Vista Tutorial - Visual Effects Options

**Brink**

How to Change the Visual Effects Options for Appearance and Performance in Vista

Information

The Visual Effects include most of the special effects in Vista. Select the settings you want to use for the appearance and performance of Vista. You can choose which visual effects to turn off, one by one, or you can let Windows choose a bunch for you. There are 20 visual effects you can control, such as the transparent glass look, the way menus open or close, and whether shadows are displayed.

Tip

If Vista is running slowly, you can speed it up by disabling some of its visual effects. It comes down to appearance versus performance. Would you rather have Vista run faster or look prettier? If your PC is fast enough, you don’t have to make this tradeoff, but if your computer is just barely powerful enough for Windows Vista, it can be useful to scale back on the visual bells and whistles to gain some performance.

WARNING

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR VISTA :

Vista Home Basic

Processor: 1GHz (32 or 64 bit)
System Memory (RAM): 512MB
Hard Drive: 20GB with 15GB available for Vista
Video Card: 32MB Memory and DirectX 9 Support
DVD-ROM Drive

Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate

Processor: 1GHz (32 or 64 bit)
System Memory (RAM): 1GB
Hard Drive: 40GB with 15GB available for Vista
Video Card: 128MB Memory, DirectX 9 Support with: WDDM Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0, 32bits per pixel
DVD-ROM Drive

RELATED LINKS:

Here's How:

WARNING

If you make any changes in the Ease of Access Center in the Control Panel (Classic View), then the visual effects settings will automatically be reset to the default settings. You will then need to make any changes that you have made to the visual effects settings below again.

1. Open Control Panel. (Classic View)

2. Click on the System icon.
A) Go to step 5.

OR

3. Open the Start Menu.

4. Right click on Computer and click on Properties.

5. Click on the Advanced system settings link. (See screenshot below)

6. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.

7. Under Performance, click on the Settings button. (See screenshot below)

8. Under Visual Effects, dot Custom: and check the ones you want, and uncheck the ones you do not want. (See screenshots below)
NOTE: If you dot Adjust for best perfomance, then you may have to turn ClearType font smoothing on again.

Tip

If you want to help improve performance, then these are the most common ones to uncheck:
Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing

Fade or slide menus into view

Fade or slide tooltips into view

Fade out menu items after clicking

Show shadows under menus

Slide open combo boxes

Slide taskbar buttons

Use a background image for each folder type

Top and Bottom half of list:

9. Click on Apply and on OK to apply changes.

10. Click on OK to close window from below step 7.

11. Close window from below step 5.

That's it,
Shawn

ronspruell · 01-13-2008

I had almost all of the check boxes unchecked to speed my system up. I did not have transparent unchecked but I did uncheck it and the box for color change on the icons is still grayed out. Microsoft has a long way to go yet. There should be a way to change the font color since they know the background would be changed by users. All I want right now and I did say now is a way to change the font color from white to black even if I have to edit the registry. If this be the Case I will need to know where and what to put in to change the font color. Maybe in the next upgrade or update they will add this little nicety.
Thanks for the help thou.

Ron Spruell Sr.

**Brink** · 01-13-2008

Ron,

Found a solution for you. See the original post:

Desktop Icon font color change

Shawn

**ivo2296** · 02-14-2008

If you check Adjust for best perfomance then you might need to re-enable Clear type - tested on Vista 64-bit.

**Brink** · 02-14-2008

Hi ivo2296,

Nice tip. It has been added to the tutorial to help others.

Thank you,
Shawn

VMLENZA · 08-06-2008

Killer!!

Katrocks · 08-07-2008

I do not have the option"Show Thumbnails Instead Of Icons" I believe I had it at one time but not now, in my options and never have, and I would like to see Thumbnails How do I correct this? any ideas?

**Brink** · 08-07-2008

Hello Katrocks,

See if you can enable thumbnail using Method One in this tutorial instead using Folder Options.

Thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Katrocks · 08-07-2008

Hey!! Shawn awesome!! got my thumbnails back!! Followed the method of merging the reg values and also deleting the "Disable Thumbnail" string Thankx allot super Forum! have a great day

**Brink** · 08-07-2008

Your welcome Katrocks. I'm happy to hear that you got them back.

Shawn