8 easy ways to free up RAM and get a faster PC

Modern PCs need plenty of RAM to deliver decent performance, especially if they're running 32-bit Windows Vista. A system with 2GB of RAM can easily run short if it's configured poorly, for instance. So you might install 4GB of RAM, only to discover the PC can only access about 3GB. Where's the memory gone, and are there any ways in which you can get some of it back? Installing 64-bit Windows Vista can make a real difference if your hardware is also up to the task (see the Microsoft help and support page), but if that's too drastic a step then there are other tweaks that can help. Here's what you need to know.

1. Control Startup programs

The path to memory mastery starts by taking greater control over the programs you're running.

Browse the Start > All Programs menu and uninstall any software you don't use, then launch MSCONFIG.EXE and click the Startup tab to see what's configured to run when Windows starts. If you see something you no longer need, then uninstall the program or change its settings so it doesn't load automatically when you log on.

Application add-ons for browsers, Microsoft Office and so on can also consume surprising amounts of RAM. Check your current browser add-ons (Tools > Manage Add-ons in IE, Tools > Add-ons in Firefox) and disable (or ideally uninstall) any that you don't use any more.

2. Disable unwanted services

To speed up Windows some people recommend you disable unnecessary Windows Services, but in most cases this doesn't offer significant gains. The exception is Windows Defender, which consumes a chunky 20MB (or more if you leave it running in the background). If you have another antivirus or antispyware tool then turn Defender off (in Vista, launch Windows Defender, click Tools > Options, scroll down and clear 'Use Windows Defender') and recover the RAM for yourself.

If you're determined to try disabling other services, then click Start, launch Services.msc and scroll down the list to see what's available. On our test Windows Vista Ultimate Edition PC we could safely disable the following by double-clicking and setting its Startup type to Disabled.

• Apple Mobile Device: Comes with iTunes, unnecessary if you don't actually have an Apple device to connect.

• Distributed Link Tracking Client: Maintains links between files across a network domain, not a feature that we use.

• Nero BackItUp Scheduler 3: Provided with Nero Burning ROM, but unnecessary if you don't use the back-up tool.

• Offline Files: Useful if you synchronise files between computers, but we don't.

• Tablet PC Input Service: This isn't a tablet PC.

This recovered perhaps 10MB of RAM. Prune your services more severely and you can achieve more, but you're also risking problems if you remove something that you actually need. If you're willing to take the risk, then visitBlack Viper for detailed guidance.

3. Reduce hardware requirements

If your PC has 4GB of memory you'll probably find you can only access 3 to 3.5GB of that, because your BIOS has allocated the rest of the address space to your video adapter, network card and so on.

To see what's allocated to hardware on your PC, launch Device Manager (click Start and enter devmgmt.msc), click View > Resources by type and expand the Memory section. The real resource hog will probably be your video adapter. If you've a high-end 512MB graphics card, say, then that's going to grab 512MB (and more, actually) of your address space. This probably won't matter if you've 2GB of RAM as there's no memory there to be blocked, but if you've 4GB then it'll prevent you using it all.

You can't make this problem go away entirely, but there are ways to reduce its impact. Have you installed an expansion card you no longer need, for instance? Remove it. If you don't make use of a high-end video card then consider a downgrade to one with less RAM (128MB is enough to run Vista). And explore your BIOS setup program to turn off features you don't need. There's generally a menu called something like 'Onboard Device Configuration' or 'Integrated Peripherals' where you can disable onboard graphics, integrated sound, unused network adapters or IDE channels and so on. Use this to turn off surplus hardware, your BIOS won't allocate it any resources, and more of your 4GB RAM will be left for you.

4. Turn features off

Don't enable Windows functionality unless you actually need it - there's almost always a performance penalty.

To speed up Windows Vista, for instance, turn off the Aero interface if you can do without it (right-click the desktop, select Personalise > Theme and choose Windows Classic). Your desktop won't look nearly as pretty, but as compensation you'll save close to 40MB of RAM.

And is it really important to see the Windows Vista network icon flash as data is transferred? If not, right-click the icon, select Turn Off Activity Animation and save 1 to 5MB of RAM.

5. Run Explorer efficiently

Windows Explorer can run each Explorer window in a separate process, so if one window crashes then it won't bring down the others. Sounds reasonable, but in our test it uses at least an extra 10MB of RAM for every Explorer window you have open. If Windows keeps crashing then it's better to find why, turn this feature off and reclaim the wasted memory. Click Tools > Folder Options > View, scroll down and make sure 'Launch folder windows in a separate process' is not checked and click OK.

6. Minimise applications

If you're running an application then it'll inevitably consume RAM, but there's a way to reduce the amount: minimise it. If the app isn't doing any work (it's just a browser with several tabs open, say) then when it's minimised Windows will reclaim some of its memory to give to other applications. So it's always preferable to minimise inactive programs rather than just leaving their windows open on your desktop.

7. Avoid dubious tweaks

Don't waste your time on pointless memory-related tips or programs that either don't work or only make things worse.

Some sites recommend an 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' Registry tweak that supposedly tells Windows to unload DLLs as soon as the program using them closes. But it doesn't work in XP or Vista. Others claim that setting a Windows XP Registry key can enable the Superfetch, the Windows Vista caching system, in Windows XP. It's a myth. And the web is crammed with RAM 'optimisers' that make big promises, but they can't fix memory leaks and don't 'free up' RAM (in fact they'll only consume it). Don't be fooled. SeeTweakHound for more 'Bad Tweaks'.

8. Monitor your PC

Once you've cleaned up your PC, reboot and take a closer look at what's using your RAM right now.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager, select the Processes tab, click View > Select Columns and make sure 'Memory (Private Working Set)' is checked). Click OK, select the 'Show processes from all users' button, then click the 'Memory (Private Working Set)' column header.

You'll now see every process on your system, in the order in which they're using memory. Browse down the list - are you running any background programs that you really don't need? Turn them off if so. If you discover some memory hogs you don't recognise, then enter their process names at Google to find out more.

If you really want to drill down into your PC's activities, then there are two free Sysinternals tools that will prove invaluable. Autoruns will show you everything that loads when your Windows starts up, while Process Explorerdisplays running programs in great detail and shows you the resources they're using. Go download them, they're some of the best PC troubleshooting tools around.

make Windows Vista boot faster

We recently asked visitors to the Windows Vista magazine websitehow long it took for their PCs to start. The results varied from less than a minute to over ten!

There are plenty of factors that could make your PC startup grind to a halt, so there are plenty of tweaks to try to get your PC starting up in a flash. It's all very well listing these tweaks, but do they work?

We have a PC at home packed with so much stuff that it takes an age to load Windows Vista, so we decided to test the tweaks to find out how much time we could save.

First things first - Start-up slow-down

Original startup time - 6:26.54

We knew that our PC was slow to start, but when we timed it and saw that it took nearly six and a half minutes from the moment we pressed the on button to when the computer had loaded all the start-up programs and was actually usable, we knew that something needed to be done.

Our first port of call was to check out the Startup folder by going to Start > All Programs > Startup. The Startup folder can be a really useful feature of Windows Vista because you can place shortcuts to your favourite programs in there and they will load up when Windows Vista starts.

CUT IT OUT: You can speed up the boot time by removing items from your Startup folder

The problem is, if there are too many programs in there, it will slow down your computer's startup as your computer loads them all. Deleting the shortcuts from this folder (don't worry, it won't delete the actual programs) will certainly help speed things up. Not all programs that load themselves when your computer starts appear in the Startup folder, however.

Take a look at the Notification area of your Taskbar, which is on the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop next to the clock, to see if there are a lot of icons there. Most of these icons are for programs that run in background, and with all of them starting up when you turn on your computer, it will definitely slow it down.

Many of these programs can be safely prevented from starting up automatically, so you only load them as and when you need to. Most of the time you can right-click the icon and either open the program or go straight to the program's options or preferences, and from there clear a box that says something like 'Run this program when Windows starts'.

If there are any programs that you don't need any more at all, go ahead and uninstall them to get an extra speed boost.

Result: After deleting four shortcuts from the Startup folder and cutting down the Notification icons from a massive 19 down to seven, we saw a huge improvement in the computer's start-up speed.

New startup time - 3:47.31

Going in deeper - Use Msconfig to disable more programs at startup

Not all programs give the option to prevent them from automatically starting up. To disable more stubborn programs, we went in to the powerful Msconfig utility. Before using this you should create a Restore point so you can revert your PC back to its former settings should anything go wrong.

Click Start and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and you'll see a list of programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program's path (where it's kept on your hard drive). Using all this information you can tell whether these programs are essential to making your PC run properly.

MS CONFIG: Click the Startup tab and then in the Startup Item column clear the boxes of the programs you wish to prevent from loading on startup

As a general rule, don't disable any programs from Microsoft because these are usually vital for Windows Vista. Any drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware should be left alone as well. Once you've disabled the programs you want, exit Msconfig and restart your PC.

If there are any problems or error messages, make a note and go back into Msconfig and check the boxes of the problem programs. You can also stop some services running on startup. Only stop them if you're sure that you don't need them. Again, no Microsoft services should be turned off.

If there are any services you want to stop, it's a good idea to search for the service on the internet to make sure it's okay to do so. Once again, if there are any problems, open Msconfig again and restart the services.

Result: We found a number of programs that didn't need to load on startup, so we unchecked them. We also found a couple of services that ran on startup that were used by old programs we had long ago uninstalled, so we safely stopped them.

New startup time - 2:36.81

Dual operating systems - Shave seconds off dual-boot options

If you have more than one operating system installed on your PC – for example, you may have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta installed – your computer displays a menu asking you which operating system you want to load. If you don't select an operating system within 30 seconds, it automatically loads your default operating system.

You can cut the amount of time your computer waits for your input before loading Windows Vista by going back to Msconfig and selecting the Boot tab. Where it says Timeout, change the number to a lower setting, but give yourself enough time to actually make your choice. If you only have Windows Vista installed on your machine, you don't need to complete this step.

New startup time - 2:35.18

Fix notifications

Windows Vista is great at letting you know if there's a problem with your computer. Your antivirus program should also alert you to potential problems, such as when a virus has been found or if you haven't downloaded and installed the latest update for the software.

These notifications usually pop up from the notification area when you boot into Windows Vista, and on a computer that's already struggling, the appearance of such messages could slow down the start-up time even further. You can save a few seconds by making sure that you always read all the notifications and subsequently follow their recommendations to fix the problems.

Not only will this stop the notification from popping up on your screen again, but it will probably also help your computer in other ways.

New startup - 2:34.05

install Windows 7 from a USB key

Microsoft's TechNet magazine has posted instructions on installing Windows 7 from a USB key - which will be very handy for anyone installing Windows 7 on a netbook, in particular.

Installing Windows 7 from a USB key will also be faster than installing it from DVD.

Dennis Chung, IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft, posted a video explaining the process.

Here, according to TechNet, is what you need to do:

1. You should already have DiskPart installed on your Windows machine - you'll use this to prepare the USB drive. If this free disk partitioning app isn't already already installed, you can download DiskPart from Microsoft.

2. Launch DiskPart by typing diskpart into the Start search box.

3. Now run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.

4. Next, run select disk 1 where the "1" is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive.

5. Now run clean.

6. Once that's done, run create partition primary.

7. Now you can make the partition active by entering active.

8. Next, set up the file system as Fat32 by running format fs=fat32 quick.

9. Enter the assign command to give the USB drive a drive letter - this will make it easier to access from Windows Explorer.

10. Drag and drop the contents of your Windows 7 installation DVD onto the USB drive to copy the files across.

11. Stick the USB key drive into the machine you want to install Windows 7 onto and boot the system from the drive. The Windows 7 installation will now begin.