Windows® 7 Tweaks: A Comprehensive Guide on Customizing, Increasing Performance, and Securing Microsoft® Windows 7

Chapter 14. Speeding Up Windows Explorer

Now that you have optimized the boot startup and your logon, let's speed up the most used application in Windows 7: Explorer. Windows Explorer is responsible for almost the entire GUI with which you normally interact in Windows 7. The Start menu, taskbar, and file exploring windows are all part of the Explorer shell. As you can see, Explorer is a very expansive application that is a major part of the operating system.

This chapter shows you how you can use some cool hacks to increase the performance of Explorer. First, you improve the speed of browsing and accessing files on your computer. Then you adjust the visual effects of Windows 7 so that it performs better on your computer hardware — finishing off with tweaking Windows Search for optimal performance.

Speeding Up File Browsing and Access

Browsing through lists of files and reading and writing files are the most basic operations that your computer performs. All the other operations that your computer performs build off these common tasks. If you are launching an application or playing a game, no matter what you are doing, it all breaks down to the simple process of reading a file from a device at some point. Windows Explorer is no exception. The speed of Windows Explorer is greatly influenced by the performance of these basic operations. Therefore, the performance of Windows Explorer, as well as all other applications, can be improved by optimizing these basic operations.

How can you speed ...