Windows 7 has a lot of great built-in tools, but they are not always very easy to use. For example, you can optimize system for better security and faster performance via the registry, but who is going to ever do that manually?
That’s where nice liked tweaker/optimizer programs come in handy. They give you easy access to common settings, optimization, and information about your system all in one place.
One of my favorite little apps is EnhanceMySe7en. They have a free version and a PRO version, but I have always used the free one without really finding a need for paying. You can see a list of features of the free and PRO here:
http://www.seriousbit.com/tweak_windows_7/comparison_table.htm
The program is broken down by sections and then sub-sections, which makes it really easy to get to a particular setting or option quickly. You have Tools, Most Used Tweaks, System, Optimizations and Customizations.
Under Tools, you can quickly get System Info, which gives you quite a bit of into about Windows, the Processor and memory. You can click on Processes, which can help you identify unrecognized process running on your computer.
What’s nice about this program is that it gives you a description of what each process does and where it comes from. Very helpful if you just want to learn about the esoteric processes running on your system.
Flip over to Disk Cleaner or Registry Cleaner and you got yourself a CCleaner basically built-in. You can clean out temp folders, delete invalid paths and registry entries and lots more.
What’s nice about Disk Cleaner is that it also gives you a chart of what’s taking up space on your hard drive, kind of like TreeSize, but again built right in. And if you click on Defragmenter, you can defragment not only the hard drive, but the registry too.
Under Most Used Tweaks, you can quickly tweak performance, security and network settings.
You can disable a lot of access using the security tab like the Control Panel, Command Prompt, Task Manager and lots more. Under Optimizations, you have a ton more options for optimizing memory, startup/shutdown speed, hard drives, etc.
Some of the stuff can be quite technical like for Startup/Shutdown, you can disable CD-ROM autorun, disable last Know Good Config, disable logging of system crashes, etc. Be careful here because some of these options really come in handy when you need to restore you system.
Finally, under Customizations, you can customize the Start Menu, the Desktop, the Taskbar, Media Player and Internet Explorer.
Overall, this program has a ton of features, options and settings. You can really do a lot with it! Enjoy!