Vista Guide - Tips, Tweaks and Advice.

[The Dark]

This guide is going to be made up of information from multiple sites, some of my own information.

Most of these tips will be Performance Based.

Tips and Tweaks are different.

D: = Difficulty rating: 1 Extremely Easy - 5 More Difficult

Contents

1 - Disable Welcome Centre [D: 1/5]
2 - Boost Your Performance With ReadyBoost [D: 3/5]
3 - Disable Network Printer Search [D: 2/5]
4 - Enhance SATA Disk Speed [D: 2/5]
5 - Increase max IE7 downloads Get Firefox.
6 - Increase network performance when playing media [D: 3/5]
7 - Quick Aero Speed Tip [D: 1/5]
8 - Performance Monitor [D: 1/5]
9 - Aero Speed Boost [D: 2/5]
10 - Speed up external hard drives [D: 2/5]
11 - Speed up start menu search [D: 2/5]
12 - Stop auto-startup items [D: 2/5]
13 - Tweak Indexing Options for More Performance [D: 2/5]
14 - Change desktop icons size [D: 1/5]
15 - Speed up Flip3D [D: 2/5]
16 - Partition drives in Vista [D: 3/5]
17 - Turn off unneeded Windows features [D: 2/5]
18 - Enable Aero mouse pointers [D: 1/5]
19 - Disable Shortcut Icon Arrow Overlay in Windows Vista [D: 2/5]
20 - User Account Control [D: 1/5]
21 - Windows Sidebar [D: 2/5]
22 - Services [D: 2/5]
23 - Turn off Remote Differential Compression [D: 2/5]
24 - Turn off Automatic Windows Defender Operation [D: 2/5]
25 - Turn off Automatic Disk Defragmentation [D: 1/5]
26 - Turn off Windows Hibernation [D: 2/5]
27 - Turn off System Restore [D: 2/5]
28 - Add an elevated Command Prompt [D: 2/5]



1-Disable Welcome Centre

Removes the welcome centre.

Open Run dialogue box (Windows Key + R) and type 'regedit' without the quotes. Hit Enter.

Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Run.

Right click on the WindowsWelcomeCenter and delete the file.

2 - Boost Your Performance With ReadyBoost

Windows Vista has many new features that are designed to help older computers run Windows Vista better. One of those features and the topic of this tweak is called ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost helps your computer by giving it more high-speed memory. If your computer is running low on RAM then it has to kick a lot of applications out of high-speed physical memory to the paging file on your hard drive. This usually results in a big hit in performance and increased activity on your hard drive. ReadyBoost helps this situation by giving Windows an alternative to having to stick data into the slow paging file on your hard drive. Instead, ReadyBoost uses a USB storage device that is faster than a hard disk. This results in a performance boost because Windows will have a high speed alternative than using the slow paging file on your hard drive.

In order for ReadyBoost to work, it requires a USB storage device that meets minimum performance and space requirements:

* The device must be at least 64 MB
* The device must be USB 2.0
* It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s
* It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

Plug your USB device in and navigate to Computer, right click on the removable storage device and select Properties.

Only if your device is compatible you will see a ReadyBoost Tab, click that.

Select Use this device and select the amount of space on it you want to dedicate for the ReadyBoost system file.

Click OK and you're done.



3 - Disable Network Printer Search

When browsing through shared folders and network computers Explorer can slow down when it is searching the local network for printers. This sounds like a great feature and may be useful for some but I would rather disable it to get maximum performance when browsing through folders

Hit Alt to bring up the menubar if it is not already on the screen. Click on Tools and select Folder Options.

On the View Tab, uncheck Automatically search for network printers.


4 - Enhance SATA Disk Speed

Do you have a SATA disk drive in your computer? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk. This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by enhancing write caching. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let's get started:

Click on the Start Button and key in Device Manager and hit Enter.

Expand Disk Drives.

Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.

On the Policies tab, check Enable advanced performance.

Hit OK and close Device Manager.


6 - Increase network performance when playing media

Windows Vista throttles your network bandwidth when you are playing any multimedia file such as an MP3 or a video. This was designed to ensure the CPU has enough free cycles available to play your media without skipping. The down side is that when you are playing a multimedia file you will notice that your network speed of file transfers will decrease on high speed network connections. By default when you are playing a multimedia file your network transfers are limited to 10 packets per millisecond.

In Windows Vista SP1 Microsoft introduces a registry key that allows you to customize this setting.

Open regedit (Windows Key + R then type 'regedit' with no quotes and hit enter)

Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile

Select NetworkThrottlingIndexValue

You can set NetworkThrottlingIndexValue between 1 and 70. If you want to disable set the hexadecimal value to FFFFFFFF.

Microsoft warns that if you increase the value above 10 you may experience playback quality issues. Depending on your network setup, it is worth experimenting.

After making any changes a restart is needed.


7 - Quick Aero Speed Tip

This tweak can easily improve vista's performance.

Click on the desktop and select Personalize.

Select Windows Color and Appearance.

Uncheck Enable Transparency.

8 - Performance Monitor

Windows Vista includes a new and improved Performance Monitor that will allow you to track many system stats much easier than the traditional performance monitor in Windows XP.

Click on the Start Button.

Key in Performance Monitor.

Hit Enter.


9 - Aero Speed Boost

These tweaks can improve the looks and performance of vista.

Open the start menu, and type in SystemPropertiesPerformance. Hit enter.

Here you can adjust your system for best visuals or performance. I have mine all unchecked with
Use visual styles of windows and buttons
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Show thumbnails instead of icons
Checked.

10 - Speed up external hard drives

Windows Vista operates external hard drives that are connected with USB differently than internal drives. Write caching is disabled so that you can safely remove the drive at almost any time. This is a great feature for USB thumb drives that are frequently inserted and removed from your computer. But if you have a large hard drive that is in an external enclosure that you never disconnect from your computer, write caching is also disabled which can decrease performance. This tweak is going to show you how to increase the performance of your external hard drives by turning write caching back on as well as activating advanced performance

Click on the start button, then right click on Computer and select Manage.

Click on Device Manager on the side menu.

Expand Disk drives and locate your external drive from the list.

Right click on the drive and select Properties.

On the Policies tab, select Optimize for performance.

Next, check Enable write caching on the disk and Enable advanced
performance as shown below.

Hit OK, and reboot.

11 - Speed up start menu search

Increas the speed of the search on the windows vista start menu.

When a users enters text in the search box on the start panel Windows automatically searches the file index as well. The file index includes all of the searchable files on your hard drive and can be quite large. One way to speed up searching through your start menu applications is to narrow the scope of the search so that it does not include hard drive files.

Prevent Start Menu Searches from searching the File index:

Open Registry Editor (regedit).

Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer and finally Advanced.

Find and right click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify.

Set the Value to 0.

Restart the Explorer.exe process or just reboot your computer.


12 - Stop auto-startup items

There are two ways to stop applications that start when you startup your computer at login. You can use the System Configuration Utility or the new Software Explorer in Windows Defender. Take a look at the two sections to get control over your startup applications and speed up your computer:

Disabling auto-start applications with the System Configuration Utility

Click on the Start Button and key in msconfig and hit Enter.

Click on the Startup tab.

Remove the check next to any items that you do not want to startup and click OK.

Disabling auto-start applications with Windows Defender

Click on the Start Button and type in Windows Defender and hit Enter.
Click on the Tools from the top menu bar.
Click on Software Explorer.
Hit Show for All Users.
Select an application and then click either Remove or Disable.

13 - Tweak Indexing Options for More Performance

The indexing service in Windows Vista is responsible for making those search boxes all over the operating system lightening fast. By default Windows automatically indexes all files in your user profile folders, start menu and any files you have setup for offline access. If you have a lot of files in these locations and the files change often you can be putting a heavy load on the indexing service. For maximum performance when using Windows Vista I recommend disabling indexing for all other locations other than the Start Menu. This will lessen the background work that Windows Vista has to do. It will also slow down your searches of other locations but that is the price you must pay for this performance benefit.

Follow these steps to tweak the indexing locations:

Click on the Start Button and key in Indexing Options and hit Enter. Indexing Options will now load.

Hit the Modify button.

Next, click on Show all locations.

Scroll through the tree-view and uncheck any folders you do not want to be indexed. When you are finished, click OK.

If you want to change advanced indexing settings such as what file types are indexed click on the Advanced button. Otherwise hit Close.


14 - Change desktop icons size

Change the size of the icons on your vista desktop

Click and empty space on your desktop, hold Ctrl and scroll your mouse wheel to increase/decrease the icon sizes.


15 - Speed up Flip3D

This tip will be useful for notebook owners or anyone whose PC is packing less than stellar graphics processing power. The Flip3D animation can bog down weaker graphics cards if it has to flip a lot of windows, so this is a tweak that lets you set the number of windows that will be rendered in 3D at one time.

Click on the Start Button, type regedit in the Search bar, and press Enter.

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, and DWM.

Create a new DWORD and call it Max3DWindows.

Set the value of this to something between four and nine (“4” and “9”) depending on the performance of your card (a higher number requires more video card power). You should then feel free to experiment to find the best value for your computer. Restart your PC to finalize the change.


16 - Partition drives in Vista

Back in the XP days, if one wanted to partition a drive from within the OS, he had to purchase expensive, third-party software to do so. Not anymore. Vista includes built-in drive partitioning which is – we can’t believe we’re saying this – totally awesome. The reason it’s so awesome is that you can partition drives on the fly, from within Windows. For example, if you have a 400GB hard drive with 200GB of free space, you can shrink the original 400GB partition down to whatever size you want, and then create a new partition out of the new unpartitioned space. Here’s how you do it.

Right-click My Computer, select Manage, and click on Disk Management. You will see all of your volumes listed.

Right-click whatever volume you want to shrink, and click “Shrink Volume.” (You can also extend volumes as well.)

Type in the size of the partition, then click Shrink. After a few seconds, the partition will be shrunk, and you’ll now have a whole lot of unallocated space.

Right-click it and select “New Simple Volume.” We fooled around with this utility, both shrinking and expanding volumes that had data on them and i experienced no data loss or problems whatsoever.


17 - Turn off unneeded Windows features

This one is self-explanatory. Do you need Tablet PC components installed? Probably not, unless you are using a Tablet PC. So turn off whatever you don’t need in the name of keeping your Windows install as lean as possible.

Click Start, Control Panel, then under Programs at the bottom click “Uninstall a Program.” In the left-hand pane you’ll see “Turn Windows Features on or off.”

Uncheck whatever you don’t need.


18 - Enable Aero mouse pointers

This is odd. Microsoft made new Aero-based mouse pointers for Vista, but the default mouse pointer is the old 3D white scheme.

To enable the new mouse pointers and animations, right-click the desktop, select Personalize, then Mouse Pointers.

Click on the drop-down box under the word Scheme, and select Windows Aero (system scheme). Click OK.


19 - Disable Shortcut Icon Arrow Overlay in Windows Vista

The shortcut icons in Windows Vista have Huge arrows on them. If you are worried about the look of your desktop, you may not want to see the ugly arrows.

Link


20 - User Account Control

User Account Control or UAC is a new feature in Vista that asks for permission to do system software tasks and also run programs. Unfortunately, this security feature is also annoying. I cannot predict the future of your system or what kind of security vulnerabilities will be used to attack systems, and as such, you need to decide for yourself if you desire to keep UAC active, but if you wish to disable it, here is how I do it:

Head to Start
Select Control Panel
Select System and Maintenance
Select Administrative Tools
Select the System Configuration button
Select the Continue button (if UAC is active)
Select the Tools Tab
Select "Disable UAC"
Select the Launch button
Select the Ok button to close the panel

You will have to reboot for the setting to take effect.


21 - Windows Sidebar

The new Windows Vista Sidebar uses between 12MB and 20MB of RAM with the default 3 Gadgets and no news headline feed.

Locate the Windows Sidebar icon in the System Tray (lower right, near the clock display)
Show hidden icons if it is not displayed
Right click the icon to bring up the context menu
Select Properties
Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts
Select the Ok button to apply the settings

You can disable the Sidebar also by:

Right click on an unused area of the Sidebar (between Gadgets or at the bottom) to bring up the context menu
Select Properties
Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts
Select the Ok button to apply the settings

If you wish to close the Sidebar now:

Locate the Windows Sidebar icon in the System Tray (lower right, near the clock display)
Show hidden icons if it is not displayed
Right click the icon to bring up the context menu
Select Exit

or:

Right click on an unused area of the Sidebar (between Gadgets or at the bottom) to bring up the context menu
Select Exit



22 - Services

Adjust for any additional unneeded services. Windows Vista Services.

Head to Start
Select Control Panel
Select System and Maintenance
Select Administrative Tools
Select Services
Select a service to adjust by double-clicking
In the General tab, Startup type section, select Automatic (Delayed Start), Automatic, Manual or Disabled.

If you like, you can also do: Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Run --> type in services.msc --> Select OK.

After configuring all services that you desire to change, reboot to see the effects of your tweaking.

23 - Turn off Remote Differential Compression

Remote Differential Compression measures the changes in files over a network to transfer them with minimal bandwidth rather than transferring an entire file that has previously been moved. By constantly checking for file changes, this service can hinder system performance.

To disable this service:

Open Control Panel
Switch to Classic View
Select Program Features
Choose Turn Windows features on and off
Scroll down and uncheck Remote Differential Compression

24 - Turn off Automatic Windows Defender Operation

Windows Defender real-time protection against malware continues to run despite having Automatic operation disabled.

To disable this feature:

Open Control Panel
Select Windows Defender
Choose Tools from the top menu
Select Options
Uncheck Auto Start at the bottom of the window



25 - Turn off Automatic Disk Defragmentation

Windows Vista and its always-on defragment feature isn’t really that necessary and can cause system slow down. Just remember to run a defrag manually every week or so.

To disable this:

Click Start then Computer
Right Click the C: Drive
Click on Properties
Select the Tools Tab
Click on Defragment Now
Uncheck Run on a schedule



26 - Turn off Windows Hibernation

Windows hibernation background services can use a large amount of system resources. If you don’t use the Hibernate feature on a regular basis you may want to disable it to give Vista a performance boost.

To disable Hibernation:

Select the Control Panel then Power Options
Click Change Plan Settings
Click on Change Advanced Power Settings
Expand the Sleep selection
Expand the Hibernate After selection
Crank the selector down to zero
Click Apply


27 - Turn off System Restore

Analysis and restore point creation by Windows Vista can eat a fair amount of system resources. Disabling this service will obviously mean the system restore feature in Vista will not be available in the event of a system crash. Change this at your own risk.

To disable this service:

Control Panel > System
Click System Protection on the left panel
Uncheck the main system drive
Agree to the confirmation

28 - Add an elevated Command Prompt

Windows power users know that a command prompt (Cmd.exe) is the fastest way to many tasks–much faster than digging through menus and tabbed dialog boxes. In Windows Vista, this is more true than ever, thanks to User Account Control. To get maximum mileage out of the command prompt, add a shortcut to the Start menu and configure it to run as an Administrator. Here's how:

Click Start and type cmd in the Search box. This should produce a list consisting of one entry: the shortcut to the Windows Command Processor, cmd.
Right-click the cmd shortcut and choose Pin to Start Menu.
Click Start again. Right-click the Command Prompt shortcut you just added to the Start menu and choose Properties.
Click the Advanced button and click to select the Run as administrator checkbox.
Click OK to save your changes.

That's all for now, i hope this guide was useful in some way.

Please remember, i didn't write most of these guides myself.

 

[MDS]

im pretty sure this should go in user education, not tech support. good guide tho

 

[The Dark]

im pretty sure this should go in user education, not tech support. good guide tho

Ye possibly, ill contact a mod. See if they can check.

 

[wtp]

Very nice guide.

 

[Eric]

When you get a chance, post this in the UE section. I'll approve it

 

[The Dark]

Done Eric, thanks everyone