Speed Up Windows 7 By Disabling File Access Timestamps (Advanced)

Did you know that Windows is keeping a file access timestamps for all files that you access? At a first glance, you might think that it’s not a lot of work for you computer, but it can be. If you don’t need them, you can disable them.

Tip: Keep in mind that a lot of programs rely on file access timestamps, e.g. backup programs require timestamps for incremental backups.

Windows 7 also writes a timestamp for every file when you preview a file. Since most people still have the preview windows enabled in Windows 7 (disable via ALT + P), you PC will have to create quite a lot of timestamps.

Some resource-hungry programs and especially games need to access quite a lot of files when you start them .. that’s a lot of work for your PC. If you don’t care when you last accessed this or that program, you can easily disable timestamp logging in Windows 7.

1. Open an elevated command prompt
2. Enter fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

3. Restart your PC
4. File access timestamps are now disabled and will no longer be logged. This can also be disabled for privacy reasons.

Should you ever want to enable timestamps again, simply open an elevated command prompt and enter
fsutil behaviour set disablelastaccess 0 and reboot. Done.

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