Windows 8.1 Tips

SSD fallacies

One thing I keep seeing come up on the great googlesphere is that there is a bug with 8.1 that defrags your SSD instead of running TRIM. This is simply not true. On an upgrade from 7 to 8 or 8 to 8.1 using an SSD as the boot disk you may run into various issues. However, improperly detected SSDs being defragged is not one of them. Windows will eventually run WEI and discover any SSDs and set TRIM and optimization properly. A clean install has no problem differentiating between HDD and SSD.

 Don't move your paging file to another volume unless it's another SSD. Since the paging file can affect system performance you don't want it on a slower drive than your SSD. DO NOT disable the paging file entirely! If you've read a tip somewhere that having more than 8GB RAM merits disabling your paging file, then it is a wooden nickel (i.e., a bad tip!). Today's SSDs along with Windows 7, 8 and particularly 8.1 are capable of sustained I/O for years before beginning to degrade. Some studies suggest hundreds of thousands of heavy, sustained reads and writes over the course of 5 years before any perceptible degradation in performance.

RAM/Memory and paging file

Take this one with a grain of salt like any other memory tip. However, this is what I currently have applied to my system for paging size and it is super fast with boot times in the 7-10 second range: MIN/MAX 3072MB.

 Windows uses the paging file on systems with large amounts of RAM even though self professed experts out there say it does not. If you look at Process Explorer (available free from Microsoft) you will notice over time that your Peak Commit Charge can be higher than you would think even with lots of RAM. This is a reading of the highest usage of the paging file/virtual memory over time that the system might need should it crash or for some reason has to page out. Some applications may even require some virtual memory. My Windows 7 system on a HDD running 16GB RAM with a Windows managed paging file had peak commits of over 8GB.

 That is not to say that I need a max of 8GB for the paging file, it just means that at its most utilized my PC may need to committed that much to virtual memory. Depending on your system you may need more or less. A good place to start, as Samsung's Magician software suggests, is 200 MIN, 2048MB MAX. You can work from there if you see your peak commit hitting that limit.

Shortcuts to tame the new Metro Start menu

The Metro interface is very intuitive. At first it was cumbersome and seemed like I would never use it, but over the course of a few hours my thoughts turned to how the Windows 7 Start menu is simply archaic and antiquated. Here are some shortcuts to use that makes the migration to Metro less stressful.

  • Win+D
    • Instantly transition from Metro to the desktop
    • Show minimized apps after running Win+M
  • Win+M
    • Minimize all open apps to the taskbar (desktop)
  • Win+R
    • Open the RUN command (type one of the below commands and hit enter)
      • cmd
        • Open a command line window
      • msconfig
        • Boot options and other system level options
      • msinfo32
        • System Information
      • devmgmt.msc
        • Device Manager
  • Win+I
    • Settings menu containing Control Panel, Personalization, etc.
  • Win+S
    • Opens Search. When in Metro, simply start typing to search.

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