Post-installation configuration (also reduce heat) for Windows 7/8 on Macbook Pro

After installing Windows 7 on Macbook Pro 13 inch late 2011, most of the things work out of the box using Boot Camp drivers. However, there are still things you need to manually configure to make them work well such as:

HOT TEMPERATURE NOTE

I'm not sure if they are the cause of the problem, but I made the change and my machine cooled down a lot. Seems like Windows has many more services that do disk activities even when the machine is idle such as indexing, defrag scheduler, and Windows Defender. This cause the disk much hotter than on Mac OS then the rest palm area is very warm all the time.

- Don't use third-party anti-virus program. Use Windows Defender, but turn off Real Time Protection or completely disable this program.
- Go to Control Panel, Power Options, and click on Change Plan Settings. Then, click on "Change advance power settings" and select "Process power management" item from the listbox. Set "Maximum processor state to 97%" and "System cooling polcy" to "Passive" for both "Plugged in" and "On battery".

- Disable Adobe Flash Player in all browsers
- Install Power Plan Assistance (i installed it to turn off backlid keyboard automatically when login but the temperature seemed to reduce too)
- Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Defrag > then disable the "ScheduledDefrag"
- Disable PreFetch and SuperFetch
- Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Advance > Settings > Custom and check only: "Animate controls and elements inside windows", "Fade out menu items after clicking", "Show shadows under windows", "Show thumbnails instead of icons", "Slide open combo boxes", "Smooth edges of screen fonts", "Smooth-scroll list boxes"
- Reduce CPU usage and Disk Activity in Chrome by disable "Enable phising and maleware protection"
- Turn off "Auto-play video" feature on Facebook
- Perform the step in Disable Unnecessary Services section below

Increase SSD's lifespan

Reducing read/write operations does increase the lifespan of SSD. Turning off some services such as indexing, hibernation, and automatic defragmentation not only reduce the heat but also increase the SSD's lifespan.

SMC Fan

What i hate about Lubbo's Fan Control is you have to put it in Startup menu yourself to make start automatically when login and its GUI will open too. It does not minimize in system tray automatically. MacFan Control beat it to this. Then, I configure the fan speed based sensor CPU Core 1. Min value is 35 degree celsius and max value is 83 celsius so that the fan speed is never below 4200 even if the machine is idle.

Power Saver

I enable Power Saver mode in Control Panel. Then, I click on Change plan setting and Change advance power settings. Then, under Processor Power Management, I set Maximum Processor State to 90% when On Battery and Minimum Processor State to 5% for both On battery and Plugged in.

Reduce Animations

Open Control Panel, then Ease of Access and Ease of Access Center. Then check the option "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)"

Disable Indexing Search (to improve performance or might reduce heat)
1. Open Windows Explorer and right click on the drive you want to stop indexing then select Properties. After than, uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" and click OK.
2. Disable Windows Indexing service in services.msc.

Disable Unnecessary Services

Start "services.msc" program and stop and disable the following services (reference):
- Windows Update
- Google Update Service
- Server
- Computer Browser
- TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
- Windows Error Reporting Service
- Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (If you don't have a scanner)
- Windows Search (If you don't use Windows built-in Search feature frequently)
- Print Spooler (If you don't have a printer)
- IP Helper (If you don't use IPv6 connection)
- Diagnostic Policy Service
- Superfetch
** You might also try registry tweak here to make it faster and so not hotter.

Remap Keys

- To remap the right Command key to Control key, you can use sharpkeys.codeplex.com