![]() Has your Windows PC become incredibly slow and you're wondering how to make it fast again? Look no further, read this article with links to many of our most. DEFAULT ~ What Bill G. Windows Vista has often been criticized for being bloated and slow and everyone unanimously seems to agree that Vista is a beast that Microsoft needn’t have. QWERTY is a keyboard layout for Latin script. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard (Q W E R T Y). ![]() Vista Too Slow Tweaks For CydiaLearn how to customize the interface, improve performance and enhance security of Microsoft Windows with hundres of tips, tweaks and free utilities. SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7. Hello to all my fellow and future users of SSD drives and Windows 7. I will separate each type of tip to its own message to keep things easier to read and to follow. All of this has been tested on my laptop system, configured as follows: HP DV2. Core 2 qual 2ghz, 4 Gig RAM. Disk 0: Patriot M2. SSD 2. 40. MBs (Boot drive), Disk 1: Seagate ST9. AS 5. 00 Gig 1. 00. MBs second drive. Windows 7 ultimate 6. Machine is used all day every day at work and home, lots of virtual machines running. These suggestions are just the way I choose to set things up and get GREAT performance and utilize the SSD to its fullest potential. Your mileage may and probably vary. The tutorials and suggestions are not meant to be debated, its all up to you to decide if you want to try them or not. All standard disclaimers apply.. I am not responsible for breaking your stuff, only mine. With all that said, on with the tutorials.. FYI, lightningltd here (me) and magic- man on other forums are one in the same, So I am posting this tutorial here with my permission. If like me, you first installed to hard drive then used an image backup program to put the OS on the SSD, then this step is necessary to allow Windows 7 to set the proper settings for SSD use and set things up for optimizing the OS after burning the firmware and/or cleaning the drive to factory specs. If you installed directly to the your SSD, you don't need to follow this step, but it can be helpful if you followed the XP and vista SSD guides and things just aren't up to snuff.*** read all the steps first so you can create the images and boot USB and CD/DVD and print the instructions before you start***FIRST.. MAKE A BACKUP IMAGE just in case!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be sure to create the restore disk, too. Basically, you need to do a repair install of Windows 7 so Windows can set itself up properly for SSD use. The following link will step you through this step: https: //www. When done, we need to verify that TRIM is active. At a command prompt (start/run/cmd), type the following: fsutil. Disable. Delete. Notify. It should respond back with Disable. Delete. Notify=0 if trim support is ready and active. If it is not, type fsutil. Disable. Delete. Notify 0. This will set Windows 7 to use TRIM when the drive and drivers are ready to do so. Next, we need to make sure our ATA/ATAPI ACHI controller is set to use trim. EDIT! 3/2. 2/1. 0: The new INTEL chipset drivers 9. TRIM! Use these instead of the MS AHCI ones for Intel Chipsets. RAID: Intel. If it says . If not, double click it and select the driver tab. Click update driver. Select browse. Select let me pick. Once it has reboot and all is fine, then U can go on to the next step (after making an IMAGE backup of the whole SSD with the new changes (I use Windows backup)). This step is necessary IF you have been using the SSD for a while before updating the firmware and/or want to return performance back to factory fresh (this will fix isues created if you ran 'tony- trim' method on another site). I did it right after the firmware update since it will ERASE the entire SSD, losing all data. It is called an ATA secure erase for a reason. ATA secure erase command when they are done (Like the samsung), so the SSD will 'inherit' any performance issues it had before. Using this method resets all the memory cells to factory values. IF you just pulled the SSD out of the box and updated it, or have never used it, then this step is NOT NEEDED. Remember! Make sure U have that image backup I keep yelling about, you WILL lose everything on the SSD if you haven't already! Download and print the instructions from http: //ata. ATA. Boot to the CD/DVD and click the bottom where it looks like a black window (prompt). Follow the instructions you just printed. On my laptop, I had to unplug the SSD while the OS was running and plug it back in real quick to make it not be frozen as in the instructions. When all done, you have a nice empty clean SSD to restore your image to! Restore the image to the drive and boot up. See U at the next part.. Optimizing Windows 7 for the SSD! Except for installation, over 9. Windows 7 operations are READS, perfect for your SSD. You COULD just use it as is and things would be fantastic. BUT, there are some things to verify first... Verify that TRIM is enabled as in the prior messages. Make sure your AHCI controller is using a TRIM compliant driver as in the prior messages. Make sure the defrag program is disabled for the SSD.. Admin tools/Services set Disk Defragmenter to disabled. I use auslogics disk defrag (free) for my other drives manually. U almost never have to defrag an SSD. It can lower its life expectancy. Page File. There has been much debate about this. The idea that no one needs a page file is a bunch of crap. I have tried it both ways, moitoring writes and reads, and YES, it IS used even with 8 Gigs of RAM. I left mine at 2 Gigs, but it is just fine at 1 Gig. Writes to the page file are sequential now. Page file is also read at boot time to speed things. Keep it on your SSD where it belongs. Superfetch/prefetch/bootfetch: Windows 7 does not always turn it all off as it should. The purpose of these things are to pre- load the programs you load from slow hard drive to fast memory (cache) in case you want to run them. With your SSD, there is no need. We will disable them and free up some memory and resources and stop a LOT of writes to the SSD. To disable Superfetch, etc: Admin tools/Services. Select superfetch and set to disabled. Run regedit and change the following values: HKLM/System/Current. Controlset/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/Prefetch Parameters and change the key valus of Enableboottrace, enableprefetcher, enablesuperfetch all to 0 and exit regedit. This will disable MOST of the superfetch/prefetch stuff.. The boot prefetch will get disabled in the next part along with some un- necessary logging that is done (and writes a lot). Windows 7 has the most event logs that I have seen of any OS. If you are having issues, then I would not change the logging options. If not, then we can stop a lot of writes that frankly, only an engineer would need (we leave the basic event logs alone). Expand data collector sets. Click on Startup Event Trace Sessions. To do so, right click on each one that has a status of Enabled (except the ones mentioned above) and select Properties. Click the Trace Session tab. Unselect Enabled. Repeat for the others (including readyboot). Enable on the SSD: https: //www. TEMP FILES.. IF you have another NON SSD drive installed, I would move the TEMP and temporary internet files to them (next message(tutorial page)). Since I have Windows 7 make an image backup of the SSD to my other drive every day (only takes a few minutes and very little resources), I completely turn off system protection (system restore). You can also turn off Windows reliability monitor. I will post a short tutorial if you want. It does quite a bit of writing too, but only every few hours. There are some other more advanced things I do, but to be honest, they result in very little speed increase (less than 5%). Quote: how do you . IF you have another NON SSD drive installed, I would move the TEMP and temporary internet files to them.? Remember, the object of superfetch is to copy program stubs from SLOW hard disk to fast RAM. With an SSD, this is not needed, since the SSD reads so fast. I recommend you try it with it on, then try it with the service disabled. You likely will not see any slow down, actually a speed up since more RAM is available for other things and there will be a marked decrease in disk writes/accesses. Windows 7 does use the page file IF PRESENT to keep things effecient. Several programs use it like VMWARE, some games, graphics software, MS office, etc.. It will only use it when it is effecient to do so. With 8 Gigs of RAM a 1 GIG page file is plenty. Remember: the page file in Windows 7 is more sequential now, and therefore much more efficient. One of my MS sources also told me that there is some cached boot code in it to speed up boot, but to be honest, I haven't seen a difference. I can tell you that it IS smoother with even a 5. Meg page file on the SSD. Try it both ways with your read- world load and decide for yourself. There is no bench- mark for it other than your gut. That is why it is so debated. Quote: could you also explain: You can also turn off Windows reliability monitor. Admin tools, open task scheduler. Scroll down and click on RAC. Go to the top and select View then show hidden tasks IF RACTASK is not showing. Right click on Rac. Task and select disable. To re- enable it, you right click it and select enable. The data is still collected in the logs, just stored effeciently. You can re- enable it and see the reliability stuff when U wish. Disabling it saved RAM and some drive churning until U need to look at it. Quote: There are some other more advanced things I do, but to be honest, they result in very little speed increase (less than 5%). I used the black viper guide and got mine trimmed down some without losing functionality of Win 7.. I like it the way it is (almost). U can read up on what each service does and decide for yourself.. SWTOR Tweaks Guide - Graphics and Performance (ini Tweaks)There are two ways you can optimize SWTOR for performance; one is by tweaking the in- game settings and second (Advanced Tweaking) is by tweaking different variables in your client. You can find that file in the location specified in the advanced tweaking section of this guide. Following are the list of in- game options with the recommended settings that you can tweak in the graphics option menu of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Thanks @zenstrata. For more help on Star Wars: The Old Republic, read our SWTOR troubleshooting guide. Resolutions. Game supports a range of resolutions, pick one that your monitor or LCD supports and stick with it. Higher the resolution, prettier the graphics, and more resources required to run the game. Checkable Boxes: Off or On. Windowed Mode (Off)Vertical Sync (Off)Bloom (Off)Conversation Depth Of Field (Off)Blob Shadows (On)Anti Aliasing (Off)Note. Whatever changes you make here will directly affect the settings that follow. You want Bloom, Shadows, Vertical Sync and Anti- Aliasing then you will have to adjust Texture quality and other graphics setting appropriately so you can still run SWTOR at best performance. This is a trade- off you will have to make. Drop Menus: Low, Med, High. Graphical Quality Preset (High)Texture Quality (High)Shader Complexity (High)Dynamic Light Complexity (Medium)Mesh Level of Detail (High)Graphic Settings Sliders. Texture Antistropy (Max)Clip Distance (Max)Shadow Quality (Minimum)Ground Clutter Density (Max)Speed Tree Distance (Middle)Recommended – Nvidia users can force tipple buffering and enable multi- tasking; it has helped several users. Setting in- game setting . Don’t force V- Sync through Nvidia or ATI Catalyst control panel; it will make performance worse in most cases. Advanced Tweak – Keep . If that doesn’t cut it, move to this advanced section of SWTOR Tweaks. Bioware highly recommends that you don’t make any changes to client. To make these tweaks work, you will have to set your client. You may have to make the changes again after the patch if it over- writes the changes made to your CFG. It is recommended that you keep a back- up of the original file before you add/alter tweaks. Where To Find SWTOR INI Settings File. You can find it in: C: \Users\%username%\appdata\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings\client. You should find it. For Windows Vista/ Windows 7. Click Start, type “%localappdata%\swtor\swtor\settings” (without quotes). You should be able to see it now (It’s a hidden file). Before you begin editing your CFG or INI settings file, do make a back up of client. You may not see all these variables but you can add them as explained later. To fix that, remove that tweak. Now let’s talk about the impact each setting would have on the performance or graphics of Star Wars: The Old Republic before explaining which settings you should really consider tweaking. Note that this isn’t the only INI setting file in SWTOR and we will explain others later in this guide. Go the next page for details on Advanced SWTOR Tweaks or check this page for General SWTOR Tweaks and sample config files. Screen Resolution and Refresh Rate. Higher it is, more prettier SWTOR will look, but that will have a negative impact on performance of the game and you may experience random slow- downs during combat and low FPS, making combat difficult for you. You can change the values in height, width, nativeheight, nativewidth to suit your needs. Experimenting with these variables will help you find values to run the game at optimum performance. Similarly, choose Refresh Rate that is supported by your LCD/Monitor. Bloom. It produces a glow of lightning around objects and gives more HDR feeling to the objects in the game but has a huge impact on performance and may make combat difficult with random slow- downs and stuttering. If your rig is good enough, you can enable it by replacing . We recommend you to rather have detailed textures and shaders than go for Bloom (Keep it disabled). Texture Quality. SWTOR currently doesn’t support High- Res textures and since going from medium to high doesn’t really affect performance, keep it medium. You can change the setting value in rage *0 – 2 ( 0 High, 1 Medium, 2 Low). Ideally higher the textures, more the resources required by the game, which ultimately affects performance. Use. Min. Spec. Shaders = true. Vertical. Sync. State = false. Keep the above two settings in your INI file as is, and you will see a significant performance increase. Dynamic. Lights. Limit. You can set the value from 0 – 8. If you are already experiencing slow- downs in crowded fights, better keep it low. Mesh. LODQuality. It determines the level of detail of objects as they move away from you. You can set it to 0 (Lowest), 1 (Medium) and 2 (Highest). Thanks for pointing out @Asmodean. You can set it low to counter the crowded combat situations (Flashpoints, Warzones) and make your gameplay smooth. If you like eye candy, try high and medium values. Depth. Of. Field. If you like eye- candy, enable this setting and if you would rather play the game smoothly, keep it disabled – True (enable) and False (disable). Depth of Field creates a blurring effect that blurs the foreground or background elements to simulate a lens focus. It’s plausible to have it enabled in games but it might not be the case for you in SWTOR. Plant. Density. You can set the value in range of 6. Yet to be tested fully). Higher the value, more dense will be the plants around you, more resources the game will require to render that effect. Keep the setting in mid- range to optimize the graphics and performance. Again, you can experiment based on your rig and find out a value that suits your needs. Plant Density over 1. Speed. Tree. Distance. Scale. This variable dictates how the trees appear in the background. Ideal range is 0 – 1. Simple principle, set higher value for eye- candy and lower value for performance. Anti. Aliasing. Level. If you are an ATI user, remove this variable from your INI settings file or it would crash your game at Splash Screen. If you are an Nvidia user, you can set the values in range *(2x, 4x, 8x, 1. Higher you go, more resources the game will demand from your system and since there are no high- res textures, you will be burdening your PC in most cases. We recommend you to keep it in mid- range or you can try different values and find the optimum anti- aliasing level which works best for your rig. Texture. Anisotropy. The ideal range is *(2x, 4x, 8x, 1. Higher you go, more system resources the game will demand and you will be essentially trading- off performance for graphics. Far. Clip. Scale. It shows you the object in the far distance. You can set the value in range *0. It is recommended that you keep the farclipscale at minimum because of the performance intensive nature of this setting. Recommended value . It is recommended that you keep the shadows disabled for a smooth gameplay unless you have a great PC but from my experience, gameplay is much smoother without shadows. You will definitely experience few slow- downs in crowded areas and in- doors with these two settings ON. Advanced Environment Lighting. Another eye candy tweak which you should rather keep disabled. If you have high- end PC, you may want to try adding these two tweaks in your client. How To Create Your CFGEasy, you can use this CFG maker, make the tweaks per your needs, and click Create CFG button; it will output a ready- made CFG that you can use for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The tool can be found HERE. General SWTOR Tweaks. How To Fix Indoor Low FPSIf going inside caves and other indoor locations makes the game unplayable for you, you may want to open the graphics settings and set the graphics quality preset to high. Apply the settings and play the game. Quit the game, start and then go to graphics settings again, and then set the graphics quality preset to low. It’s a game bug that keeps the settings to high even though you have set it low hence setting them to high and then following up with low settings brings them back to where you want them to be. Recommended Tweaks For Better Graphics. Anti. Aliasing. Level = 4. Far. Clip. Scale = 3. Draw Distance)enableadvenvirolighting = true. Debug. Adv. Enviro. Lighting = true. SWTOR Tweak – How To Decrease Draw Distance If you can’t tweak . You can also try 0. These are community suggested values that should work well and give you a performance boost. Step 5. Save your client. If you want to increase the draw- distance try 0. Note. You can further tweak graphics.
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