3. Other Ways To Improve Performance

There are other ways to improve the performance of your notebook. Here are some of them.

Deactivate System Restore

Microsoft's system restore feature adds substantial leverage to a running notebook. Should your system fail following some application updates, software changes or new installation then you can roll back the system to an earlier known good state as if nothing ever happened. This can save tremendous amounts of time troubleshooting issues or starting over with a fresh installation. However, System Restore uses considerable CPU resources. If your notebook has a relatively clean bill of health, especially in terms of viruses and you rarely implement new software you can improve performance by deactivating this service.

Open My Computer > Properties and select the System Restore tab. Check the option labeled "Turn off System Restore on all drives" to deactivate this service once and for all.

Disable Search Indexing

Unless you are perpetually forgetful to the point you find yourself routinely searching disk drives for documents and files, you can disable disk indexing (appropriately called the Indexing Service). While this feature aims to improve search performance it also impacts overall drive performance as it compiles information on each file it indexes for later searches.

Open Start > Run and type services.msc in the Open: textbox and press the Enter key or click on My Computer > Local Disk (C:) then right-click on the C: drive to open the Properties dialog box and uncheck the last option titled "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching". See the image below. Additionally, be sure to stop the currently-running Indexing Services background process using the Start > Run > services.msc option.

Hint: You can reduce the need for indexed searches by better organizing your folders and files. Don't put everything you work with on the desktop in the form of an icon that points to an application or data file. On the desktop and everywhere else use folders to organize files so they're easier to find.