The system properties panel is one of the most important parts of Windows, always present since the first editions. Even if that of the system properties is one of the main parts of the Windows system and also one of the most complex and delicate, which one should understand and know in order to be truly master of one's own computer.
Most of the advanced settings in System Properties are certainly not things that you need to change often and, in most cases, you should probably leave the default ones, but it is very useful to understand them and know what you can do from that control panel.
To open the advanced system settings in Windows 8 just press the right mouse button on the Windows flag in the lower left.
If you are using Windows 7 you must first go to the Control Panel and search for System or you can right-click on Computer and then choose the properties.
Although it may seem strange, the window that opens is almost purely informative about the computer you are using.
In another article we saw how to change computer information: manufacturer, model, logo ....
However, you need to click on advanced settings to enter the real property panel.
Among the various tabs, that of the Advanced is the most interesting, the one in which you can change the configuration of the computer by making important changes.
The tab is divided into four sections: performance, user profiles, startup and recovery and environment variables.
The average user wouldn't really need to change anything here, except in some very common circumstances.
Then click on Settings under the Performance item to decide which visual effects to enable and which to disable.
Visual effects are also nice to look at, but they consume a lot of memory and make the computer slower.
You can then choose to set them for the best performance or follow this guide on how to have super fast Windows 7 by changing unnecessary options.
For example, I always disable annoying animation to minimize windows.
The performance tab is divided into three tabs including, again, the very important Advanced tab .
From here you can change the size of the paging file, the amount of disk space to devote to virtual memory.
On older and less powerful computers it is (rather was) useful to change this quantity or to disable it completely as explained in the guide on setting up the paging file or virtual memory of Windows.
With modern PCs that use 4 GB of RAM or more, the paging file loses importance and can be left as it is.
Furthermore, Windows 7 and 8.1 use the paging file only when really necessary and are much smarter than XP in this regard.
There tells us that you can disable the paging file generally on computers with a lot of RAM, but it is not recommended because some programs may need it and would crash if they do not find it.
For the other option regarding how to allocate processor resources, you must leave it on Programs and choose to obtain better performance for the services only if the computer is a server.
In the third tab we have the execution protection of the programs that you don't understand what it means.
This protection, called Data Execution Prevention (DEP), is available in 64-bit versions of Windows and prevents virus applications from exploiting parts of memory for their malicious purpose.
Of course, it should never be disabled (you can only disable it using tweaking programs) and you can leave protection active only for essential Windows programs and services.
If you want to check which processes are protected by this function, you can open the task manager (task management), go to "details", click on the column heading with the right button, press on Select column and add the one of the Program execution protection .
Returning to the Advanced system settings, on the Advanced tab, after the performance you can click on User Profile Settings .
The User profiles function is not very useful for home use of the computer, it is especially useful for creating common profiles in a Windows domain.
The Startup and Recovery settings have two useful features for a dual-boot computer, to choose the default operating system and change the length of time the choice menu is displayed.
You can also choose whether to restart Windows automatically after a blue screen crash and whether to write the cause information to a memory dump file. Disabling automatic restart is useful for taking the time to write down the error message.
Environment variables are common settings for applications, to quickly launch specific programs from the Run box.
We have seen in another article how to change the TEMP and TMP environment variables on Windows to move temporary files, explaining broadly what they are and how to use them.
Going back to the system settings window, going beyond the Advanced tab we have:
- Security, where there is the system restore already explained in another guide.
Keep in mind that on Windows 8.1 there are other options to restore or reinitialize Windows 8.
- The Remote Connection tab is very simple and only allows you to choose whether or not to enable Remote Assistance and the remote desktop (only in Windows Professional).
If you do not use these features, they must be disabled.
While useful, it is much easier to use programs like Teamviewer or Chrome remote desktop for the remote desktop.
- Changing PC Name can be a nice but useless thing, unless you have an internal computer network.
Computer Name and Workgroup are important for creating a LAN of computers at home or office and for sharing files and printers.
The description of the computer is completely useless while the network ID should be put only in case of Windows domain.
- Hardware is finally a card with two important buttons: one to access device management, the other to decide how to install future driver updates downloaded from Windows Update, whether with automatic or manual procedure.
READ ALSO: "Computer Management" administration tools in Windows
