Whether you upgrade an older PC to Windows Vista or have bought a new PC with Vista installed, you might think the operating system doesn’t run as quickly as it should. You’ll learn more than a dozen things you can do to speed up your Windows Vista computer, from simple changes you may not have thought of to ways to streamline the inner workings of your computer. Don’t worry–we’ll walk you through it step by step.
Step 1: Software
Alert:
We only offer recommendations for speeding up the performance of your Windows Vista PC. Before you do any troubleshooting or changing to your PC settings, we recommend that you do a full backup of all your files.
While Windows Vista makes many improvements to security and other features, it also includes its fair share of programs that use a PC’s resources you may not want to run. In this step, we’ll show you what programs in Vista you can turn off to free up system resources.
Trialware
Let’s start with your hard drive to remove some unnecessary files. The more programs on your hard drive, the longer it takes a PC to find anything.
Vista comes with many software packages preinstalled; you can decide which you want to run or disable.
- Click your Start button on the bottom left hand of your screen, then choose Control Panel.
- Double click “Programs and Features” (which used to be called “Add or Remove Programs” in Windows XP).
You’ll see a list of all the programs that came preinstalled with your new PC. Some of these software packages are “trialware”, in which you may have 30 days to try the software. Often, this software is bundled with Vista from your PC manufacturer or Microsoft. It’s up to you whether you want to try the software or delete it from your PC.
Note:
Trialware is often referred to as crapware or junkware. Critics complain that crapware is unwanted, useless, and sometimes hard to remove by design–all the while taking up valuable disk space. Most crapware is operational for a trial period in hopes of persuading the user into buying the full version.
When you’re done, it’s time to disable some unnecessary software that comes with Windows itself.
From the Programs and Features window.
- Click “Turn Windows features on or off” on the left side panel.
- User Account Control will ask you to confirm; do so.
- You’ll get a list of Windows built-in software, much of which you’ll never use. Uncheck whatever you don’t need.
If you’re not sure whether you need something or not, hover your mouse over it to get a description. Some likely candidates for removal are Games, Indexing Service, Print Services, Tablet PC Optional Components (unless you have a tablet PC), Telnet Client and Telnet Server, and Windows Fax and Scan. If you still aren’t sure, leave it alone.
Disk cleanup
Next, if you’ve been using your PC for a while, let Windows Vista free up file space on your hard drive.
- Click your Start orb, then Computer.
- Right-click on your hard drive.
- On the General tab, choose Properties.
- Click “Disk Cleanup”.
- In a few moments, you’ll get a list of what Windows doesn’t need anymore. Make sure all the boxes are checked, then click OK. you’ll be asked to confirm your choices; click Delete Files.
Step 2: Aero tweaks
User interface
It takes a lot of computer horsepower to create graphics-rich interfaces, whether it’s the rich detail of a video game, or simply the smooth opening and closing of windows.
In some cases–video games for example–you need as much detail as possible. That’s part of the fun. In day-to-day use, though, rich graphics simply slow down your computer.
Most modern computers have a second processor dedicated solely to graphics. Manufacturers of high-end video cards, for example, will tout their speed and amount of RAM on their products the same way computer makers do.
Having that kind of graphics horsepower is especially important with Windows Vista, which is specifically designed to take advantage of it.
There are two components to Windows Vista’s graphics that you can make changes to. First is the big one: The visual styles, which set the overall look of your system. There are four choices: Windows Aero, Windows Vista Basic, Windows Standard, Windows Classic.
- Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Personalize.
- Click Window Color and Appearance.
If your computer supports Aero and it’s turned on, you’ll see a row of boxes showing the different colors you can choose for your windows.
If your computer doesn’t support Aero (or it’s not on), you’ll see a box labeled “Appearance Settings” showing some sample windows and listing color schemes.
Running Aero is actually a good thing in terms of system resources. In older versions of windows, the more graphics displayed, the slower the computer. So you might think that Windows Classic, which has the fewest bells and whistles, will give you the fastest performance. But that’s not exactly true for Vista.
Both the Windows Aero and Windows Vista Basic (a.k.a. Aero Lite) use your computer’s graphics card, not the computer’s processor, to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to the display. Using one of those–as opposed to Standard or Classic–actually lets your computer do less work.
You can switch to Windows Vista Basic for most of Aero’s graphics; that also saves resources. Here’s how:
- From that Window Color and Appearance box, click “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.
- Choose Windows Vista Basic (you can click “Advanced” if you want to tweak the settings).
If you want to keep all of Aero’s bells and whistles, you can still get a performance boost if you’re willing to give up transparency. Here’s how:
- Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Personalize.
- Click Window Color and Appearance.
- Uncheck “Enable transparency”.
To review if your computer and your version of Vista support Aero, the following settings will speed up Vista:
Fastest: Use Windows Vista Basic.
Faster: Use Windows Aero with transparency turned off.
Fast: Use Windows Aero.
Slow: Use Windows Standard or Windows Classic.
Tune ups without Aero
What if your computer doesn’t support Aero? Whether or not you use Aero, there are still a few things you can do to get some more speed. You can disable some of the graphics effects that can look nice, but really don’t add much. Here’s how:
- Open Control Panel.
- Choose “Performance and System Tools”.
- Click “Adjust visual effects”.
- You can now either choose “Adjust for best performance”, or you can choose Custom and pick the effects you want to keep.
Suggestion: Keep “Smooth edges of screen fonts” and “Use visual styles on windows and buttons” or the result might look awful. Everything else is up to you.
Finally, while Vista’s Sidebar can be a cool thing–let’s face it, that clock is kind of nice–it’s also a resource hog. It slows your computer. Disable it.
- Right-click on the Sidebar (or, if it’s not visible, choose “Windows Sidebar Properties” from the Control Panel).
- Uncheck “Start Sidebar when Windows starts”.
- Click OK.
- If the Sidebar is currently open, right-click on it and choose Close Sidebar.
Step 3: System registry, part 1
Back up Registry
Before you do anything in this section, we strongly recommend you do two things: 1) back up your data, and 2) create a Protection Point.
To create a Protection Point:
- From your Control Panel choose System.
- On the left side, click “System protection”.
- Make sure your hard drive is checked, then click the Create button on the bottom right. This will save all your current registry settings, so if you make a mistake you can undo your changes.
- It may take a minute or two. When it’s done, click OK to close the System Properties box.
Note:
Always back up your registry before making changes.
Registry clean-up
Now it’s time to tackle the registry.
The registry is essentially a huge database of thousands of settings for Windows itself and most of your software. When you install or even use a program, it makes changes to the registry, but when you uninstall something it often leaves junk behind, filling the registry with garbage. Luckily, there are a bunch of good registry cleaners out there that will seek and let you destroy useless stuff.
We recommend the following Vista-compatible system utilities, available at Download.com
A good one to try is ToniArts EasyCleaner. It’s both free and easy to use.
Here’s what you do:
- Download and install a registry cleaner for Vista. When that’s done, start the program to get a grid of 16 things to choose from.
- Click the registry button.
- Click the Find button on the bottom. EasyCleaner will search your registry for the leftovers of old programs and other detritus. This could take several minutes.
- When it’s done, the Delete All button will become clickable. Click it.
- Click Yes to say you really want to delete the bad entries.
- That’s it! Click Close and let’s move on.
Search indexing
You might notice that your computer’s hard drive is busy a lot, even when you’re not doing anything. That could be because Vista is busy indexing all the contents of your drive in case you need to search for something.
The good thing about Vista’s indexing system is it lets you find things on your computer very quickly when you need to. The downside is if you don’t search a lot, your computer’s time and resources are wasted doing that.
If you search your drive only occasionally, here’s a good way to speed things up:
From your Control Panel choose “Indexing Options”.
- Hit the Modify button. A dialog box with two boxes inside it will appear.
- In the bottom of those two boxes will be a list of locations on your hard drive that Vista is indexing. One at a time, click each one of those “Included Locations” except Start Menu.
- As you click each one, it will appear in the top box with a check mark next to it. Uncheck it. You should end up with only Start Menu listed as an indexed location.
- Click OK, then close the Indexing Options box.
Feel like diving into the Registry for a quick change that might make a noticeable difference? Try this to speed up how quickly some program menus appear when you click on them:
- Click your Start orb, then click Run.
- Enter regedit to start the Registry Editor.
You’re now going to make your way through several levels of the registry.
- Click anywhere in the left-hand pane, then click Ctrl-Home to make sure you’re at the very top.
- There will be five sections under “Computer”, all beginning with “HKEY_”.
- Click on the little arrow next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
- Click on the little arrow next to Control Panel.
- Click the word “Desktop”.
- On the right side, double-click “MenuShowDelay”.
- In the box that appears, enter 0 (that’s a zero) in the box labeled “Value data”.
- Click OK, then close the Registry Editor.
Step 4: System registry, part 2
You may be working in a program and wondering why it runs so slowly–especially if you don’t have any other programs open. The problem is that when Windows boots up, a lot of programs are automatically loaded to run “in the background” where you can’t see. Of course, some of these are quite valuable (virus protection, for instance), but many are useless and simply eating up your system resources for no reason.
Here’s how to get rid of these unnecessary startup programs:
The first and easiest way to seek and destroy unnecessary startup programs is to look in your Startup folder.
- Click the Start button, then choose All Programs (if you’re using the classic Start menu, you’ll click “Programs” instead).
- Click the Startup folder.
- The list of programs that automatically start will appear. Check this list, and if you see something you don’t want or need to start automatically–such as some Microsoft Office task–right-click it and choose Delete.
- Repeat as necessary.
Now let’s go a little deeper and remove some programs that start automatically without appearing in your Startup folder. Here’s how:
- Click your Start orb.
- Click “Run”.
- In the box that appears, enter msconfig.
- Click the Startup tab.
You’ll see a list of all the programs that start automatically with Windows. Most of these should start: Your antivirus program, several Windows programs, maybe a driver or two. But some things just waste resources.
Most notorious for loading themselves are media players such as Quicktime and RealPlayer. There’s no need for them to be loaded until you need them. If you see things like that, uncheck them and click the Apply button. When you’re done, click OK.
That done, let’s go even deeper. Besides programs that run automatically when you start up, Windows also launches services–internal software that does important things, such as making your network run, managing users, and a host of other things.
But there are some services you just don’t need; running them is a waste of resources. Here’s how to find and reduce them:
- Click the Start button, then Run.
- Enter services.msc in the box.
The screen that pops up is a bit intimidating at first, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Services are programs that run in the background, helping your computer work. They do things like make sure you’re connected to the network, allow your mouse to work, and so on.
The Services list shows everyone that’s on your machine and tells you whether it starts automatically or manually, among other things. Some of the services that start automatically are unnecessary, so we’ll stop them. Here’s how:
- Click the Extended tab on the bottom, which will create a space that will give you a description of each service.
- Click on the words “Startup Type” at the top of that column, which will sort the services. The ones that say “Automatic” are, obviously, the ones that start when Windows does. They’re the only ones you care about.
Alert:
Some services are critical for your computer to run. So don’t disable anything that’s not on the list below unless you’re absolutely sure that it’s an expendable item.
You can choose to disable the following non-critical items without encountering problems. Find out what each does before disabling, click on them. Some of these items are specific to Vista, while others are also found in Windows XP.
- COM+ Event System
- Cryptographic Services
- DFS Replication
- Computer Browser
- Distributed Link Tracking Client
- IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules
- IP Helper
- IPsec Policy Agent
- KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator
- Offline Files
- Remote Registry
- Secondary Logon
- SSDP Discovery
- Tablet PC Input Service (Unless you have a Tablet PC)
- Terminal Services
- UPnP Device Host
- Windows Error Reporting Service (no more asking you to notify Microsoft when there’s a crash!)
One at a time, find each one on the list and double-click it. A dialog box will appear. In it will be a drop-down menu next to “Startup type” that is probably set to Automatic.
Change it to Manual and click OK. This way the service will start only if it’s needed, not all the time.
Then under Service status, click Stop.
Click OK and go to the next service on the list.
Step 5: Hardware and Vista
Besides making the changes to your system that we’ve explained, there are some things you can buy that can make a big difference.
The first and most basic is more memory. In general, the more RAM your computer has, the faster Vista will perform.
Think of your hard drive as a pantry and your RAM as the dining room table. The bigger the table, the more food you can have out at once. You can have a giant pantry (hard drive), but if you have a tiny table (little RAM) you can’t cook big meals.
Adding memory, which is a lot less expensive than it used to be, is a simple way to improve performance if you have 1GB of RAM or less. (If you have more than 1GB of RAM, adding memory will help, but not as noticeably.) Adding or replacing RAM is relatively simple to do: You simply plug some chips into sockets on your computer’s motherboard.
The challenge, however, is getting the correct memory module for your PC. Just about every computer is different. Some are already equipped with plenty of memory, while others have very little. And there are a lot of different types of memory, so you need to be sure to get the exact right module for your system.
Note:
Though Microsoft has published detailed system requirements for Vista, CNET and most experts recommend a higher set of minimum specs to run Vista properly.
If you don’t want to go through the trouble of finding and installing more memory, you can take advantage of a Vista feature called ReadyBoost. If you have a high-speed USB flash drive, Vista can use it the way it uses internal memory. It’s not as fast, but on low-memory machines it can make a lot of difference.
Here’s what you need:
- A USB flash drive with at least the same amount of memory as the RAM on your computer. So if you have 512MB of RAM, you want at least a 512MB flash drive, preferably even larger.
- The memory card must be high-speed. The ones you can buy in your local big-box store probably won’t cut it. Look for devices from major brands such as Lexar or SanDisk that are designed for ReadyBoost.
A 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro, which the company says meets ReadyBoost’s requirements, costs only about
S$50, so we’re not talking about a major investment.When you plug the flash drive into your computer, Vista will ask what you want to do with it. Choose “Speed up my system” and follow the instructions.
Note that ReadyBoost makes very little difference on machines with a lot of memory, but it’s a great way to speed up a lower-end system.
Another hardware investment you might want to make is a more powerful video card. Today, video cards are computers in their own right, and Vista takes advantage of them by letting them handle the display so your computer itself has more power available for running your software.
A graphics card with at least 256MB of RAM based on technology from either ATI or Nvidia can make a big difference, especially if you’re into video games or photo or video editing. You can spend
S$500 or more for a top-of-the-line card, but a midrange model such as the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro or one using Nvidia ’s GeForce 7600 chip set (both about
S$300) can make a tremendous difference.Finally, if you have either a laptop or an uninterruptible power supply for your desktop, Vista offers a way to speed up your hard drive. (The downside is, if there’s a sudden power outage you can lose data, which is why you need a laptop or a battery backup.)
- From your Control Panel, double-click Device Manager.
- Click the plus sign next to “Disk drives”.
- Look for your hard drive on the list. It should be obvious–it won’t be a USB device, for example.
- Double-click it.
- Click the Policies tab.
- Check “Enable write caching on the disk” (if it isn’t already checked) and “Enable advanced performance”.
- Click “OK” and close Device Manager.
Step 6: Maintenance and drivers
Defrag
Just like your car should have occasional tune-ups, your computer needs them as well. If you’ve followed the instructions in these lessons, your computer should be running better and faster. But you’ll still need to tune it up once in a while.
The biggest and simplest thing, akin to changing your car’s oil, is defragmenting–or defragging–your hard drive. It’s a good idea to do this about once a month.
When your computer stores files on your drive, it puts them in whatever empty space is available. The result is that over time individual files are actually split up and stored in several places on the drive. (Imagine a library where the different chapters of a book are on different shelves.)
Defragging puts those pieces together so your computer spends less time accessing the files. The procedure is simple:
- Shut down any running programs.
- Disable your screensaver by right-clicking anywhere on your desktop, choosing Personalize, then clicking Screen Saver. Set it to “None”.
- Click the Start orb and then Computer; right-click on your hard drive.
- Choose Properties, then click the Tools tab.
- Click “Defragment Now”.
- In the box that appears, it’s a good idea to check “Run on a schedule” to have Windows defrag your drive automatically every month.
Drivers
You should also keep your drivers updated. Drivers are pieces of software that let your computer work with your hardware. There are printer drivers, videocard drivers, audio drivers, and so on.
Hardware manufacturers often update this software, but don’t always send those updated out automatically.
Here’s what to do:
From your Control Panel, double-click Windows Update.
Click “Change settings” on the left side.
Make sure “Install updates automatically” is checked, and that it installs them every day.
Make sure both “Include recommended updates” is checked–that will tell Windows to get recommended updates as well as critical ones.
Click OK.
Back on the Windows Update screen, click “Check for updates” and let it do its thing.
Finally, every month or two, clean out your files and use a registry cleaner to keep your registry up to speed.
The measures we’ve covered in this course will help speed your computer, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of other changes you can make, and the only limitation is how deep you’re willing to delve into your system.
A number of Web sites are dedicated to helping people squeeze every last drop of speed from their machines. Searching for “speed up Vista” or “Windows Vista speed tweaks” will help you find some.
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