How to turn on or off Windows 7 features

Windows 7 features are like programs installed in your computer, but they are part of Windows 7 operating system and you can turn them on or off.

Sometimes, there could be features in Windows 7 that we never use and they could be wasting our computer’s resources or perhaps we need some additional features that are off by default, so today we are going to learn how to turn them on or off.

This is actually pretty simple process:

1-  Click Start in the search box “Search programs and files” type “turn windows features on or off”.

2-  In the search result under “Control Panel” title, click on “Turn Windows features on or off”.

3-  Features in Windows 7 are arranged in folders and some folders contain subfolders with more features on it. You’ll notice that features that are turned on in your system have a check mark on them and the ones that don’t have a check mark are turned off; also if you see a blue square in the check mark (or filled box), it means that just some of the items are turned on. To turn a Windows 7 feature on, select the check box at the left of the feature that you want. To turn the feature off just uncheck the box. (See image)

4-  Click OK to finish the process.

Some features have dependencies, this means that if you are turning off a feature, there is a possibility that some other features might depend on it to work properly. If you are notified about this dependency, make sure that you visit the Microsoft link “Go online to learn more”, located at the bottom of the notification message, to understand what will happen if you turn off the feature. This way, you’ll know if it is worth it to turn on or off the feature.

Note: Turning the feature off does not uninstall the feature, and it does not free up space in your hard drive. This also means that the features are always stored in your hard drive so you can turn the feature back on at any time you wish.