Advice for optimizing Vista Home Premium 32

mojowon said:

Hey Guys,

I love this site with all the great help here. I have a Vista Home Premium 32 bit on my Toshiba laptop. There is 1 GB of Ram. I have performed a complete system recovery due to very slow performance and frustrating freezing episodes. ​

My first question is: 1) Without having to buy additional RAM, are there things I can do to lower the demand on Ram use to make the system more efficient with less freezing and crashing?
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html

My second question is: 1) what is the recommended sequence of steps to restore the computer after the recovery (i.e., antivirus, java updates, adobe updates, driver updates, and any other necessary updates).

Update SPs and any windows updates including Security updates, update drivers (for software etc) The rest can be done as needed.

My third question is: 2) what is the recommended method to insure total update of all drivers, applications, software, etc. (is there free software to download all the updates besides the Windows Update provided for by Vista?)
There is software but it is not recommened.What I do, at a convenient schedule is to go to search and type cmd, in cmd type driverquery. You will see all your drivers and dates. Any older than 2008 should be updated.

My fourth and final question is 3) my C drive does not have a recovery partition. I want to create a partition for system recovery instead of using recovery discs. Is there a way to create a recovery partition using available free software. Can anyone tell me what all I need and the steps used to create a recovery partition that works from when I reboot the system into a recovery mode?
You do not need a a recovery partition, there is something better. Download the free macrium reflect. On an external hard drive make a back up of your hard drive. If you update it once a month, you will have a current back up and will not have to reinstall anything.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide. You guys are great and very appreciated. :D

Click to expand...

Hope this helps

Rich, I tried the driver query in the cmd and it pops up with the information, but it quickly disappears. How can I get it to stay so I can read it? Thank you again.

make driverquery one word

To maintain your computer

10 Tips on How to Properly Maintain Your Computer

Steps that I did not notice on the guide include:

Running a scan disc before doing a defrag

Using Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes.

Making System Restore points, at least once a week

Makaing a system Image once a month (varies by user)

Not relying on your A/V common sense, should prevail. You know of many sites can cause a problem.

Do not use any reg cleaning or optimizing software.

Download and use Ccleaner about once every two months. Untick any registry entries.
http://www.piriform.com/

If you follow these instructions, you will be trouble free for a long time to come.

Be sure to back up your hard drive about once a month (varies by user) and to keeep system restore points up to date.

You can also put your computer into performance mode... Run Windows Vista in High Performance Mode

Try BitDefender for backing up and also you can clean up your computer. This is a best all rounder for you. Its an anti virus etc... software, like Norton or eset gui.