How to speed up my desktops?

Hi guys,
I'm new here so don't get mad at me if this has been answered before. I have a couple of desktops at work and was thinking of upgrading to faster specs. I mentioned this to a friend who's into computers and he told me that the computers I had should be more than fast enough for what I'm using them. He said I should look into optimizing their performance settings. These were the four main things he mentioned:
-drive indexing
-page file
-environmental variables
-startup
Any ideas how I would go about doing that? Any information would be greatly appreciated. I'd even be willing to pay somebody if they could walk me through it step by step. Just PM me if your interested.

It would help if you gave a general idea of what sort of computers you have and what they typically run. What speed issues are a problem? Is startup really a problem? Do employees start up their PC at the beginning of the day and that's it?

There is a guide in the forum for speeding up Windows.

My impression of the items you listed is that they will not help very much. In fact indexing is something you don't usually want. Clearing out clutter, regular defragging, removing malware will all help.

From the hardware specs, it may be possible to spend small amounts of money and get significant improvements. Hard drives, memory.

Windows will slow down over time. When was the last time a fresh install has been done on these machines? What operating system is being used? How much memory is installed? Do you run malware scans? Just because you have an antivirus program and run it doesn't mean you are infection free. You should download and run Malwarebytes, update it and run a quick scan on all your machines. Ccleaner should also be downloaded and ran and clean out all the old temporary internet files and system files, which will speed up your systems tremendously. Also stopping any unnecessary bootup programs will help. Without knowing system specs and other things, its hard to tell what to tell you to do to get your speed back.

re:

Sorry about the lack of info. All of the computers run windows 7. They all have a processor speed of 2.8ghz or more. One of the computer is a quadcore (slow from day one) and the others are single core processors. Startup isn't the main issue, it's just regulare us that's slow. We mostly do basic photo editing and are upolding and downloading small amounts of data.
I already run ccleaner weekly/bi-weekly and spyhunter. Anything else I should share?

what do you mean by "fresh install"? Are you referring to windows installation? If so, they range between 2 and 6 months ago.

The basics in the guide I referred to earlier are the core. Personally I would not bother with Soluto. If you choose to run it and it is of no benefit, uninstall! Defragging is a definite help - there are a number listed in the freeware list, Maintenance section.

The graphic editing you mentioned is not a particularly difficult task. What areas of working are slow? Where is time wasted? Are you waiting for programs to load? Tasks to run? Menus slow? Do you need to automate tasks more?

By the way, thanks for the link to the guide! I checked it out and did most of what was listed (it's a guide for XP so I wasn't able to figure out everything since the directions aren't the same as windows 7). The main tasks that are going slow are like I mentioned before; basic photo editing (using irfanview), uploading listings to ebay (we have a great internet connection, about 18mb download and 3 or 4 mb upload), and printing labels using java.
The steps in the guide definitely helped, but it's still not going as fast as I'd hoped for, it may have even been faster when I first purchased it. Any other suggestions?

mobobs said:

By the way, thanks for the link to the guide! I checked it out and did most of what was listed (it's a guide for XP so I wasn't able to figure out everything since the directions aren't the same as windows 7).....

Click to expand...

I'll get to the apps later, but in the guide there is a section for Windows 7!

IrfanView is about the lightest weight editor you can find. I use it as my default for displaying images as it starts instantly. What sort of problems could you possibly have with that regarding speed? It has limited editing capability so you cannot be doing anything complex. I could understand issues with Photoshop with large images, multiple layers and complex effects. What sort of editing are you doing on each image or batch?

Your uploading, surely that's limited by the connection not your PC. If the bandwidth is apparently to your satisfaction, where is the bottleneck there? Organizing the upload?

I can see Java being a problem. I avoid it like the plague. I've several apps that I saved pre- their Java versions and those are way quicker than the later Java versions. Sometimes apps get too flexible and top-heavy for their own good. Is the issue there that the app runs slow? No alternatives? Is printing speed the limiting factor?

My PC is a 1.8GHz single core, 7 years old and I've never had problems with speed. I've probably processed 5 million images in the life of this PC, if not twice that number. I automate tasks as much as possible. In IrfanView you have limited batch processing if that is applicable.

Re:

I'll check the guide again, I guess I must have overlooked that section... thanks for pointing it out.As I mentioned, I don't think it's the internet speed since it's the fasted comcast offers. When I'm working on multiple windows at once, the different open windows sometimes stall and I have to wait a bit before I can click anything. Since I'm printing shipping labels via Paypal, I think I'm stuck using Java. Are you aware of any other way of printing them?

Do you have adequate RAM? With Win7 you can add RAM easily without buying RAM cards. You can use Ready boost capable USB drives, $8 for 4GB at Newegg. If it does not help very much, you can always use as a normal USB flash drive. Try one and see. There are guides on the Net for setting up Ready boost RAM. I've read mixed reviews about the effectiveness.

I usually have at least 6 windowed apps open when I'm editing graphics. I've only 1GB of RAM with XP and I don't have waiting issues. Are you running any apps that are CPU hogs? There are a few around that insist on using 100% of the CPU at the expense of others. Those typically cause the other windows to stall for a while.

Label printing you may be stuck with if it's Java and related to PayPal. Where is the hold-up there? Is it simply downloading the information to print? You can't go faster than your printer.

I can't offer advice on the best use of multicore processors of which you have at least one.

Edit: There is one aspect of IrfanView and similar editors that is very tedious and can be time-consuming - the making of thumbnails. If you have a large folder, it's difficult to browse because the thumbnails have to be made as you go through.

There are two types of thumbnail processes that I call "live" and "database". Irfanview is live only so you have to wait for the thumbnails to be made. There are editors that make the thumbnails and keep them in a database for future use. Open the folder the next day and the thumbnails are there. Once you have made them you can quickly browse. I use payware ThumbsPlus but there are some freeware like FastStone Viewer that can keep a thumbnail database.

I have not used FastStone very much but ThumbsPlus and similar can be very efficient. For example, I choose not to make thumbnails automatically. Any new files being dropped in my working folders have no thumbnails. I can choose to make them when I want or if I make an edit, the thumbnail is automatically made. I can instantly see which images I've edited because they have thumbnails. I won't go into all the other benefits because those depend on what you are doing.