How to Make Vista Run Faster
Want to speed up Vista? Here's a Simple Guide how to do it
1. Introduction
‘The Wow starts Now’, was the catch-cry at Vista’s lavish launch early in 2007. The campaign was slick and glossy, but it didn’t take long for users to complain in droves that Vista was as slow as a wet week, a resource hog and painful to work with. The cool aero-glass look wasn’t enough to offset the pain. The verdict: Vista was a cane toad in fancy drag.
Microsoft’s infrequent responses reflected, with crystal clarity, the company’s arrogance. ‘Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista,’ was how one spokesperson put it. Mostly, Microsoft ignored the howls of protest because it knew that Vista would sell up a storm regardless, because it gets installed on almost every new PC sold.
By mid-year, the rousing chorus chanting that the Wow had become a mere whisper stung Microsoft into action. A new campaign was launched: ‘100 Reasons You’ll be Speechless.’ The marketing hype took enormous liberties with the truth and failed to mention the heavy slug of the Vista upgrade price or the cost of the extra hardware needed to run it.
By the end of 2007, most of the early wrinkles - including missing drivers - had been ironed out via various updates, but Vista’s poor performance remained. Those who hope for Service Pack 1 to improve things will be out of luck, as the tests at this site show. Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, on the other hand, showed a 10% improvement.
Reality bites
Vista’s advantages over XP are largely cosmetic, despite what Microsoft says, while some of its drawbacks are very real. For a light-hearted take on this comparison, check this story which uses reality inversion to great effect by introducing XP as the successor to Vista and going on and on about the many improvements XP introduces.
Bottom Line: If you have a well-working XP set-up on your PC, keep it. There’s little you can achieve with Vista that you can’t do faster with XP. If you run professional graphics applications, the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista is an extra handicap. The same applies to CPU-intensive applications like video transcoding, where Vista lags a long way behind XP.
The old XP theme doesn’t look too bad if you change the blue borders for silver ones (Control 
Panel>Display>Themes) and replace the green lawn with a pretty picture (right-click on picture>set as desktop background). If you’re still hankering after Vista’s eye-candy, there’s plenty of it and it’s mostly free.
Vista Style is a popular choice. Vista transformation pack is another. Be warned that some of these transformations can have unintended effects on system stability.
If you still have your heart set on Vista, the best way to avoid the steep upgrade price is to buy it with a new PC. My Vista Business edition came with a bargain Compaq Presario laptop I bought on sale (twin AMD Turion cpus, 1gb of RAM, nVidia go 6100 graphics).
"Vista makes using your PC a breeze"
This is one of the first of the ‘100 Reasons you’ll be speechless’. It did that alright because, fresh out of the box, Vista Business took many minutes to reveal its full glory, the long periods of darkness relieved occasionally by the mouse pointer appearing with the circle spinning like a top.
About performance, the 100 reasons list says this: ‘New technology in Windows Vista makes your PC significantly more responsive while you are performing everyday tasks. Improved start-up and sleep behavior helps both desktop and mobile PCs get up and running more quickly ...’
Don’t believe a word of it - Vista runs many more services than XP and uses far more resources as it looks after itself. That’s no surprise, since new Windows releases have always been heftier than previous versions, and Microsoft’s architects have always relied on Intel to restore performance. Put another way, ‘whatever Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.’
"It’s the Safest Version of Windows Ever"
This is the third reason in Microsoft’s 100 reasons campaign. With Microsoft’s poor track record in security, that’s not saying much. Vista’s User Account Control, the great new security feature here, is about as well-thought out as Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
What is the point of forcing a user (who is also the administrator) to re-enter the same password she started the system with, over and over again, and going all dark on her every time she wants to do something? It’s worse than the constant pop-ups in XP that warn us not to open files from un-trusted sources (including those from Microsoft). At least that made you stop and think. UAC just makes you mad.
And Vista still needs the same old security software to keep it protected, despite Microsoft’s assurances to the contrary. More of that further down.
2. Optimize Windows Vista for better performance
That’s the title of one of the articles Microsoft has dribbled out of late to address the issue. It shows clearly that Microsoft is still in denial, preferring to blame the user: ‘That state-of-the-art PC you bought last year might not feel like such a screamer after you install a dozen programs, load it with anti-spyware and anti-virus tools, and download untold amounts of junk from the Internet.’
That’s adding serious insult to grave injury, but the court jesters at Redmond aren’t done yet: ‘Sometimes changing your computing behavior can have a big impact on your PC's performance. If you’re the type of computer user who likes to keep eight programs and a dozen browser windows open at once—all while instant messaging your friends—don’t be surprised if your PC bogs down.’
There you have it, you pitiful dumb users. The final insult for this user who bought a brand-new laptop with Vista Business installed is this piece of advice: ‘If your PC is rated lower than 2 or 3 [on the Vista Experience Scale], it might be time to consider a new PC ...’
The Vista Experience Index
In the Control Panel, clicking on ‘Performance Information’ leads to a panel where Vista offers to rate the Presario's performance. Taking up that option produces an ‘Experience Index’, which holds up numbers like those sullen judges who rate Olympic ice skaters.
You’d assume that the score is on a scale of 5 but it turns out to be out of 5.9, a number only the King's architects could conjure up, isolated as they are in their tall towers at Redmond. They say it's the nVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 integrated graphics chip that's letting the side down, which I’m not ready to accept. For one, the Presario handles Ubuntu’s Emerald’s aero-glass and compiz-fusion 3D with no dramas of any kind.
When you explore 'learn how to improve your computer's performance', you’ll find that Vista's first suggestion is turning off the aero-glass. Microsoft’s article makes the same suggestion, but why would you turn off the WOW already? Isn’t that why you bought Vista in the first place?
Getting rid of excess baggage
Let’s move on. Our tweaks are for simple users with a working knowledge of Windows. Most involve turning off various services Vista starts automatically, whether you need them or not. To follow the simple instructions here, please choose ‘Classic View’ on the left hand side of the Control Panel.
We’re not going near the Windows Registry, where one wrong move could stop Vista dead in its tracks - we’ll keep it nice and simple.
The first candidate for deletion is the Vista Welcome screen. This is an easy checkbox at the bottom left of the screen.
Vista’s Sidebar is also on by default. I like a sidebar but Vista’s gadgets are on the garish side and ill-matched. You can turn the Sidebar off by right-clicking the Windows Sidebar icon in the system tray> Properties>Uncheck the Start Sidebar when Windows starts box.
User Account Control is the next item on our list: Control Panel>User Accounts>Turn User Account Control on or off. Uncheck the box that says ‘Use User Account Control to protect your computer ...’
Stop auto-start applications
The simplest way to do this is to run Windows Defender>Tools>Software Explorer. Go down the list and disable the start-up services you don’t need. This is one of the few useful suggestions made in the Microsoft piece. 
If you’ve already installed a security suite that includes spyware protection, you may want to turn Windows Defender off as well. Bring up Windows Defender from the main menu, click on Tools>Options, scroll to the bottom of the long panel until you see the ‘Administrator Options’, uncheck the ‘Use Windows Defender’ box and click SAVE. Confirm in the pop-up panel that you mean it, click Close, and you're all set.
If your security suite includes a firewall, you should turn Vista’s firewall off. Some security suites do this for you – check Control Panel>Windows Firewall.
Other candidates
Microsoft’s article suggests uninstalling programs that are no longer needed, and getting rid of excess files. That’s like saying that washing your car will make it go faster. The advice to restart you PC at least once a week hints at users who’ve grown tired of waiting for Vista to boot up and shut down.
User Account Control is a pain and a drain on resources. UAC’s primary purpose is to stop users from doing dumb things, like downloading suspect files or programs from unsavory sources. If you use common sense, download files only from reliable sources and have decent security software on board, there’s no need for Vista’s heavy chastity belt.
Vista has a new search feature which replaces that useless puppy of old, but it indexes your files in the background to make searches more snappy.
If you use Google or Copernic desktop search, you can turn this feature off. The easiest way is to open the Control Panel>Programs and Features>Turn Windows features on or off.
Google desktop offers a sidebar as well. Right-click on the Google Search icon in the notification area (bottom right of screen), tick the sidebar option and choose your gadgets. If you choose carefully, they’ll look neater than Vista’s garish collection.
Vista’s built-in disk defrag utility is enabled and set to keep your files tidy in the background. This is overhead and overkill, and Vista’s defragger does a pretty poor job anyway. You can turn it off this way: Control Panel>Performance information and tools>Advanced Tools>Open Disk Defragmenter. Uncheck ‘Run on a schedule’.
Automatic backup is another candidate for deletion. It works in the background to back up files as you work. It’s a nice idea but you may not have an external drive, or you don’t have it connected all the time, or you’re running Vista on a laptop and backup your work when you get home. Most likely, you already have your favourite backup and defrag programs sorted out.
Antivirus Software can bog a PC down faster than a mud slide. Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro used to be the worst offenders but Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite is the new champ. The suites that have the lightest footprint and interfere the least are ESET NOD32/ESS, Avira/Antivir and AVG. The first two also provide the best malware protection currently available.
Laptop Users have found that Vista sucks battery juice like a Hummer guzzles gas. So much for Vista smarter power management capabilities. I said that Aero-glass wasn’t a big drain on performance but it is a drain on batteries because the video is doing the work, and the video card consumes power.
When you want to get the most out of your batteries, turn off the aero-gloss. You’d assume that you do this under Personalization but Microsoft likes to play hide-and-seek with us as usual – go to Performance Information>Adjust Visual Settings>Visual Effects and select the radio button next to ‘Adjust for best performance. That turns Vista Business into Vista Home Basic but it conserves precious juice.
Tuning for Performance
The easiest option on a PC with 1gb of RAM is to double it. A simpler and cheaper way to raise performance is Vista’s Ready Boost feature, which uses the flash memory of a USB stick as additional RAM. Simply plug the USB flash drive in and select My Computer, right-click on the USB drive, select the Ready Boost tab, choose ‘Use this device’ and select as much space as you can. 2gb is optimal for 1gb of RAM.
It makes a small difference to overall response, which will vary from PC to PC. I ran a simple benchmark often used by PC mags called PCMark05. Without the USB stick, PCMark05 came up with 2431. With a 2gb Cruzer flash drive, the number was 2741 – a 13% improvement. Not bad, but it doesn’t feel that much faster.
Bear in mind that flash drives vary dramatically in read/write speed, even the newer USB2 types. The Cruzer is among the faster ones but a Lexar Lightning might’ve come up with a slightly better number.
Disk Performance can be optimized for SATA disks, which are the norm these days. Here you can enable write-caching and advanced performance.
This will speed up disk access but it has a downside: if you lose power suddenly, you’ll loose whatever data was sitting in the cache at the time. If you’re running Vista on a laptop as I am, that’s okay since the batteries take over when the power cuts out.
To enable better hard disk performance, right-click on your hard drive in ‘My Computer’ and go to Hardware>Properties>Policies where you’ll find the check boxes we’re looking for.
Superfetch is a new Vista feature that learns your habits and pre-loads the apps you use most often and keeps them on stand-by after you close them. It makes start-up a little slower but speeds up launching programs. The experts say that superfetch needs 2gb of RAM to show a benefit, or at least a USB drive on Ready Boost. With systems running 1gb of RAM, the advice is to turn it off.
I tried both settings - Start>Run> type ‘services.msc’> scroll down to superfetch >right-click>properties>change startup type to disabled and status to stopped. Turning it off produced no improvement in speed of any kind. Against the odds, the Presario seems to run better with superfetch left on.
This is one of those things that comes down to individual set-ups: by the time I got this far down the list, I’d cut the number of running services down from over 70 to 45 (see below) and Vista was using just over 500mb of RAM instead of over 700 at idle. That meant I had some spare RAM left for superfetch to work on. On systems with less available RAM, it may slow things down – there’s only one way to find out.
The Page File is a small part of the hard disk Windows uses as ‘virtual memory’. In XP or Vista, you can adjust the size of the page file but just how much difference it makes is a hotly debated topic. Bring up the Control panel, choose System>Advanced System Settings. Choose Settings in the ‘Performance’ panel and then ‘Advanced’ in the Performance Options panel. Now you see a page file size, set to a minimum of 1500 here (if you have 1gb of RAM). Click on ‘Change’ and set the maximum number to 2500, then click ‘Set’ and ‘Apply’ and close the panels with OK. The common advice is to make the upper number 2.5 times the actual RAM.
That’s about it for the easy tweaks. By now you should have a Vista setup that works reasonably well. The next section explores an area that is more tedious but it may help to improve performance by another 10%. It’s the law of diminishing returns.
Serious Tweaks for Serious Types
Unless you’re a competent user, you might want to skip this section. When you turn on your system, Vista starts up a host of background services for applications you may never use – Network Printing or FAX and Smartcard services, for example, and offline files and tablet PC and blue tooth stuff. Most of Vista’s services are much more obtuse, and you’ll need a reliable guide to help you decide whether you do or don’t need them.
I used two guides to help me: this one from Black Viper's well known website, and another a stumbled on. The two guides don’t agree, which adds some drama to the tedious exercise. If in doubt, go with Black Viper’s ‘Safe’ settings, and don’t let the name put you off.
The second list is a bit more radical and best left alone unless you’re looking to trim every bit of excess fat from Vista’s bulk. If in doubt, don’t disable a service but set it to manual. That way, a program or service that depends on it can prod it into action.
To find the list of services you can use RUN and key in "services.msc", but a program like Starter from Codestuff is a better option.
Starter makes the job a little easier with one click descriptions of running programs, services and processes. Just double click on the service you highlight and a panel pops up telling you what it is. Starter also has a section where you can easily check the services that keep ingratiating themselves in the start-up process.
Unexpected Rewards
After hours of fiddling, we've got the number of start-up processes down to 45, and the RAM that Vista chews up just idling is down to 500mb. Another reboot produces a big surprise: the login panel pops up in about 40 seconds, and it takes another 50 to get ESET’s signature database updated, the icons on the desktop settled down and Google’s sidebar up and working. Google desktop/sidebar runs 3 processes and uses over 20mb of RAM so it has an impact on performance.
Still, programs are fast to launch and files quick to open, and I'm beginning to like using Vista rather than just admiring the show. What we have now is close to optimized XP performance, which is hard to believe after reading so many stories about Vista, the slug.
Most of it was easy. Just what difference disabling the extra services made is hard to measure but it gives Vista much-needed elbow room on a machine with 1GB of RAM.
Keeping the Edge
Windows tends to get clogged up over time, and Vista is no exception. It’s worth cleaning out temporary files, the gunk that builds up in applications and in Windows, but registry cleaners that boast of restoring your PC to as-new performance aren’t worth the money. The only software that boosts performance is a good disk defrag utility, and that doesn’t involve the risk of breaking the fine china in Windows’ special cabinet – the registry.
The experts say that the best way to rejuvenate Windows is to re-install it from scratch. For most of us, that’s about as much fun as doing tax returns. And it takes longer, given the time it takes to restore all your data and your programs, and to update Vista.
An easier way to do this is to take a snapshot of our trim, taut and terrific Vista installation with disk imaging software like Acronis True Image (or the free version of Seagate Disk Wizard, if one of your HDs is a Seagate or Maxtor drive).
My Presario didn’t come with a Vista install DVD – just a restore partition – so a disk image is essential. Now I have an easy and complete emergency option that restores my last optimized configuration, not the one HP put on the restore partition a year ago.
And remember, it’s not the stuff you pile on your hard drive that adds the performance-strangling bulk, it’s Windows. Just take a look at this chart I found on WikiPedia
The table doesn’t tell the whole truth, though: the specs given for XP above have increased dramatically over the last five years, after many updates and major revisions like Service pack 1 and 2. In fact, at the time of Vista’s release, Windows XP takes as much hardware to run well as is listed for Vista in the table above.
The old PC I’m writing this on reflects this trend perfectly: it started life back in 2002 with a 600mHz CPU, 128mb of RAM and a 20GB hard disk, which seemed overkill at the time. Several upgrades later, it runs a 2.4gHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard disk. The original 20GB HDD – a Seagate Barracuda that is still doing duty for file backups – is now just big enough to hold Windows XP (including restore, page file, hibernation file and trash can).
If this trend continues with Vista, and there’s no reason to assume it won’t, by 2012 the new OS will need a CPU 5 times more powerful than current issue, 8GB of RAM and 150GB of disk space. So be prepared for the occasional hardware upgrade.
Briard
February 2008
For more useful stuff, check Briard's company website http://www.technoledge.com.au :
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ok let just all say it, what choose do we really have but to accept that Micro rules our lives. Micro-Dictateralship Given to all businesses that dont feel that the customer is first priority.
I prefer Microsoft 3 beta back when it was free.
Bells and whistles r 4 carnivals, not work.
hi i have a widow vista laptop and i was wondeing how to update my laptop and to make it go much faster than it does now for free
Try a few things from above and go and do the some computer maintenance and also maybe upgrade your laptop memory. Make sure you get a professional to do the memory upgrade.
Also remove unwanted programs including all trials.
Run AutoMZ monthly - by Johny.
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/2919f3ddbc1761c74ef5692b824fd01b
I make my Vista run faster by using Registry Cleaner from Digeus.
It can be found here: http://www.digeus.com
I have recently bought two laptops from Dell...(6 months)
One is the cheapest $699 job with Vista (2gb ram)
The other is the $1099 job with Vista (3gb ram)
I cannot believe how well they run... I have not tweaked them or changed any settings but I did wait until they were giving away ram as an extra bonus.
So after to 6 months of everyday use (including games for children) I have had no trouble and just stuck to a regular cleanup routine like this checklist that previous comments have already mentioned.
This is what I have done with these laptops:
-Connected them to a network of computers that run windows XP with no problems at all.
-Converted movies, burnt dvd's, played games, webcammed.. etc etc
-One thing I do not do is save files onto my laptop. All files are saved to an external backup drive as the checklist says to.
I am impressed with these laptops because I have never bought a computer because I actually build them for a living. The quality and the features are fantastic.
On another note.. I have had customers bring me their new laptops (for example a toshiba) and it has ran slower anything I have seen.. Being dual core and all the rest..
Now to compare these two brands, I think that Dell is shipped with the bare bones and other brands are loaded with junk programs for you to try. You can remove these, however the only real way to get back to basics is to format and start again.
If we all think back to when Windows XP was released we all had the same problems with that.. It was also a resourse hog and was not compatiable with most of our devices that were connected to our computers.
I have searched through hours worth of blogs and chats and can't seem to make my pal's Vista Acer laptop transfer files from our network harddrive any faster than 40kb/s. We've tried eliminating the running programs, we've paused the avast!antivirus programs for now, and we've stuck it right next to the linxsus router to make sure it's got an 11mb/s signal. Nothing.
Any other suggestions???
Teracopy (or =).
I think Vista is fine if you have a computer with specs that can handle it.. Microsoft made a mistake when they first said that vista only needed 512mb ram to run..LOL LOL LOL
I have 3GB of ram and I love vista. To keep it running smoothly I just use this computer maintenance checklist
Thanks for the link. I had no idea i had to do that stuff.
Great link!
thank you so much
thank a lot
Ok so when i try and go to the programs and features and do the turn on/off windows features nothing shows up in the box to choose anything. I didn't know if there was something that controlled this if i turned it off without knowing if someone could help me that would be great.
Oh wow.
Two things I'd like to add to this.
1) a 5.9 is stupid easy to achieve. I've built many, many gaming rigs that do this. If you're not afraid to pay for good hardware, you'll get a good Vista Experience score. Simple as that. Don't skimp on RAM, that tends to be the lowest point most of the time - go for some high-clock OCZ, Patriot, Mushkin, etc.
2) Battery life is not worse in Vista. My MSI Wind gets nearly 5:45 with Vista (even with Aero Glass on) and only about 5:20 in XP. It's even worse in Ubuntu, because it's so crap for handling suspend.
Briard, you forgot to include the link to that chart in the Wikipedia or an image showing it.
Really good work, though.
Marc
I disagree with some of the content above, like turning off indexing, all you have to do is optimize it and enable natural search, that will replace launchers like Launchy or FARR. Search 4.0 is working very well:
http://www.vista4beginners.com/Improve-Instant-Search
http://www.vista4beginners.com/Enable-Natural-Search-and-learn-how-to-us...
In regard of UAC, you forgot - or not - to mention a lot of reliable customizations available, or you can simply turn on the hidden Administrator account, without UAC prompts, although I wouldn't recommend it without a good hips and AV in place:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/4-ways-to-make-uac-less-ann...
Vista firewall has inbound and outbound filter, it is rather simplistic to show only how to turn it on/off, and I this this is the right place to discuss it. Some of us might like to use it together with a stand-alone hips, it's a lot more interesting to explore the advanced security features:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc138010.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748991.aspx
Another one interesting is to use the the Extended Disk Cleanup for aditional options:
run > cleanmgr /sageset:1; & run > cleanmgr /sagerun:1
And a fix for a bug, causing Vista to eat itself in-1-click:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/175654-disk-cleanup-windows-error-repo... http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/serious-disk-cleanup-problem-caused-by...
THE QUICKER, SIMPLER, EASIER, FREE WAY TO SPEED UP VISTA - A LOT
FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE THE TIME, or interest, or knowledge to deal with all the tweaks mentioned in the article above.
I'm a computer consultant who uses this method with great results. I have no connection to the makers of these products.
If that's not fast enough, do the following:
After getting used to your new, speedy computer for a week, re-add Vista Sidebar, or Google Desktop, or Aero-Glass if desired. Add them one at a time, not all at once, and look for sluggishness. Results may vary.
-Johny
http://laptopacademy.net
I hope later windows vista will improve an update and it could turn as fast as windows XP............
Yea,
i bought my laptop a couple of months ago seemened ok with vista for the first 5 minuites i mean its no problem but it annoys me that my fiend with a 1.4ghz 512mb ram on xp can run games movies pretty much anything better than my 1.7ghz dual core 2gb ram and nvidia 8600m gs i mean ive got more video memory than he has ram. anyway back to the point as soon as vista connected to the internet and downloads all the "necessary" updates my laptop didnt like it and decided to run like a square wheel i dont have that many processes running i keep my laptop very clean but even dont trust internet explorer it uses too many resources, i would consider not using vista unless the user wants an interner or email viewer but i know this is what people said about XP until vista came out so hopefully microsoft will make vista a mistake and say o just one more and then people will complain about there new OS.
My two Canadain cents,
Ok I have no problem with Vista performance because I have a new dual core 2.4 with 2 gigs of ram and a geforce 8800 vid card, I'm basically cutting edge with spending a fortune. Vista is what it is and has it's ups and down but the way I keep it as clean and quick as possible is fallow the initial advice and turn of sidebar and start screen on your next restart. Also every time I exit explorer I run CCleaner to make sure that and nasty cookies of waiting trjens that may be lurking in my temp files are deleted prior to and reboot. Also I use AVG anti virus that seems to do the job and put minimal strain on my sys. A weekly or bi monthly scan with Ad Aware usually finds something it doesn't like and I usually just go ahead and delete what ever it finds. I trust it. Now I'm amazed at how many People click click ckick there way through installing new software and forget to uncheck the browser toolbar add-ons like google / yahoo / MacAfee / YouTube the list goes on and on. good luck to you if you have the party poker tool bar :) click on view toolbars and see what you have lurking there.
All rhese programs are free and great quality. You have My word. This is who I am, You can get my mailing address there and send my a thank you letter :) http://www.Central-Toronto-Real-estate.com
Do this in order.
Run Ad aware full scan, then you run CCleaner, then run AVG the reboot and when sidebar and quick launch appear take a moment to check off that they do not start up automatically. Also CCleaner has a registry check/fixer ability. Not very good but doesn’t hurt.
Next time you reboot, say to yourself “ Thank goodness they’re are people like Frank in the world. Then everything should run a little smoother.
Stop the spread of crud, have your pc cleaned.
Hope that's helpful.
With Vista,my computer is about as slow as Obama's realization that we need more sources of oil. Thanks for totally necessary political reference.
Haha.. another republican redneck living under a rock. I think you meant to say "we need more renewable energy sources".
I hate vista, Thats why i only really use it for times when i am on games or watching DVD's and videos online, heres something i have found very bad with this vista laptop, when the power goes out when i am watching something online, the internet dies, then vista gets the BSoD for no reason!!! I've encountered over 20 bsod's last month, this proves that vista is really unstable.
My xp pc is around the same speed as this, but it has less than half the specs of this vista laptop, and twice as much runnning, to make vista fast enough i had to change my theme to windows standard, doesnt look very good but its a lot faster and less of a drain on the battery, so heres something you should know, if you want a fast pc, just stay with xp, microsoft boosted xp to 2014 so why do you need to change? we still have 6 years till we have to switch over!
(1) I adjusted my visual effects to Best Performance, and then I changed my theme back to Windows Vista basic. It still has most of the visual effects turned off, except I clicked on Show Thumbnails instead of icons just because I like that option, and Windows clicked on Use visual styles on windows and buttons (the last visual display option in Adjust visual effects, under Performance Information and Tools). That's all you need in order to display the basic vista theme, that includes the black bar, black background, and windows circle for the start button, but not the transparency.
(2) I like a lot of the Vista options, myself. (a) I like that I do not have to install software for my printer, for example. (b) In XP, I have to manually install my printer, but Vista does it on its own and much more quickly. (c) I find it easier to copy files to a CD/DVD in Vista and I have fewer format conflicts with the Vista operating system. (d) Many people like the Directx10 for games.
(3) In the negative: (a) Vista messed up a few of my games that actually work in XP (Diablo II, Sammy Sosa's High Heat Baseball); (b) the UAC is annoying, annoying, annoying like hell; (b-2) Did I mention that the UAC is annoying? (c) some other software that I liked is incompatible (my old defragger). (d) It takes up more hard drive space and battery energy.
(4) I've never once gotten the BSoD myself. I didn't even know they still had it in Vista.
Do you have SP1 installed? It is much more stable.
I noticed that Advanced WindowsCare V2 has a system optimization that disables some of the services recommended at the BlackViper website. It disables all but a couple of them, such as the fax/Parental Controls/Tablet PC Input Service/etc.
I've had Vista (home premium) for a little over a year. On my xp system
I was able to tweak it and get my boot time down to 45 seconds. On Vista
the best I could do was 1 min 45 seconds. When I say boot time I mean from the time i turn the power on till the computer is ready to go. I disabled some services,(I have 40 running at start up) left aero on,but turned off some features. The only way I could get it to boot a little faster than 1min 45 sec was to turn off things I needed or wanted to run.
Then I found a program called WinBubble 1.73. I only use one feature on the program. You'll find the setting in the Optimize tab. It's Enable/
Disable Multiple Monitor Configuration. I set it to disable. I've been running on this setting for two weeks, no problems on my system from this change. Boot time is now 54 seconds.
Thanks, I especially agree that the UAC just makes us angry. The UAC reminds me of the MCP in the movie Tron. I hate the UAC more than anything else in Vista! Why I can't simply move a shortcut into a different folder is beyond me. I would love to stop the little red flag, though, from appearing without completly disabling the security center -- any ideas?
UAC may be annoying, but I personally have not noticed any performace hit from User Access Control (UAC).
UAC is a great HELP for people who wisely create limited user accounts for daily usage.
Running your pc in admin mode all the time (which is most people) is a big security hole. It will give any hacker or virus instant admin access to your whole computer. So it's much safer to create a limited user account for your daily usage.
Then the UAC will enable you to install software without having to log off and then log back in again as admin. It will also alert you whenever any lurkers try to gain admin access to your computer.
Sure, entering a password is annoying every time you want to install some software, but having to log off and log back in again as admin is MORE annoying. And having your system or files damaged by a virus, because you decided it was easier to leave your machine wide open, is even more annoying.
In a nutshell, make a limited user account for daily computing, and leave UAC on.
check out the vista tweaking tools MZ Vista Force. Google it. It is really useful..... Apart from tweaking your vista system, you can disable some of the features like
1. Vista waiting indefinitely for programs that crashed to respond during shutdown thus not shutting down at all
2. Running explorer, desktop under multiple processes so that crash of one don't affect the others
3. Disabling DEP for explorer. This causes explorer to crash occasionally
4. De fragmenting the pagefile during shutdown etc etc
http://absolutehorizon.blogspot.com
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