Optimising Windows 8 for speed - what are your tips and tricks?

ancient_mariner

ancient_mariner

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There used to be a bunch of settings in windows XP to do with memory management and visual effects that could be changed to make windows run much more efficiently. Having just come back to windows after 5 1/2 years on a Mac, I was wondering whether anyone had some recommended adjustments that could make it run better over default?

I'm also having 'fun' trying to migrate emails from Entourage 2008 into a format Outlook 2013 can import, but that's another story. :(
 
And any advice for transferring emails from Entourage into Outlook would be welcome to. :mad:

Gave up in the end - bought Gladwev entourage to PST converter - £22 seemed better than playing silly beggars trying to convert through various formats that never really worked, and STILL wouldn't import into Outlook. At least they arranged things with a trial version that did a limited conversion first to confirm it worked, before having to stump up the cash.
 
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The defaults on Windows 8 are fine; it's highly unlikely that any twiddling you do will noticeably improve performance. I play games on my PC, and am therefore performance-conscious. I have never had cause to adjust any settings or tweak anything.

Of course, if you're just curious, knock yourself out; tinkering is a fine way to spend a wet Wednesday afternoon. Just be prepared to fix whatever you break, where "fix" means everything up to and including reinstalling the OS :)

But generally, I am firmly of the belief that the way to computing happiness is to let the OS do its thing whilst you do yours, and then if there are specific problems, identify and solve them.

A modern OS like Windows or Mac OS X is a complex system, designed and implemented by Tefal-men and Tefal-women who have thought of more things than you or I. Attempting to "tweak" or "optimise" it is likely to lead to an inadvertent exploration of the law of unintended consequences.

And stay away - well away - from anything that claims to clean, optimise or otherwise fart about with the Registry.
 
Go into Task manager and startup, disable anything you don't need.

Also check which power setting you are on and that the CPU is not being throttled.
 
Do you mean if you don't know what it is find out before doing anything.
 
I've edited my post to reflect my "if it's working alright, don't touch it" approach.

I've being "doing computer stuff for money" for 20-odd years, and the more experience and knowledge I get, the more I don't touch things that are working well enough and that aren't actively annoying me.
 
More computers are broken by people who think they know what they are doing (& don't) !!
 
There is touching it and there is stopping the adobe Reader speed launcher, stopping various unneeded tools at startup which has a huge effect on start up times.

I don't use the Dell backup, Dell support centre or the Dell driver update tool so why have them start every time I turn my machine on. I may need them in the future so don't want to remove them.

This has changed the time tAken to log in on my laptop and be responsive from 30 or more seconds to 10 seconds. A big difference
 
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Dale, you clearly have a firm grasp of what's going on with your system, and you're making an informed decision about what to modify in the startup sequence.

My point is that if someone doesn't have that firm grasp and they're just going on received internet wisdom that they should "tweak things" (despite the fact that their computer was running perfectly satisfactorily up until they read the article about tweaking Windows), then unless they are trying to solve a specific problem, they should leave things well alone and get on with just using their computer to do more interesting and creative things, like process photographs and play Titanfall.

My 10p is that fiddling with the Windows startup sequence would need a much bigger payoff than 20 seconds off the login time for it to be worth the hassle/risk/time.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time both in my career and personal life (when your mum says "my laptop's broke", you can't very well say "don't look at me; you broke it, you fix it" - this goes double for your wife...) picking the bits out of well-intentioned but ham-fisted "optimisation" sessions. Getting paid for it is one thing, doing it just to stay married/in the will/off the sofa is quite another :)
 
Back to the OP.

There are currently two relatively simple speed boosts you can give any computer, one of which is drop-dead easy, the other is a bit fiddly:
  1. Install more RAM. In particular, going from 2GB upwards will yield a considerable speed boost, as the OS doesn't have to page to disk nearly as much. After that, and especially beyond 8GB, it's a case of diminishing returns. It used to be the case that RAM was so cheap that I'd recommend simply maxing out the system (in my case, that would mean going to 32GB RAM, as that's the maximum that my particular i5 processor will support) but RAM prices are currently such that I recommend going to 8GB and staying there, unless you're doing video (in which case, max it).
  2. If you currently have a magnetic hard disk that is your system disk, replace it with a Solid State Disk (SSD). This will necessitate either cloning your current system disk onto it, or reinstalling Windows on it.
After this, you're looking at things like replacing the graphics card (if you're using a desktop system or one of the rare laptops with upgradeable graphics) and the CPU (which, again, is easiest in desktops and may not be possible at all in many laptops).
 
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ancient_mariner said:
And any advice for transferring emails from Entourage into Outlook would be welcome to. :mad:

Gave up in the end - bought Gladwev entourage to PST converter - £22 seemed better than playing silly beggars trying to convert through various formats that never really worked, and STILL wouldn't import into Outlook. At least they arranged things with a trial version that did a limited conversion first to confirm it worked, before having to stump up the cash.
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When I did something similar - going from Apple Mail to Outlook - I used Virgin Media's IMAP functionality as the intermediate.

Create a new mail account in Mail pointing at the VM IMAP server, copy all folders and mail to it, wait a zillion years for it to sync (seriously, it took hours. I think I had a bath, watched the Grand Prix, cooked, served and ate dinner, and it was just about done)

Set Outlook up pointing at the VM IMAP server, copy all mail down, job jobbed.
 
I had north of 20,000 emails (just under 3Gb of mails and attachments and that's after culling spam etc) so bought a tool to convert from .rge to .pst. Wasn't able to find an imap service without paying for it, so that wasn't an option, and my internet connection is pedestrian at the best of times. Contacts were more of a pain, because outlook would only import the name & mobile phone number of contacts saved to a .csv file from entourage. However as I've used an android phone I was able to create a .csv file from google contacts and sync that, bringing over all the address & email details. No idea why the original .csv wouldn't work.

As for the rest of the stuff that's more about hardware optimisation, thanks for taking the time, but that's not really what I asked. But as an IT professional, your best experience is that Windows 8 is already optimised out of the box and there ain't a thing that can be done to make it faster? Disappointing. I'm finding that an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM can get a bit sluggish after editing a few images in lightroom, and hoped there'd be a memory tweak or similar to optimise that kind of work.
 
Carlh said:
tbh i havent tried it, maybe when the majority of people start using it and MS take all the NSA backdoors out of the OS I might use it. ;)
Click to expand...

Well, the way I look at it, if there actually were any NSA back doors in Win 8, they would just be refined versions of those already in Win 7 ;).
 
ancient_mariner said:
"..............

As for the rest of the stuff that's more about hardware optimisation, thanks for taking the time, but that's not really what I asked. But as an IT professional, your best experience is that Windows 8 is already optimised out of the box and there ain't a thing that can be done to make it faster? Disappointing. I'm finding that an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM can get a bit sluggish after editing a few images in lightroom, and hoped there'd be a memory tweak or similar to optimise that kind of work.
Click to expand...

Maybe clearing out all your temp. folders might help?

Despite some folk on here having virtual strokes about using registry cleaners, I have used Ccleaner for many years without problem.

Mind you, I can "fix" it if I need to:)
 
ancient_mariner said:
As for the rest of the stuff that's more about hardware optimisation, thanks for taking the time, but that's not really what I asked. But as an IT professional, your best experience is that Windows 8 is already optimised out of the box and there ain't a thing that can be done to make it faster? Disappointing. I'm finding that an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM can get a bit sluggish after editing a few images in lightroom, and hoped there'd be a memory tweak or similar to optimise that kind of work.
Click to expand...
I've got an i5 with 24GB, and it never gets sluggish, even when stitching multiple 41MP RAW files together in PS CC, and definitely not when working in Lightroom. Even when I had just 8GB, it never slowed down (although the upgrade to LR5 yielded an enormous speed boost).

I have 4 memory modules in my system (2x4GB and 2x8GB) installed in matched pairs.

It's not like the days of Windows XP and its predecessors, when hardware was quite limited and tweaking to eke out every last drop of performance was definitely a thing.

Tell us about your PC, and in particular, the storage arrangements (disk and memory).

Is it 64-bit? Spinny disks or SSD? Graphics - integrated or discrete?
 
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ancient_mariner said:
I had north of 20,000 emails (just under 3Gb of mails and attachments and that's after culling spam etc) so bought a tool to convert from .rge to .pst. Wasn't able to find an imap service without paying for it, so that wasn't an option, and my internet connection is pedestrian at the best of times. Contacts were more of a pain, because outlook would only import the name & mobile phone number of contacts saved to a .csv file from entourage. However as I've used an android phone I was able to create a .csv file from google contacts and sync that, bringing over all the address & email details. No idea why the original .csv wouldn't work.
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Yeah, my method is predicated on the existence of a free IMAP service and a reliable (and reasonably fast) upstream connection.

Intriguing that the CSV import was so flakey. I used the import wizard wossname to map all the fields, and this preserved everything quite nicely.

Learned my lesson though, and I keep everything in the cloud now.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'm finding that an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM can get a bit sluggish after editing a few images in lightroom, and hoped there'd be a memory tweak or similar to optimise that kind of work.
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I find that an i7 machine with 8GB RAM doesn't get sluggish after editing images in lightroom.

I do go through and disable services I don't need, take stuff out of startup and the HKLM + HKCU 'Run' keys. jusched is one of the most annoying as it will just bung a UAC elevation prompt up when it runs, which is effectively system modal. If there's a zero-day exploit in the JRE I generally know about it before Sun get a patch out, so having auto-updates enabled is of little benefit.

Only thing to note is my system disk is an SSD.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'm finding that an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM can get a bit sluggish after editing a few images in lightroom, and hoped there'd be a memory tweak or similar to optimise that kind of work.
Click to expand...
You may want to look at what the system is doing. Although I haven't run the latest LR on Win 8 (I'm still on 4.4 and Win 7 here) I found that it is almost impossible to get LR using more than 2.5G or memory. Consequently, memory tweaks would be of little use. What is more of use is scratch files and getting your source files on an SSD. Have a look here: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/ssds-and-lightroom.417126/
 
pwhysall said:
I've got an i5 with 24GB, and it never gets sluggish, even when stitching multiple 41MP RAW files together in PS CC, and definitely not when working in Lightroom. Even when I had just 8GB, it never slowed down (although the upgrade to LR5 yielded an enormous speed boost).

I have 4 memory modules in my system (2x4GB and 2x8GB) installed in matched pairs.

It's not like the days of Windows XP and its predecessors, when hardware was quite limited and tweaking to eke out every last drop of performance was definitely a thing.

Tell us about your PC, and in particular, the storage arrangements (disk and memory).

Is it 64-bit? Spinny disks or SSD? Graphics - integrated or discrete?
Click to expand...

It's a new (1 week old) Dell XPS15 9530 running i7 quad core, 16Gb RAM and both Intel & Nvidia graphics chipsets. It uses an mSATA 32Gb card as cache memory for fast boot & opening programs and spinning rust as main storage. I'd guess it's the HDD that's slowing things down in that case, and I'll just have to live with it for now. I do have a Crucial M500 240Gb SSD sat here that the present OS could be cloned to, but it's a bit small and I'd rather replace the mSATA drive with an SSD at some stage (and thanks for the link Andy).
 
What exactly are you doing when it slows down? Can you quantify this slowdown?

I see it's a laptop. Could you be encountering thermal CPU throttling?
 
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The slowdown happens when I'm doing brushwork and sometimes when opening menus in the develop module (particularly the detail section). I don't *think* it's thermal issues - I know when the machine is under load because the fans are audible, but that's not happened here (quite the opposite to the Macbook, where the fans would start when just browsing the library).

I've not dug around in the systems monitor yet, but may well do later. Typically now I'm trying to reproduce the issue it's not being a problem, even with Outlook, Firefox and perfect Effects running in the background. :rolleyes:
 
Quick check: version of Lightroom? Reason I ask is that LR5 is much more responsive than LR4, especially when using those tools.

also, is everything all 64-bit?
 
5.4, and yes, AFAIK everything is 64bit

Interesting your comment on Lr 5, because some comments I've seen suggested Lr5 had a problem with being laggy compared to Lr4, and I recall watching a video where the narrator (Anthony Morganti) apologised for the laggyness, explaining he'd just moved from 4 to 5 with that as a result.
 
Well, on my system (Windows 8.1 64-bit, LR5.4 64-bit, i5 3.2GHz, 24GB RAM, all magnetic disks, NVidia GTX 660 2GB card), LR5 flies and things like the adjustment brush are just so much better to use.

I wonder - is your system using the integrated graphics or the discrete?
 
Integrated I'm fairly sure - discrete kicks in if there's 3D rendering to be done.
 
The discrete will provide considerable additional computational shove via the magic of CUDA and other acronyms. Can you turn it on all the time?
 
Tis a good question. I can associate programs that do 3D work with it, but can't seem to turn it on otherwise. I presume that's because Lightroom doesn't use any of the processing power in a 3D graphics card, as other have said on here.
 
If you've got the Dell with the same ATI 7430M hybrid graphics as mine then I can tell you that driver support is effing sheyite. It's meant to use the integrated HD4000 for low power then kick in the 7430M for high power CPU stuff, whilst continuing to render the output via the HD4000. Getting it working is bloody temperamental and any Windows Update or ATI update will probably break it. Hate mine.
Having said that, LR doesn't use GPU acceleration and should not slow down under HD4000.

Where's your scratch file set to?

I have replaced the 32GB mSATA on mine with a 256GB mSATA and instead of using as cache am just using it as a standard SSD, and keeping the 1TB traditional drive for data. It works really well although I'm not sure I'd dare do it again - getting to the mSATA required a complete stripdown of the entire laptop. I used to be certified on Dell and Toshiba laptop hardware and even I found it a bit nervy...
 
Carlh said:
uninstall and put windows7 back on ? :)
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Why? Win 8 kicks it's ass.

Just install Start8, and you have windows 7 interface back, with all the advantages of Win 8.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Typically now I'm trying to reproduce the issue it's not being a problem, even with Outlook, Firefox and perfect Effects running in the background. :rolleyes:
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all techy approaches have failed; it is now time for outright deception.

Whenever you're going to use Lightroom, loudly say "Well, I do hope it goes a bit slowly this time, and then I'll be able to put some information on that TP thread I started."

Whilst they are definitely malicious, computers are also quite thick and easy to deceive.
 
one, two, three, four, five.....

;)
 
ancient_mariner said:
.......I've not dug around in the systems monitor yet, but may well do later.
Click to expand...

I just measured it on my Win 7 machine and Lightroom's memory usage quintuples as soon as an adjustment brush is used (and it stays at this 5x level even after exiting the Develop module).
 
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