Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine?
- 1/11/08 3:13 PM
Why the Vista Bashing?
by Launchpad_72 - 12/14/07 11:05 PM In reply to: Vista, Cnet loves to hate on it by rizzo420I too am confused with all the Vista bashing going on here. XP needed time to let the hardware catch up, and the same thing is happening here. It's not "bad", it just needs time. Remember how much everybody fought XP? Now everyone loves it. This is no different.
And for you Mac lovers, I *use* a Mac Mini as well, but I find myself much more frustrated with my Mac than my PC. It is much slower, and Mac's security prompts are a lot more invasive than Vista's UAC. Oh, and it's a lot less versatile, too.
Those that live in a glass house shouldn't throw stones.
No, Launchpad, Your statement is incorrect!
by john3347 - 1/4/08 6:15 PM In reply to: Why the Vista Bashing? by Launchpad_72Everybody doesn't "love XP". many, many new Vista users never used anything prior to XP and therefore your statement of loving XP is only relative. I love Windows 2000 Pro first and Windows 98 SE second. Everything since these OS's have been less stable and more "hoggish" without really providing any remarkable improvement in getting work done. I am still using programs from Windows 3.11 on my XP machine because the programs do what I need done. Vista is only compared against XP because XP is the OS that Vista is trying to replace. Guess what? Sadly, these two old programs of mine will not run on Vista.
hi its me da stranger
by jebus714 - 12/14/07 8:31 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i have the same question, any answes yet??
let me know please
How to spped your Vista up
by mrobinsonjr - 12/14/07 8:43 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i have windows vista home premium
what i did is i went to www.ccleaner.com clicked the download link and i clicked on alternative download. then i installed ccleaner. then i run the cleaner by clicking on run cleaner near the bottom right corner. then i deleted some of my startup programs. like programs that i did not use. them programs startup when windows starts and they can slow down the computer. delete the ones you do not use. then defragment the hard drive with disk defragmenter. to do this, click the vista flag click on all programs, click on accessories, system tools, disk defragmenter. i used diskeeper. it is a whole lot better than the vista one.
that fixed my vista and it should fix yours as well. Happy Holidays!!
c0mput3r g33k
by MingoDynasty - 12/14/07 8:43 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hey there Darren. Not to offend you or anything, but it'd be helpful to go much more in depth. You say 2GB of ram, but is it dual channelled? What DDR2 is it? Or is it DDR3? Or plain DDR? What about the latencies? What video card do you have? (integrated gpus don't count) You say you have a fast processor, but what model is it?
There are a number of things to consider when you're trying to speed up your PC, in which a hardware fix may or not do. Aside from hardware, some other ways such as removing your paging file. Long story short, paging file is like ram, but on your hard drive. And since ram is much much faster than hard drives, it'd be best to disable it for faster performance (loading programs, etc). Go to Computer->Properties->Advanced System Settings->Advanced tab->click on Settings next to Performance, and then disable your paging file from there. It should require a restart. Note that you'll have to make sure you use less than 2GB of your ram or you'll run out. Most people don't use up even half of that, but it's something to think about.
Another thing is RAID. Basically, it's when two or more hard drives work in unison. Theoretically, that means twice the speed, or thrice or etc. Although this is a bit more on the advanced enthusiast end, the gains are enormous. I myself run a RAID 0 (striped) setup and I'm very happy with it.
Lastly, your ram is probably what's slowing you down. When you have slow ram like DDR2-333 or high latency ram like 10-10-10-20 timings, thing will be sure to load up ridiculously slow. My ram timings are at 5-5-5-10, and even setting them to 6-6-6-18 makes loading up My Computer (in Vista it's called Computer) very slow.
Hope I helped, and hope you have more questions for me 
Ps. 250GB hard drive is not that big. I have 4 hard drives for a total of 2+ terabytes :P
Pps. Don't believe what everybody tells you about ReadyBoost. USB is insanely slow compared to electrical ram. Avoid using ReadyBoost anytime you can.
Whats wrong with ready boost?
by ellis feigenbaum - 12/17/07 3:56 PM In reply to: c0mput3r g33k by MingoDynastySure its slower on the usb drive , for a running system but the point of using it is just for your start up cache.
instead of accessing your electrical ram and hdd it basically is booting from the usb cache and not accessing the hadd for system settings.
ready boost isnt the same as adding ram it just makes boot times a little quicker, the more real ram you have the less effect it has. in anycase if you have a full 3 gig compliment of ram or 4gig on sp1 it probably will not make very much difference at all.
but most people dont have that much so any little help is useful- i find it gives me around 10% percent boost on a 2gig machine.
I had the same issue but not anymore.
by mikebliv - 12/14/07 8:48 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you received it from Dell, make sure to uninstall Google Desktop and Norton Internet Security (2007). I replaced Norton with AVG (free.grisoft.com) and switched to the Vista firewall and the computer is so much faster now.
I tried a few other products that didn't result satisfactorily on Vista 32-bit (compatibility issues/performance issues): Bitdefender 10, PC Tools firewall pro, Comodo Firewall, Zonealarm firewall. I used the Vista-compatible versions of all these products.
I'm still looking for a decent Vista firewall with more control than Vista's default one.
Wii Dilema
by marconiusrex24 - 12/14/07 8:57 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I got my 16 YO nephew a Wii last Christmas. Ther were very hard to find and still are! I lucked out and found one at a West Hollywood Target store one Sunday morning..I stood in a line of over 150 people and they handed out 150 tickets before the store opened. Many people who got Wii's last Christmas had to pay twice or more the $250 retail price to get one on Ebay or another similar acution website.
He has enjoyed it...but he recently told me that not many good new games have come out for it. (I got him Zelda...the one he wanted and he loved that.) Other family members of all ages enjoyed the Wii too..even those not video game Savvy. I thought it was fun because there is an enhanced level of physical interaction with the game which I think is a good direction for video games to go for our couch potato society.
But you know...I am sure that next Christmas we'll probably see the Wii II and then it will be back to square one
If you decide to get one...good luck!... ( I hate to say it but you should have probably started trying to get one about 6 months ago)
Cheers and good hunting
Uhh, Wrong Thread
by Launchpad_72 - 12/14/07 11:10 PM In reply to: Wii Dilema by marconiusrex24Excuse me, but I think you have the wrong thread here. You want this one:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=274798
-Thanks
a few simple steps to better your system
by Smatty24 - 12/14/07 8:58 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First and foremost, run a test to see if the machines hardware can run vista on its optimal settings. i think microsoft.com has one but evga.com DEFINITELY has one to see how your hardware stacks up. also, vista itself has a rating it gives your machine with suggestions on what you can do if it isn't up to snuff. but here are a few other things that might help.
1)make sure you have gotten all the latest vista updates from microsoft.
2)see if your hard drive needs defragmenting (just type disk defrag into the vista search, it should come up). every hard drive should be defragged at least once a month just to keep it from getting cluttered. this can usually boost performance in any machine because the computer can now access data that much faster.
2)get the latest drivers for your video card. this can be done b going to either ATI's, or NVIDIA's websiste (whichever makes your card) and looking up drivers for your make and model video card.
3)Vista has plenty of bells and whistles but you can tell it which bells and whistles to use, if you want any at all. just type in 'SystemPropertiesPerformance' in the search bar and you can choose which visual items to turn on or off.
these are just a few things that came off the top of my head, i hope they help.
Vista... recommendations
by superkoupe - 12/14/07 9:16 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Darren,
Having been a beta tester for Vista, one can say they combined 4 previous versions of Windows in to one package or in Microsofts case, 6 different versions of Vista. Vista is a heavy system that relies on the computer you are using and all its hardware to give it the best appearance, not performance, possible. My father, an engineer sent the following link to me that pretty much sums up Vista. Stick with XP... Microsoft did!
http://blip.tv/file/340692/?skin=popup&file_type=flv
Because Vista is a pig
by wizardb - 12/14/07 9:20 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you must use windows use XP,Vista is a poorly designed OS and a resource pig.The only reason Microsoft would foist this POS on the public is so they could increase the bottom line.I run it on a test bed and even after installing service pack 1 it's still a slow pig.Run XP or XP 64bit and enjoy a mature OS with a fast interface!
Start up menu most important
by RDO CA - 12/14/07 9:28 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Vista likes Ram so more will help some--do all the basic things like downloading all win updates and defrag---I think you will find the largest improvement from unchecking most items from the startup menu as all these things are loading each time you boot and are running in the background slowing you down--go to start menu and run and type in msconfig and click the startup tab--uncheck most and if you don't know if it should be unchecked or not I think one of the best sites is sysinfo.org to research which you can uncheck--than reboot and when back up check the box to tell that changes to config is ok--you will notice that run is not turned on as a default in vista but you can do it by right clicking start and choose properties and start tab and customize and scroll down to find run command and check it.
hope this helps some.
Roy
How do I keep startup box message from popping up?
by Jane917 - 1/11/08 3:08 PM In reply to: Start up menu most important by RDO CAI un-checked some boxes in msconfig so theat some programs would not start up. However, now I get an annoying box popping up that alerts me that some programs were disabled at start up. I have to check the box to make it go away. Is there a way to disable this message for good?
Check the box
by afro2358 - 1/11/08 3:14 PM In reply to: How do I keep startup box message from popping up? by Jane917Check that box after you start your computer while you're at your Desktop,than click ok. And when you start your computer again, you won't see that pop up box.
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