Vista - Performance Tweaks

This is a list of tweaks that will show you how to speed up the performance of Vista.


Tweak 1

This tip “enhances” drive performance by allowing the drive in question to perform more write caching to system memory.

Click the Start Orb, type Device Manager in the search bar and hit enter, open up the Disk drives tree, right-click a drive, and select Properties. Go to the Policies tab and check Enable Advanced Performance. Click OK.


Tweak 2

This tweak disables the vista search index which results in a faster pc with less noise as the hard drive is being used less. One down side to this tweak is that searches will take longer.

Click on the start orb then click on Computer Right click on the hard drive and click on Properties. Uncheck the Index this drive for faster searching box then click on Apply. Next select Apply changes to drive, subfolders, and files and click on OK


Tweak 3

This tweak enhances the stability of Vista by opening every folder in a separate part of memory.

Click the Starb Orb and then click on Computer. Click on the Organize button and then choose Folder and Search Options.When the Folder Options multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the View tab then check Launch folder windows in a separate process. Click OK to close the dialog box.


Tweak 4

This tweak is for setting a paging file. By doing this Vista is relieved of the need to manage the paging file which leads to more efficient operation.

Click on the Start Orb and right click on Computer.Click on properties then in the left-hand pane, choose advanced system settings. Click the advanced tab, then under the performance heading click on settings... Next click advanced tab then under the virtual memory heading click change...

Uncheck automatically manage paging file size for all drives at the top then highlight the drive that contains your paging file. Select the custom size option and now enter in an appropriate amount of space in the minimum and maximum boxes. A good guideline is to set the min and max amounts to be the same size and set it at a minimum of 4096 for the min amd max size.Click Set and OK.


Tweak 5

This step removes uneeded start up programmes. Every programme that starts automatically with vista is slowing it down and so its a good idea to use the steps below to reduce the amount to under 5 startup entries.

Click the vista start orb and in the search bar type Windows Defender and hit enter. In Windows Defender, click Tools at the top and then click Software Explorer. Click the Show for all users button and under Category:, make sure that Startup Programs is selected. Next click on the startup program you want to change and click on the Remove button and continue to do that till you have the minimum thats needed.


Tweak 6

Services for windows are running from the moment you start your pc but in Vista they have more than whats needed starting automatically causing a reduction in performance. Use the service list over at Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Service Configurations by Black Viper to reduce the amount starting automatically and change the ones not needed to a Manual setting.

To open the servies window click on the Start Orb and in the search bar type services and press Enter. Right click on the service you want to disable or enable and click on Properties.