Tweaking your Windows 7/XP Desktops on VDI

My buddy John Simon has put together some common tweaks he uses for for his company’s Virtual Desktops.  These are easy tweaks that can be used in VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop desktops but are sometimes forgot.  Pop them into your VM template and reap the performance benefits.  Some can also be used on your local machine for some enhanced performance.

Disable hibernation by running the command powercfg /hibernate off from the command line (WIN7/XP):

Set the windows page file to a static number. By default windows will grow and shrink the page file which will cause an I/O overhead. This value should be 1.5 x the amount of system RAM with a limit of 4096 for a 32bit operating system (WIN7/XP):

Disable indexing by going to properties of the C drive and un-checking the box to allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file searching (WIN7/XP):

Disable the boot graphic, this graphic is not needed for a virtual machine and just consumes resources. To do this click on start and then run and run msconfig. From the pop up window, click on the boot tab and then check the box for NO GUI BOOT (WIN7/XP):

Uninstall Tablet PC Components by going to control panel – programs and features and select turn windows features on or off then remove the checkbox by Tablet PC components (WIN7):

Finally you should disable logging on the VM from the VM settings menu. This can be done by going to the options tab of the virtual machine properties (WIN7/XP):

Have any favorites that aren’t GPO’s? (Sample GPO to come in a later post).  Post in the comments.