How to speedup your Windows 7 netbook

If you've read my previous post on "How to get around the netbook trap", you would know that there are plenty of software applications which can be successfully run on a low power netbook. However as the number of applications on your netbook grows, the performance (especially speed) of your computer will decrease exponentially. This is mostly due to cumbersome processes running in the background. Even though we don't pay much attention to these background processes on a normal laptop or desktop, when it comes to netbooks it is critical that we disable any background process which is not required for the day-to-day stuff you would do on it. If you use your netbook for skype or facebook (which I'm sure you do), you would notice that your calls drop all the time or that your video is patchy or that your photo uploads fail. This happens partly due to slow internet connection speeds and partly due to not enough resources being available to complete the process.

What is the solution? Do a bit of housekeeping on your netbook.
Here's how you do it.

Right click on the task bar of your netbook and click on "Start task manager"

In the Task manager window, select the "Services" tab which will list out all the services currently running

Click on the "Services..." button at the bottom to open up the service manager

Browse through the list of services and see whether there are any that you can identify from the name. The ones you would need to pay attention to would be the services which start up automatically. These would indicate "Automatic" for startup on boot or "Automatic (Delayed Start)" for startup after bootup. One of the services which would slow your netbook down would be the SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) service which starts up the SQL express database server. This might get installed with some of the software applications you might have installed. The other resource heavy process would be the Microsoft .NET Framework. This is a platform which allows .NET applications to run. You will need to be cautious when disabling this as it would mean that some applications might not run. However you can always turn it on manually when required. This will give you better control of you netbook. There might be other processes which are redundant. Just have a browse and see what you can live without. You can always turn them back on if needed.

To disable a process, right click on the process you want to disable and select "Properties"

Select "Disabled" from the "Startup type:" drop down. Click on the "Stop" button to stop the service running on your netbook. Since you have disabled the service it will not run automatically the next time you boot up your netbook.

Click "OK" to continue. The process would now be shown as disabled

Now that you have stopped all the unnecessary background services, your netbook should become faster. However it is a good idea to keep an eye on the resource usage to see if any rogue processes are eating up your resources. You can add a resource monitor to your desktop to do this.

Here's how to do it

Right click on the desktop and select "Gadgets"

Double click on the "CPU Meter" gadget. This will add the resource monitor to your desktop.

Now you will be able to see what is going on with your CPU and Memory usage at any given time.

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