Server 2008 R2 Performance Tuning

Here’s some of the things I do to a new Server 2008 R2 install (physical and/or virtual settings are mixed in; (VIRTUAL ONLY) specifies I only do configuration change on Virtual systems).

• Disable Screen Saver, Personalize -> Screen Saver -> None
• Sound, Do not start Audio Service -> Sound
•  No Sounds
•  Display Performance, System -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance Settings -> Adjust for Best Performance
• Power Options -> High Performance
• Power Options -> Changed when the computer sleeps -> Turn off Display = Never
•  Pagefile, System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Set no pagefile (VIRTUAL ONLY)
•  Disable System Screensaver Regedit -> HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop -> Delete SCRNSAVE.exe
•  Stop Audio Service in services.msc, set to Manual
•  Remove ipv6 support
•  Start Menu -> remove quick launch
•  Drive Indexing, My Computer -> C: Properties -> Unselect Index this drive… -> Apply recursively -> ignore all permission errors
•  Run as administrator ‘cmd.exe’ -> powercfg -h OFF to disable hibernation and delete hiberfil.sys from C:
•  reboot
•  delete pagefile.sys on c: (VIRTUAL ONLY)
•  defrag C: (I use contig http://live.sysinternals.com/contig.exe and run contig -s c:\*.*)
•  clear c:\users\administrator\appdata\local\temp folder
•  enable remote desktop, right click my computer -> properties -> advanced properties -> remote tab
•  activate windows
• Run as administrator ‘cmd.exe’ and copy/paste the following:

  powercfg -setactive scheme_min
  Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor 45bcc044-d885-43e2-8605-ee0ec6e96b59 100
  Powercfg -setactive scheme_current
  Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor 893dee8e-2bef-41e0-89c6-b55d0929964c 100
  Powercfg -setactive scheme_current
  Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100
  Powercfg -setactive scheme_current
  powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 893dee8e-2bef-41e0-89c6-b55d0929964c 100
  Powercfg -setactive scheme_current