Improve the Performance and Response Time of the Microsoft Windows Interface

Are you tired of waiting for your computer to process commands? Does it hang when you try to do simple things like open a web browser or a folder? This could be because of Spy ware or other malicious software but a lot of times it can be caused by poor performance. The good news is this can be changed by making some simple setting changes. This article applies to any version of Windows, XP and up.

The first thing we're going to do is right click the desktop and choose properties. When then display properties window comes up, click on the Themes tab. Change the theme to windows classic. This is a much more lean and clean theme and will react faster to your clicks. Next we'll click on the Appearance tab. Click the effects button. The options on the effects screen take a fast processor and a good amount of memory to render properly. For the best performance possible, I would suggest un-checking all of these options. After you're done configuring effects, hit okay twice and you should be back at the desktop.

The next thing we're going to do is click the start button, right click my computer and choose properties. The system properties window should now be open. Click the advanced tab and choose the settings button under the performance section. On the visual effects tab you'll see several different options. The options are "Let windows choose what's best for my computer", "Adjust for best appearance", "Adjust for best performance" and "Custom". If you choose to let windows manage these settings for you, it will choose what settings to enable below depending on your systems specs. If you choose to adjust for best appearance, it will turn all of the options on. If you choose to adjust for best performance, it will turn all of the options off. If you decide to turn some settings on and some settings off, it will choose custom. I highly recommend choosing to adjust for best performance unless you have a fast processor, lots of memory or can't live without some of these effects. Once you've done configuring visual effects, hit okay a couple times and you'll be at the desktop again.

These settings should help quite a bit as you maneuver around in windows. You'll need to reboot for the changes to take effect. There are a lot of other things you can do to improve the speed and reaction time of the windows interface but these should be a great start.