Disable Visual Effects (Not Aero) in Windows 7 | Faster 7 Part 10

As we continue this series we will be disabling more and more portions of the Windows 7 operating system so we can make it run faster.  Some of these tweaks might not “catch your fancy” because, quite frankly, they keep Windows 7 from looking really nice and fancy.  For those of you who don’t care about looks, you’ll have no problem disabling portions of your operating system such as this one.

Disabling visual effects (no, not the Aero Effects) in Windows 7 is extremely easy, and it is done the same as it is done in both Windows XP and Windows Vista.  The nice feature about disabling these effects is you can still retain a good majority of them and individually de-select the ones you do not think are visually useful to you.  You will understand more how this works when you follow the steps below.

The Windows 7 operating system, as powerful and efficient as it is, sometimes needs to be told not to enable some of its features.  Right out of the box it is set up for the most visually pleasing experience.  For the majority of people who have more than 3 gigabytes of RAM, this is great.  However, for those users who upgraded their operating system to Windows 7 and still are only running one or two gigs, these visual effects can reign disaster on their performance.

Disable Visual Effects (Not Aero) in Windows 7

1. On your desktop, right click on ‘computer’.

2. Select ‘Properties’.

3. Under control panel settings, Select ‘Advanced system settings’.

4. Make sure the ‘Advanced’ tab is selected

5. Under ‘performance’, select ‘settings…’

6. Select the radio button for ‘Adjust for best performance…’

7. To retain some Windows 7 beauty, scroll down to the bottom of the list and enable ‘Smooth Edging of Screen Fonts’, ‘Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on Desktop’ and ‘Use Visual Styles on Windows and Buttons’.

8. Select ‘Apply’

That’s it!  You have successfully disabled a large chunk of visual effects that come enabled by default in the Windows 7 operating system.  This should be a good beginning in making your Windows 7 operating system run faster than before.  If you are one of those individuals who don’t care much for the visual effects anyways, make sure to disable ALL of the visual effects for even more of a performance increase.  Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.