Performance tips for Windows Vista
From ipinfinity.com
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Disable Search Indexing
Vista’s search engine is faster but it loves to index everything all the time, causing your hard disk to get thrashed. This will make the OS seem sluggish and most people hardly ever use it anyway so you might as well kill it until you need it. Here’s how.
Run Services (just type “Services” at the Start Search bar), right click on the Windows Search service and select “Properties”. Then choose “Disabled” for the start type. Afterwards, you have to stop this service by right clicking on it and selecting “Stop”.
Note: you can still search, it'll just be slower.
Disable Remote Assistance
Seriously, most people won't need this and it’s an added security risk, kill it. Right-click on the Computer icon and choose Properties, in the left pane choose Advanced System Settings. In the resulting window, switch to the Remote pane. Uncheck Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer.
Disable Windows Defender
Microsoft’s Windows Defender starts up every time you load Vista and tries to deal with spyware. This hogs a lot of resources, thrashes your hard disk and is not considered an effective tool. So long as you have a good router firewall and strong anti-virus/spyware software then disable this.
Go to Start > Programs > Windows Defender > Tools > Options > Uncheck everything, especially ‘Use Windows Defender’. Click Save.
Disable System Restore on other HDs
You only really need System Restore to be running and monitoring the hard disk your OS is installed on, there’s no need for it to track any HD’s you’ve designated for downloads and games etc.
Right-click on the Computer icon and choose Properties, in the left pane choose Advanced system settings. In the resulting window, switch to the System Protection pane. Uncheck all drives except the one Vista is installed to.
A pop-up will happen asking for confirmation, click Turn System Restore Off, then click Apply.
Disable Windows Welcome Centre
It may be useful to some people at first but eventually you’ll want to be rid of the Windows Welcome centre and there’s only one proper way to stop it using resources even when you can’t see it (Microsoft seems to like useless idle processes).
- Start Regedit (Start > Run > Type ‘regedit’).
- Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Run.
- Right click on the WindowsWelcomeCenter key and select Delete.
- Reboot your PC.
Disable Automatic Defrag
This attempts to defrag your hard disk to improve performance but often can’t tell the difference between an idle and active state. To put it another way, it thrashes your hard disk and can cause sluggishness. Note that you should always defrag hard disks once every month anyway but having this enabled all the time is not required unless you're extremely lazy .
- Click on Start, and then click Control Panel.
- Click on “System and Maintenance”.
- Under “Administrative Tools”, click on “Defragment your hard drive”.
- If you are prompted by User Account Control to allow the action, click on Continue.
- In the Disk Defragmenter window, uncheck “Run on a schedule (recommended)”.
- Click OK.
Kill unused services
Vista runs a lot of services at default that 90% of people will never ever need, disabling them will help to improve the overall performance of your system and use less RAM. Typically you can’t be 100% sure what you’re all doing with your PC’s so I’ve only listed the really useless stuff below (will add more only when I’m certain they’re safe to suggest):
- Run services.msc via the Start > Run command (Windows key + R).
- Stop the following services and change their start-up type to ‘disabled’.
1. Tablet PC Input service Do you own a Tablet PC or UMPC with touch screen? Probably not, kill it.
2. TCP/IP NetBios helper Nobody really uses NetBios anymore, it’s a relic from the Windows95/98 days and you don’t need this either.
Disable Aero
That sexy looking transparent windows effect you get on more modern systems can suck up to an additional +100MB's of physical system memory, eats extra battery life (bad for laptops) and also uses up more CPU time. To switch it off:
- Go to your Desktop and Right Click anywhere with some free space.
- Select 'Personalize' from the drop-down menu that appears.
- Choose 'classic appearance properties for more color options' at the bottom of the new window.
- On the scroll list of Colour Schemes select 'Windows Vista Basic' and Apply.
No more transparent windows.
NOTE: Some may find the 'Vista Basic' theme to be a bit ugly, in that case it's worth checking out this as a custom replacement:
http://vishal-gupta.deviantart.com/a...Basic-64148498
However, to use a custom theme like that you will also need to download and run the UltraUXThemePatcher first, which can be found here (tested up to Vista SP1):
http://www.public.sytes.net/hoefs/wi...me.php?lang=en
Fixing DirectX 9 Game Compatibility
Vista uses a DirectX 10 wrapper to run DirectX 9 games, except the default installation does not include all of the latest DX9 files and Windows Update does a poor job of fixing this. Instead you should download the most recent end-user runtime files (e.g. 'DirectX Redist (June2008)'):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/r...DisplayLang=en
Unpack these to a temporary directory and then run the DXSETUP file and update. Done.
Improve DirectX Game Performance
There are a couple of ways in which you can give some of your games a performance boost.
- DirectX9 based (made for XP) games should be run in Windows XP compatibility mode. Simply Right-Click the shortcut or game executable, select the 'Compatibility' tab and make the appropriate adjustment under 'Compatibility mode'.
- While in the 'Compatibility' tab you can also 'Disable visual themes'. This will disable the Aero UI while playing and free up more resources for your game. Note that games run in 'Fullscreen' mode (not Windowed on your desktop) will do this automatically anyway.
Run Vista's Sidebar in LOW PRIORITY or Disable it completely
Vista's Sidebar is actually quite useful once you figure out how to use all the gadgets. You can of course disable it by Right-Clicking a blank area of it, choosing ‘Properties’ and then disabling the ‘Start sidebar when windows starts’ option. The sidebar should also be closed after doing this, which needs another Right-Click as before.
However, you may prefer to keep it but save CPU time and battery life by running it as a LOW PRIORITY, in which case a little technical knowledge is required. To do this you need to make a new Shortcut at the following location via the 'Windows Explorer' application:
C:\Users\[YOUR USERNAME]\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\startup\
The shotcut would need the following in its location field:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start "sidebar.exe" /LOW "C:\Program Files\windows sidebar\sidebar.exe"
Now, when you next restart your computer, the sidebar should be given a lower cpu priority and use less of your CPU. On most modern PC's you shouldn't suffer any degradation as a result of this. Remember to change the drive letter from 'C' if you have Vista installed somewhere other than your primary hard disk and change the YOUR USERNAME to match.. uh.. your username.
Disable Superfetch
Superfetch is a clever bit of technology that loads your most frequently accessed programs and applications into RAM, thus improving load times. However, shifting all that data into memory will thrash your hard disk, especially if you play games or use media heavy applications. It will also slowdown the bootup process because you're shifting extra applications into system memory.
Naturally you can leave this feature untouched, though it's worth seeing how Vista performs without it. After all, what does it matter if Microsoft Word loads in 2 seconds as opposed to half a second? Having to wait an extra second or two won't bother most people. Typically you can either disable or modify how Superfetch works. To disable..
- Open 'Services' in 'Control Panel' or by typing 'services.msc' into the Start menu 'search' or 'run' boxes.
- Scroll down the new list to find 'Superfetch', right-click, select 'Properties' and disable it in the 'Startup type' (requires reboot).
To modify instead of disable..
- Click the Start button (bottom right) and type REGEDIT in the Start Search area (or 'Run command' if you have that option) and enter.
- Navigate to this location in your system registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters
- On the right side, double-click on EnableSuperfetch.
- Give it one of these number values:
0 = disable Superfetch 1 = enable prefetching when program is launched 2 = enable boot prefetching 3 = enable prefectching of everything
Click OK and close everything.
