OSD Scripting Hacks Part 2 – Performance Settings

In a new series of short posts I’m going to show how to get around some frustrations I have had with the lack of GPO support for some common requirements plus a few other issues I have come across which have crept up recently.

In part 2, I will show you how to change the performance settings via a script which can be run from a task sequence step. Like the file extensions in Part 1, this was another area that (at the time of writing) seems frustratingly missing from group policy. I was creating an MDT task sequence recently to build some servers and one of the requirements was that the Visual Effects setting was specifically set for ‘Best Performance’ as opposed to Let Windows choose…

Anyway, the script:

# VisualFX - Best Performance
$RegKey ="HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects"
Set-ItemProperty -Path $RegKey -Name VisualFXSetting -Type DWORD -Value 2

For MDT, you may wish to run this as a commandline as follows:

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -command "set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects' -Name VisualFXSetting -Type DWORD -Value 2"

In the above I set the value to 2 for best performance. Other values can be:
0 – Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer settings.
1 – for Adjust for best appearance settings.
2 – for Adjust for best Performance settings.
3 – for Custom settings.

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