Summary: Speeding up Windows 7

To beef up the performance of my laptop, I changed the settings on Windows 7. The guides online are generally long-winded, so I made a summary of the things you can do.

Run:
1) services.msc Set some 10~ useless services from the default 'Automatic' to 'Manual'.
2) msconfig.exe Disable unwanted programs from starting on boot up.
3) powercfg.cpl Enable the 'High performance' power option.
4) sysdm.cpl Under 'Advanced', 'Performance', 'Settings'... disable all visual settings except the last 4.
5) mmsys.cpl Disable Windows sound effects by choosing the 'No Sound' theme.
6) appwiz.cpl Under 'Turn Windows features on/off', disable unwanted features.
7) control color Disable Windows Aero.
8) wuapp.exe Update Windows.
9) dfrgui.exe Defragment your hard disk.

Lastly, there are some batch commands to optimize your registry that you can download, go look for them.

Update: I've summarized the useful registry changes from known tweaks. To be honest, only a few make a perceivable difference to how fast your W7 performs, so I only specified those below. Anyway, copy the code in a .txt document, and rename it to anything with a .reg extension, and run it.

;COPY CODE BELOW HERE
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoResolveSearch"=dword:00000001
"NoResolveTrack"=dword:00000001
"ClearRecentDocsOnExit"=dword:00000001
"NoRecentDocsHistory"=hex:01,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"MenuShowDelay"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="5000"

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer]
;STOP COPYING CODE ABOVE HERE