Local group policy has this here in Windows 10:
Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Data Collection and Preview Builds
We may disable “Allow Telemetry” and enable “Do not show feedback notifications” for excellent effect.
Domain group policy will only have the above, if it has been upgraded (or installed) with the appropriate very recent version of Group Policy templates.
Previous favorites now come bundled with very unwanted adware. This one comes bundled with just the Google Toolbar, it works very well:
New version includes Windows 8/2012 and 10/2016.
Not sure quite what this is yet, but the description is intriguing:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-
These steps can improve Windows performance a whole lot. It works because a vast array of different applications and services in Windows utilize VSS on their backends. All of the below, except for one server-only step sometimes needed, is encapsulated in PowerShell script (3.0 and up) OVSS.ps1 , part of the windows-tools project.
To do the VSS optimization interactively, start an administrative CMD, and then…
Step 1:
vssadmin Delete Shadows /All
If there are orphan shadows, you will be asked whether you want to delete them. If there are and you delete them, you will see immediate performance benefit. Reportedly, Windows autodeletes them only after there are 64 per volume. We prefer to see zero! These build up as a result of bad shutdowns, drive and drive controller issues, and insufficient RAID resources to serve demands.
Step 2:
We now improve any existing preassociation of disk space for VSS. On some machines, this will increase performance very impressively, immediately. In general it keeps them smooth and stable and prevents hesitations. This does not reserve or take up the space, it just “associates” it, makes it ready for use, so that whenever Windows wants to do any of the bajillions of things it does with VSS, things ranging from tiny to enormous, it can skip that step.
It is worthwhile to know that C: on all workstation installs and many server installs, has a minimal preassociation already set up. And we should check to see if it has been done. So the first step is to check it. Do the below:
vssadmin list shadowstorage
If it gives you something like this:
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\)\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\)\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 100 MB (20%)
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-501f00000000}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{84214e3c-0000-0000-0000-501f00000000}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 373 GB (20%)
where “Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: “ for each volume is set to 20%, the rest has been done, you are fully optimized. Otherwise, if this is a desktop OS, we resize the existing association for each volume. For volumes without letters, and to pull a list of all VSS-ready volumes, see the note towards the end of this document.
So for the C drive, do the below in administrative CMD:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=20%
Do repeat for any other active hard drive partitions, D:, E:, et cetera. Don’t worry if you get an error, the next step covers it.
Step 3:
It may well throw an error, saying there is no such association. If this is a workstation OS, vssadmin lacks two commands which we need for any further steps, so in that case we are done. But on any Windows Server OS from 2008R2, if the error was thrown, we do an Add:
vssadmin Add ShadowStorage /For=E: /On=E: /MaxSize=20%
Step 4:
And finally (server only), one more thing which can help if, for instance, C: is almost full but E: has plenty of space:
vssadmin Delete ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: vssadmin Add ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=E: /MaxSize=20%
This maximizes overall performance, and also prevents possible backup failures and other issues due to insufficient disk space on C:.
Note:
On some machines, the volumes do not have letters. For these you will need to use the volume GUID path. In vssadmin list shadowstorage, they look like this:
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (\\?\Volume{99ac05c7-c06b-11e0-b883-806e6f6e6963}\)\\?\Volume{99a
c05c7-c06b-11e0-b883-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (\\?\Volume{99ac05c7-c06b-11e0-b883-806e6f6e6963}
\)\\?\Volume{99ac05c7-c06b-11e0-b883-806e6f6e6963}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 32 MB (32%)
For such a situation, substitute \\?\Volume{99ac05c8-c06b-11e0-b883-806e6f6e6963} (the whole long string) for C: in the above command lines.
PowerShell will give GUI paths for all volumes thusly:
GWMI -namespace root\cimv2 -class win32_volume
References are here:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788050.aspx
https://www.storagecraft.com/support/kb/article/289
http://backupchain.com/i/how-to-delete-all-vss-shadows-and-orphaned-shadows
RUNALL.CMD is the best way to run our very own windows-tools, a Windows cleanup, optimization, and speedup toolset, on an Internet-connected Windows PC. It requires Powershell 3.0 or newer, which comes with Windows 8 or newer, and can be installed into Windows 7 using the WMF. There is just one gotcha: Offline Files compatibility of all folders shared from the PC, “share caching”, is turned off, for one of several significant hikes in performance and overall reliability. If you need Offline Files, you’ll want RUNMOST.CMD, which does it all except this one item.
with the right router/firewall. I’ve had at least three different Netgears at home over years, all mid- or mid-high range in their consumer range at purchase. Every time, I tested using OEM up-to-date firmware, and tested with DD-WRT, many tweaks on both. DD-WRT gave a little improvement. On a little divine inspiration, I just did this:
Suddenly WWW and Roku respond much faster, much less latency and jitter and other delay, and most unexpectedly, Internet download speed is much, much faster, even though the wifi is still running through the Netgear. And after a bit of performance tweaking, pings are lower, from 28ms down to 22 wired and 24 wireless.
Haven’t tried Squid proxying yet, or IPv6, but will be!
These items help a lot in any application, including desktop, web server, or terminal server. The end of this post has two large compilations of these settings, one for wired (“non-lossy”) networking, one for wireless (“lossy”).
On the vast majority of Linux distributions, one can just add these changes to /etc/sysctl.conf, and then run sysctl -p to apply them without reboot. However, recent additions to standards have enabled us to place custom settings in our own configuration files, so that we don’t take /etc/sysctl.conf out of distro control.
On recent Debian and Ubuntu, we may best put them in /etc/sysctl.d/60-custom.conf (or replace the word “custom” to your liking), and then run sysctl --system to load both /etc/sysctl.conf and everything under /etc/sysctl.d.
On some other recent distros, it’s /etc/sysctl.d/custom.conf (the word “custom” is still arbitrary), and then run systemctl restart systemd-sysctl.
You can check your results with sysctl -A.
The first selection is for wired networking performance:
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1 net.ipv4.tcp_workaround_signed_windows=1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_fack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency=1 net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc=0 net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing=1 net.ipv4.tcp_frto=2 net.ipv4.tcp_frto_response=2 net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=illinois
A bit different first group for networking performance, is recommendable for anything involving wireless, i.e., “lossy” networks:
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1 net.ipv4.tcp_workaround_signed_windows=1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_fack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency=1 net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc=0 net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing=1 net.ipv4.tcp_frto=2 net.ipv4.tcp_frto_response=2 net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = hybla net.ipv4.tcp_allowed_congestion_control = hybla cubic
And then some general networking performance items:
net.core.rmem_default = 31457280 net.core.rmem_max = 12582912 net.core.wmem_default = 31457280 net.core.wmem_max = 12582912 net.core.somaxconn = 4096 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 65536 net.core.optmem_max = 25165824 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.udp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.route.flush=1
And some for network security enhancement:
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 2000 65535 net.ipv4.tcp_rfc1337 = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 300 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 5 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 15
And now a few to keep virtual memory usage under good control:
vm.swappiness=20 vm.dirty_ratio = 60 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 2
And one to increase the maximum number of open and watched files, very helpful indeed for servers, file synchronization of all sorts, and many other functions:
fs.file-max = 2097152 fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288
The above was compiled from these two excellent articles:
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2227856/opensource-subnet/best-networking-tweaks-for-linux.html
https://easyengine.io/tutorials/linux/sysctl-conf/
and other sources. Here is the whole set for wired (non-lossy) networking:
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1 net.ipv4.tcp_workaround_signed_windows=1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_fack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency=1 net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc=0 net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing=1 net.ipv4.tcp_frto=2 net.ipv4.tcp_frto_response=2 net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=illinois pre. net.core.rmem_default = 31457280 net.core.rmem_max = 12582912 net.core.wmem_default = 31457280 net.core.wmem_max = 12582912 net.core.somaxconn = 4096 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 65536 net.core.optmem_max = 25165824 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.udp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.route.flush=1 vm.swappiness=20 vm.dirty_ratio = 60 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 2 fs.file-max = 2097152 fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288
and another full set for wireless / lossy networking:
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1 net.ipv4.tcp_workaround_signed_windows=1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_fack=1 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency=1 net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc=0 net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing=1 net.ipv4.tcp_frto=2 net.ipv4.tcp_frto_response=2 net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = hybla net.ipv4.tcp_allowed_congestion_control = hybla cubic pre. net.core.rmem_default = 31457280 net.core.rmem_max = 12582912 net.core.wmem_default = 31457280 net.core.wmem_max = 12582912 net.core.somaxconn = 4096 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 65536 net.core.optmem_max = 25165824 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.udp_mem = 8388608 8388608 8388608 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem = 8192 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem = 8192 65536 16777216 net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.route.flush=1 vm.swappiness=20 vm.dirty_ratio = 60 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 2 fs.file-max = 2097152 fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288
A registry entry:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v SeparateProcess /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
which can be set up in group policy, under Computer Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry.
This will make any Windows 10 machine run much faster, at the cost of the fancy Cortana query and search component.