Windows 7 is faster overall than Vista. But startup and shutdown times can still be frustrating. If you shut down your computer once a day — or more — those minutes waiting for a usable Windows 7 desktop can seem to drag on forever.
The same can go for shutting down. The good news: There are steps you can take to shave seconds, even minutes, off of both processes.
Use Your Cores
Windows 7 is the first version of the operating system that can use all processor cores to speed bootup. There’s just one problem: the feature is not active by default.
You can change that, though. Open Windows 7’s Start menu, type “msconfig,” and click the msconfig.exe entry that appears. The System Configuration dialog box opens.
From there, click the Boot tab, and then click the Advanced Options button. From the resulting BOOT Advanced Options dialog box, select the checkbox labeled “Number of processors,” and then from the drop-down list box underneath, select the number of “cores” that your computer has.
Typically, just select the highest number offered in the drop-down box, Click OK, and you’re done.
Remove Fonts
Fonts in Windows 7 — and all previous versions of Windows — load at startup. So to cut down on startup time, pare your font collection to only those typefaces that you need and use.
Visit the Fonts dialog box by opening the Start menu and typing Fonts. Select the Fonts entry that appears and, from the resulting dialog box, delete any fonts you don’t use.
To save those fonts for later use, try a font management program, such as FontFrenzy or Suitcase, which makes it easy to uninstall fonts without removing the underlying files.
Supercharge Shutdown
Often what holds up the Windows shutdown routine is the operating system waiting for background and foreground processes to close. Microsoft has tried to alleviate…