Windows 7 tweaks, tips and customizations.

[Mario]

This here is a list that I will maintain for things to do (customize) after installing Windows 7. As of today, my main operating system is still Windows XP. I am seriously attempting to migrate my daily usage platform (DUP) over to Windows 7, but God knows it's hard. There are so many things I greatly dislike about Win7, it's not funny. I will however persist and try to embrace it as best I can. (2013 update: Well, after about two years now, Windows 7 is my default OS. I still multiboot with Windows XP, of course.) (2016 update: Well, after another two years, Windows 7 is now my primary and secondary operating system. Windows XP is being retired from the main PC/"everyday" use.)

• Disable hibernation - this will delete the hiberfil.sys file.

Open a DOS prompt (as Administrator) and type: powercfg -h off
Additionally, go to "Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options" and select the plan you wish to use, then select "Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings" and customize as required.

• Disable Remote Assistance.

Go to System Properties and from the Remote tab click the Advanced button. Uncheck the "Allow this computer to be controlled remotely" setting. Change the Invitations settings to; "1" & "Minutes". Click the "Create invitations that can only be used from computers running Windows Vista or later" checkbox. After returning to the main Remote tab, uncheck the "Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer" setting. Finally, make sure the "Don't allow connections to this computer" radio checkbox is selected from the bottom section of the Remote tab.

• Disable Remote Desktop.

Go to System Properties and from the Remote tab, make sure the "Don't allow connections to this computer" radio checkbox is selected.

• Disable System Restore/Protection

Go to System Properties and from the System Protection tab, make sure that all drives have this feature turned off. Additionally, especially if this setting was previously used, select each individual drive and click the Configure button. From the following window, delete any existing restore points and makes sure each drive uses 0 bytes of disk space.

• Disable User Account Control (UAC). (2012 Update: Don't disable. Leave at default level.)

Go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Change User Account Control settings and lower the slider all the way to the bottom - Never notify.

• Disable Virtual memory (pagefile.sys)

Go to System Properties and from the Advanced tab click the first (Performance) Settings button. From the following window select the Advanced tab. Click the Change button from the Virtual memory section. From the following window uncheck the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" setting which will "unfreeze" the drives section. Make sure every drive has the "No paging file" radio button checked.

• Disable Windows Search & Indexing
  

Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off > uninstall Windows Search.

Run services.msc. Locate the Windows Search service. Stop the service. Go to its Properties section and disable it from the Startup type pull-down menu. Proceed to delete any existing indexing files from their default directory of; %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Search\ (Simply delete the entire Search directory.)
If the indexing location was previously changed, its location can be gained via the registry key; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search > DataDirectory



Useful tips;

If using Flashget, make sure that it is run with Administrator privileges. If not, it won't save certain settings, and it will have problems when importing an existing database.

The list of unchecked startup entries in "MSConfig" is located at; [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig\startupreg]

If multi-booting Windows 7, since there is no more boot.ini, use the internal (Windows\System32) bcdedit executable if you wish to edit the boot menu sequence names.
ie: bcdedit /set {identifier} description "name you want" ("identifier" will be the specific Windows "session" you will want to rename. The device section should easily reveal which "session" you want to edit.)