Next click “Desktop Background”
• From the Location drop-down menu select “Solid Colors” pick a color and click “OK”

It takes up memory to display wallpaper and screen savers and more memory means faster computer.

15.  Disable Unwanted System Sounds

• Open the Start Menu and type “mmsys.cpl” in the Run option
• Locate the Sounds tab
• Under “Sound Schemes” then choose “No Sounds”, click “Apply”, click “OK”
• Optionally, you can keep some of your favorite sounds turned on and select which sounds to disable, but keep in mind that sounds played during startup, shutdown, logon, etc. take away from performance that could be utilized better elsewhere

16.  Tweak your Registry

We have a couple of articles in our PC 911 blog that have a lot of information on how you can tweak your registry to improve the speed of your computer!

17.  Software to help Speed Up Windows 7

There are several software programs out there that you can use to maintain a nice, healthy system. Programs that update your hardware, programs that clear bugs, programs that clean registries and programs that remove potentially harmful information against you. Some of my favorites are listed below.

• Reimage Total PC Repair Software
• PC Registry Cleaner
• Bug Doctor

This article is from our friends at PC 911, 17 ways to speedup Windows 7. Try a few of these tweaks to speedup Windows 7.  I am sure you will be able to regain some lost speed that your machine once had.  I remember the first few weeks after getting my new computer with Windows 7.  It was crazy fast compared to my XP machine that I had gotten used to. After using a few of these tweaks to speedup Windows 7 it feels like that again.

Related articles

• Q&A: Boosting the Speed of a Windows 7 PC (gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Increase Windows 7 Performance in 4 Easy Steps (ghacks.net)
• Does Windows ReadyBoost Work? (lockergnome.com)

Then select the Advanced system settings from the left side.  This will show you the system properties window.

Then you are going to want to click on the Advanced tab at the top and then click on settings under Performance.  Select custom options and then uncheck all of the boxes except the last 4.

This will make your desktop look older but it will make your computer run much faster. You can read each effect and decide on the individually so you can get the best look with the best speed.

Play around with different settings then reboot and use your computer for a day or so to really find the sweet spot. Disabling visual effects can really regain a lot of lost speed for many computers.

Related articles

• 9 Essential Tips To Speed Up Windows 7 (techebook.wordpress.com)
• So cool! 100 years of visual effects in 5 minutes (cbsnews.com)

1. First of all it’s mandatory that you will have unnecessary programs uninstalled. There are a lot of people that just install tons of applications that in the end they will never use, so those programs use your computer’s resource in vain. So those applications will run in background every time you will start your computer and cause valuable resources to be wasted. In order to correct this, you will need to assess which of those programs you are actually using and for those that you don’t need, just go to Start, Control Panel and then to Add / Remove Programs and uninstall them.

2. Downloads and junk files should be shot on sight! Every computer that is running Windows will certainly have junk files present in them. You might deem them as harmless, but the truth is that your computer needs resources and time in order to index them, which slows down overall performance. These files are temporary internet files but they can range to your downloads as well. So when the computer will be booted, when Windows will have all of these files analyzed and “remember” where they are located. Windows does this so that when it will need them, it will be able to find them much faster. As you can see here, the more files you have, the longer the boot will last for, so remove them periodically. If you don’t want to do this manually, make sure you use a junk file removal tool.

3. Keep your registry clean at all times. In most cases of Windows based machines slowing down, the registry is the one that is responsible for this. The Windows Registry is actually the place that all of the settings of your Windows based computer are stored and this allows your machine to work properly and smoothly. Yet when the registry begins to get improperly saved, problems will appear and you will experience slowdowns with your machine. With more time required in order to read the settings, the computer will become visibly slower.

You can download the Bug Doctor to cleanup your registry and optimize your computer.

So here they are, the top three ways to speed up your computer and ensure that at all times you have your machine performing one hundred percent of what it can output. Employ these solutions whenever you feel that your computer is working slower than before and you will speed it up in no time!

I would be willing to bet that your PC has a lot of errors on it. We created the Bug Doctor because we got tired of needing to be a full blown computer tech in order to keep our PC out of the repair shop. The Bug Doctor has become such a huge hit that hundreds of thousands of people are now primarily using it to keep their PC’s running error free. This is the software that computer geeks don’t want you to know about!

You will not believe how common it is for an average PC to have 200 or more errors. When you install/uninstall software a lot of programs leave trash laying around on your pc. Old shortcuts to non existent programs, redundant files, invalid application paths.

This list goes on and on, The Bug Doctor fixes all these errors and hundreds more. Let the doctor make you a house call and fix those errors for you today so you can enjoy a faster and more efficient PC. Listen to some of our users call in on our testimonials page.