Ideas for customizing the OS with SSD please ?

Cov

Cov

Gawd
Joined
Dec 3, 2007
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Hi, I am trying to put a list together of all personal adjustments after a fresh installation of Windows 7.

I'm aware that many people would not agree with all of these settings, but I have found it to be useful for my system with an SSD as a boot device.

Please have a look at my list and you are very welcome to comment and / or contribute with more suggestions of what might be useful.





Windows 7 - Supercharged​



• How to modify UAC

Start › user accounts › change user account control settings › adjust slider

• How to disable Page File

Start › system › Advanced system settings › Performance › Settings › Advance › Virtual memory › Change › No paging file › Set › OK

• How to disable Hibernation

Start › cmd › type: powercfg -h off› enter

• How to disable System Restore

Start › System › System protection › Configure

• How to turn off Search Indexing

a) Start › services › windows search › disable

b) Start › computer › right click c drive › properties › untick: Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties

c) Start › Indexing options › modify › show all locations › double click users in summary of selected locations › uncheck users directory › double click start menu in the summary of selected locations › uncheck start menu directory › ok

• How to turn off Remote Differential Compression

Start › Control panel › programs › turn windows features on or off › uncheck Remote Differential Compression › ok

This makes file transfers (copy, move) faster by turnig off “Remote Differential Compression” (RDC). Copying a 1.91 GB folder from the main HDD to a folder on an external USB drive resulting in ...

With RDC turned on: 3:23 - three minutes and 23 seconds (with a stopwatch).
With RDC turned off: 2:25 – two minutes and 25 seconds.

• How to turn off unneeded Windows features

Start › programs & features › turn Windows features on or off › uncheck

· How to remove the recycle bin

Right click desktop › Personalize › change desktop icons › untick recycle bin

· How to disable defragmentation & Superfetch

Start › Computer Management or Services › Disk Defragmentation › disable
Superfetch › disable

· How to change title text of Internet Explorer

Start › regedit › HKEY_CURRENT_USER › Software › Microsoft › Internet Explorer › Main

Look for “Window Title” Registry Key at the right pane. If it’s not there, create a String Value type of registry key and name it as “Window Title”.
Double click the “Window Title” registry key and enter the customized text that will appear in the IE window title.

· How to change border padding for windows

Right click the desktop › Personalize › Windows Color › Advanced Appearance Settings › select Border Padding › change size 4 (default) to a lower value.

• Windows uses 20% of your bandwidth, here's how to get it back

Start › Run › gpedit.msc (Local Group Policy Editor) › Local Computer Policy › Computer Configuration › Administrative Templates › Network › QOS Packet Scheduler › Limit Reservable Bandwidth › ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO › OK

• Disable unneeded start-up programs from loading

Start › msconfig or system configuration › services tab

• How to access the Disk Management Console Tool

Start › diskmgmt.msc

· How to display system information

Start › system information

• Turn off automatic update

Start › Windows update › change settings › never check for updates

· How to clean the HDD / SSD

Start › cleanmgr (or use CCleaner)

· How to access Resource Monitor

Start › Resource Monitor
 
Remote Differential Compression wouldn't affect copy times to external drives.

Turn off automatic updates? :|

How would changing the default IE window title have anything to do with having an SSD? Or window border size?
 
disable superfetch? ok but I'd rather purposely stub my toe on concrete.
 
bigdogchris said:
disable superfetch? ok but I'd rather purposely stub my toe on concrete.
Click to expand...

This actually made me laugh out loud.

That list almost seems like someone loaded 7, or perhaps Vista, on a completely under-powered PC and bitched about sub-par performance. To compensate for said performance, disable EVERYTHING you can.
 
Thank you for your kind replies and here are three more tweaks:

1. Temporary Internet Folder: Under Internet Explorer go to the “Tools”, then to which will bring up Internet Options, then go to Browser History and hit “Settings”, Go to Current Location and hit “Move Folder” then proceed to move the folder to your alternate location, IE secondary Drive or a None SSD or OS drive.

2. Move the “Temp and Tmp” files: Go to \My Computer\\Properties\\Advanced\\Environment Variables\, then highlight the "temp or tmp" depending on which one you’re working on, pick the variable, click edit, and Change the path to another hard drive if they are located on the Solid State with the “Variable Value Field”.

3. PIO Mode: Make sure the SSD is not running in PIO mode. To verify that go into the Device Manager, open IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers and double-click all Primary and Secondary IDE Channels. Verify that there are no signs of PIO Mode under the Current Transfer Mode entry in Advanced Settings. It should list Ultra DMA Mode 5 by default on there.

I just checked and it even says Ultra DMA Mode 6

Source: G.Skill SSDs
 
Joe Average said:
Simple answer:

Leave it alone.
Click to expand...

Seriously.

It's like the black viper "tweaks". Someone smart on Anandtech actually checked performance after "tweaks". The result was, Windows either ran the same, or oftentimes, WORSE. There were some improvements so miniscule they didn't even matter, at best. Frickin ridiculous. Most of the time it's better to leave stuff alone. I can see disabling system restore if you don't use it, and a few things like that. The other "tweaks" are normally pointless or detrimental.

See here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1678445&enterthread=y&arctab=y


Disabling the pagefile is another idiot manuever I'm always seeing arguments about. Ugh. But somehow you can never convince people.

See here:
http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html. ctrl-F "Disabling the Paging File improves performance".

Myth - "Disabling the Paging File improves performance."

Reality - "You gain no performance improvement by turning off the Paging File. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no paging file (pagefile.sys) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no paging file is present."

....
Click to expand...
See references to Windows IT Pro magazine and MICROSOFT.

and here:

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

and here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html

and a discussion here at [h]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1282926&highlight="disable+pagefile"
 
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So by "supercharging" Win 7 on an SSD (which, from your list, looks like it would apply to Vista as well), you're basically disabling most of the really useful features of the operating system to prevent "wearing" the memory cells...? That's like unplugging your ethernet cable for "increased security." Might as well not even turn your computer on--it could access memory cells and make your SSD fail. Catastrophically. :p

Conversely to SSDs, hard disk drives have lots of moving parts that operate at extremely high speeds with tight tolerances--very prone to mechanical failure.

My point is that there are risks involved whenever you're reading or writing data of any type on pretty much any type of media, but it's foolish to get all OCD about disabling core OS features so as not to touch the drives. I've got a better idea. If you're worried about data integrity, keep backups. Problem solved. :D


BTW -- I don't consider disabling search indexing as "supercharging" ... that's a very useful feature and it crawls without an index.
 
I think people that buy SSDs only to disable or modify so much of the OS to "protect" the SSD shouldn't be buying freakin' SSDs to begin with. They're rated for ridiculous numbers of write cycles, far more than most any of us would ever actually reach, so it's a bit silly to spend so much time doing fairly useless tweaks just to eek out a bit longer lifespan on such hardware.

Grab a damned hard drive and be happy... :D
 
Wow, I can feel so much love in this thread.
[H] seems to be an aggressive forum to me.
 
n00bie said:
Wow, I can feel so much love in this thread.
[H] seems to be an aggressive forum to me.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm just [H]ardened to it, but these responses don't really seem out of line. Actually pretty civil. Almost everything in the OP is simply a bad idea, so you'd kind of expect these types of posts...
 
n00bie said:
Wow, I can feel so much love in this thread.
[H] seems to be an aggressive forum to me.
Click to expand...

You lurk for a while and get a feel for things. Sometimes people make such asinine posts that, anyone with a bit of tech knowledge, automatically triggers a response in our brains that instantly says WTF?!?

Joe Average's last post summed it up best. If you are that paranoid about wearing out your shiny new toy, perhaps you should leave the shiny toy on the desk and throw in some old worn out buzzard shit.
 
You should also read this top to bottom

Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives

The part I found most interesting is;

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
Click to expand...

After researching SSDs a lot and lurking the Technet forums and reading everything and anything that has to do with SSDs I have determinded that MS engineered Windows 7 to accomidate to a 95% optimization of SSDs automatically on install (*of what's known of them today). Perhaps the only thing that I might consider as a tweak might be stripe size or offset, but until some other sucker finds out what not to do I would leave it alone.

Also, I understand your mentality. You read about the sector wear and the lifespan of SSD's. Believe me, they will be dirt cheap long before you have to worry. Think about how expensive [x] size USB was and how cheap that same size is today. They will drop faster in the $/gb range than even hard drives. It's going to be nutz.

Most of the changes you are making will essentially negate the most useful reasons for getting an SSD. eliminating the page file or moving it to another drive is pointless and actually robs you of the main benifit of an SSD.

Most of the information you are using to make this list I recognise as years and years old based on other OS's and "theories" from gamers on a slim budget. I know them well, I used to be one, scavanging parts from lesser computers no one wanted. Trying to optimize everything all the way down to what drive was on what controller, and where the scratch disk physically was on the platter. Know what I learned?

-Technology moves far too quickly to be taking up that kind of time over half an FPS (if it was even there to begin with) when I could get the same damn result from turning the a.c. up, or using that time to mow lawns and using the money to buy actual better gear.

I did the obsessive thing, it won't magically get you the same numbers of those who just spend on better gear.
 
Yeah, I have to say, I did the Black Viper tweaks back in the day, and the performance increase (maybe a few percent if that) was not worth the trouble of having to re-enable certain services that I was sure I'd never need to use. I've also stopped bothering with stuff like disabling drive indexing; having faster searches is worth sacrificing the rather miniscule performance gain.

All I bother with now is placing a fixed-size page file on a seperate drive (or partition if none is available), and disabling hibernation on computers that I don't need to have hibernate if hard drive space is at all an issue (particularly older rigs with small drives and that I tend to shut down when I'm done with).

Whether or not you have an SSD shouldn't be an issue. If you got the hardware for its performance benefits, make the most of it.
 
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Are those the settings for Win7 Problem Edition? :p
 
pxc said:
Are those the settings for Win7 Problem Edition? :p
Click to expand...

That made me laugh. :D

Now back on topic:

Disable Superfetch? My god...why? Why would you castrate the OS? Why turn off the page file? If you're going to disable Superfetch and let your RAM go to waste at least create a RAM disk and dump the page file in there. Turn off automatic updates? :rolleyes:

This threads topic is so full of FAIL it's sad. :eek:
 
about the only thing I would disable is search and defrag.

The rest has nothing to do with SSDs.
 
Here's my method: I insert the Windows 7 disk. I install it. I let the installer reboot, then I enter a username/password. Then I use the computer. ;)

(If it detects one, Windows 7 automatically optimizes itself for SSDs. It knows better than you do, so just leave it alone. The archaic Windows tweaks from 1999 don't apply in 2009.)
 
This list (like most other people in this thread seems as well) made me twitch while reading it

• How to modify UAC

Start › user accounts › change user account control settings › adjust slider
Click to expand...

Dear god why? I understand that UAC is a personal choice, but Windows 7 did such a better job that just a bout the only time i ever see UAC is when i am running exe files. The concept of the UAC is a valuable defense to stopping unauthorized application from taking a foothold.

• How to disable System Restore

Start › System › System protection › Configure
Click to expand...

Although i can see why one would consider this with todays smaller SSD drives, overall i would recomend against this because personally i have seen System Restore save one's bacon many a times after hosing a system because of a bad system tweak or driver update


• How to turn off Search Indexing
Click to expand...

Um? i like being able to find things quickly and efficently, why would i want to disable this?


· How to disable defragmentation & Superfetch

Start › Computer Management or Services › Disk Defragmentation › disable
Superfetch › disable
Click to expand...


Defrag, sure, but windows 7 will automaticall do this when it detects an SSD drive. Superfetch, again, see my comment to indexing.


• How to disable Page File

Start › system › Advanced system settings › Performance › Settings › Advance › Virtual memory › Change › No paging file › Set › OK
Click to expand...

See all the other facepalms about this suggestion


• Windows uses 20% of your bandwidth, here's how to get it back
Click to expand...

Wrong wrong wrong WRONG! Dont touch this!
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/316666
 
Yes, the UAC step is worth taking. You either max it, or turn it off. The default setting adds no security whatsoever, but still nags you when programs elevate themselves 'properly' (while allowing other programs to elevate themselves 'improperly' sans-prompt). By Microsoft's own admission, UAC isn't for the end user's protection, but to encourage developers to write code that doesn't often/ever require elevation. The default setting is just a nudge for developers and not worth annoying yourself with, when malware could self-elevate anyway.

I'm going to turn mine OFF, install all my apps and configure everything, then max it and evaluate how annoying it is from there.

[ Disabling system restore is a bad idea, as is removing your page file, playing with QoS settings, or turning off indexing unless you're sure you'll never need to do a search. And this list has nothing to do with SSD's ]
[ Edit/ and the Win 7 defragger already won't degrag an SSD, so no reason to disable this. Seems that nothing on the list is worth doing except making a decision on UAC. ]
 
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When I first read the title of this thread I thought it could be a useful read. I started having doubts after I read the first item on the list, how to adjust UAC. I gave up after the mention of removing the recycle bin. Most of the items on this list have nothing to do with SSD in particular. "How to access Resource Monitor", I mean seriously? This is more of the OPs checklist for what he plans to do after he installs Win7. A very shitty one at that.
 
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