Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine?
- 1/11/08 3:13 PM
Vista is slower?
by tom.o - 1/5/08 5:52 AM In reply to: Speedimg up Vista by JeffmeagorEveryone told me that Vista was a nightmare before I installed it on an HTPC I built. I had some minor issues as a HTPC so I swapped out MBs for one with more features (HDMI and S/PDIF optical out) and relaced the CPU with a lower power chip (AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz). After doing this, I downloaded the up to date drivers. It has been running a month now, I have no complaints (other than having to call support to reactivate Vista because I just swapped the HD into the new HTPC setup). The original HTPC MB went to a new desktop PC for me (AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600 Windsor 2.4GHz). I did a clean install of XP Pro on that one. It too is considerably better than the my Dell Dimension 4700 desktop with all the bloatware and slightly faster than the BE-2400.
Then I blewout the several year old Dell Dimension 4700 set up (P4 3gig with 1.5 GB Ram on board audio and video)and did a clean install of another copy of Vista Home Premium for my daughter to use for email, internet and MS Office applications. Vista installed without a hitch on this computer then told be the video card may need to be replaced. I downloaded new video driver from Dell and no problems. It is considerably faster than when I was running XP Pro.
The best thing to do whether XP Pro or Vista is stay away from the bloatware crap it will choak the OS. Also stay away from Norton's. It used to be the best now it is a major resource hog. Resort to the old KISS principle.
I don't use PCs for gaming and I never tried Media Center before Vista. I can't relate to gaming issues; but, I am told Vista Media Center is much better than the previous version.
re:- vista
by petchoulier - 1/5/08 8:55 AM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have just bought a new laptop with Vista arghhhhhh!!
Can unwanted programmes be uninstalled safely???
Many thanks
Dee
Re:- vista
by afro2358 - 1/5/08 9:04 AM In reply to: re:- vista by petchoulierSome unwanted programs can be Uninstalled, but, i would contact the people where you brought your laptop from, just to make sure nothing goes wrong with it since it's still under warranty
laptop with vista
by 194659 - 1/5/08 11:47 AM In reply to: re:- vista by petchoulierhi dee, i bought aa new laptop with vista home basic 3 months ago and had nothing but trouble with it. the manufacturer finally allowed me to swap for a desktop after they had replaced the ram and then the motherboard. still no joy. i now have a new desktop and this has vista home premium and i love it. i, like many others, had nothing but problems with it. i will never buy another laptop again. they are definately no good for games. i know nothing really about computers as i have only had one since september last year. i am 61 and never thought i would be addicted to a machine. the makers finally told me after the computer had gone in for the third time, that they are not suitable for game playing and many of the other media software. i have discovered however, that vista home basic IS rubbish.
Improving speed of vista
by nightrome2004 - 1/5/08 9:42 AM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
To all, as you all know when you get a new machine which I have here just recently, encountered the same problem, vista to me took forever. Took me about a solid month, before I have it now running as fast if not faster, than my old xp. Like most new operating system, they load all the frills and gadgets they want you to have. You basicly have to redesign the os to your liking, althou vista was a little more difficult to redo because of some of the security features. Can't go into everything I did to smooth out vista but the there are three major issues, to deal with, most people may not agree with my finding, but have corrected many a computers, dealing with the same issues. The three and most important issues to correct in vista along with any os is
1. Don't run internet explorer, for a browser, it is a catch all for all the adware, spyware, viruses, any all the other things out there on the market. When first started up vista, without changing anything, as soon as it hit the internet picked up about 23 adware and spyware, that was running there firewall, and all there security features, it just drew everything in like a magnet.
2. Don't run whatever firewalls comes with vista, also catch all for adware and spyware.
3. Install different , browser, firewalls, and security system, for those of you who would like to know good free utilities that don't take up much space and work fast, send me an email at nightrome2004@yahoo.com and I will tell you what I run , which is fast and good free programs. Just for a side note basic different in any operating system is what is running, wasn't but last year retired an old 386 computer, which in todays terms isn't hardly heard of anymore, but take into consideration, basicly it was practically redone, could of went further but didn't want to change the mother board out. Price of new computer was the better option.
B e Careful what you delete!
by Major Pain51 - 1/5/08 12:50 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I know next to nothing about the inner workings of Vista, but I have a friend who is IT type and one BIG caution is DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING THAT SAYS IT IS ''SHARED'' FILE! You may knock out way more than you think!
I'm frustrated with Vista, as a gamer, it will NOT run lots of my old games, so I would not call it "Backwards Compatable"! I hope Vista SP 1 will cure this?
games with vista program
by 194659 - 1/5/08 1:42 PM In reply to: B e Careful what you delete! by Major Pain51i also had this problem with vista. right click on your game file and go to run with an older program. i selected xp service pack and run as administator and your games will be ok
Vista works well with Duo Core,1.5 gb RAM and good video
by dqdewalt - 1/5/08 7:31 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a Dell D520 laptop that came with XP. I put Vista business on it and it ran exceptionally well without any modifications. It came with the Duo core 1.6 ghz processor (667) fsb with 512 mb RAM. I bumped the RAM to 1.5 gb and Vista ran even better. I use it as my everyday computer. Now... I'm well versed on Vista, XP, Win2k, Win2k3 and even Mac OSX. I use all daily in my office. Yes I have 6 computers in my office. I also experimented with Vista on a Dell 2400 desktop. It was a dog until I put 2 gb of RAM and a 512 mg ATI vid card on the system. Vista sat up and ran well after that. SO... from my experience... get a Duo Core processor, at least 1 gb of RAM preferably 2 gb and a very good Video card and you'll have no trouble running Vista. Well... Vista will run but you still might have trouble because it is different from XP. It takes time to learn it. Now... to improve what you have? Increase RAM to 2 gb and get a really good video card. If you don't, install XP then. The best part of Vista is the eye candy and if you disable it (Aero)... you might as well get rid of Vista. Oh ... if you have a 64 bit processor... put the 64 bit Vista on it. I have a dell dimension e521 that came with 32 bit Vista. I put the 64 bit OS on it ran far better.
For those who say get a MAC... I have an iMac 2 ghz 20" in my office. I run parallels app so I can have Windows on it. It is a work horse. I put Win2k3 running SQL2005 and our ERP as an app and then I run another with WinXP as a client to test the server all while booted in MAC OS 10.5 Tiger. 3 operating systems running simultaniously on one computer. It's by far the best computer in my office and the most versatile in the company.
Go ahead and ask me about unsucessfully connecting a Sony dcr-h28 to an XP or Vista box and then how it instaneously worked on my iMac. Same thing happened with my Motorola Razr.
I love both platforms but right now... the imac is my favorite.
Install SP1 ASAP
by john3347 - 1/6/08 8:12 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Darren, I am not one of the Vista Gurus that you are asking advice from, but I have found a way to speed Vista up by a noticeable amount. I have been using my current Vista machine for about a month now and it has been quite noticeably slower doing anything that any of my XP machines, one now 4 years old. (No, this is not a dump Vista rant.) I have disabled all the "fluff and puff" stuff that I didn't care for anyway and really saw no noticeable improvement. Today, I downloaded SP1 RC and, as promised, it did noticeably speed up both boot-up and shut-down and the speed of opening applications as well. I encountered no difficulties in the download and installation process. Now for the rant: Vista simply ain't as good as XP and XP simply ain't as good as 2000, but SP1 does seem to be a small step in the right direction for Vista. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!!
Thoughts from an XP tech support veteran
by glen271 - 1/6/08 8:30 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have not used Vista much, and do not have it installed, but apparently about all of the same speed-enhancements for XP apply to Vista. Member djmatt6899 has the best answer I have read in this thread. Something I have not read here is this: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ONLY 1 FIREWALL, 1 ANTI-VIRUS, AND 1 ANTI-SPYWARE PROGRAM RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND. 2 firewalls will very likely block or slowdown your internet connection, so I assume you do not have that. Two A/V or 2 anti-spy programs may considerably slow things down.
The things that most affect performance:
1. Processes and services running in the background. Reduce these so fewer startup on boot. Also, if you have more than 1 windows profile in use, make sure people are logging off between profiles. If you just switch between them, each profile will leave processes running. I agree that security programs like norton and mcafee are resource hogs and recommend something like the Zone Alarm Security Suite. (The number of programs installed and the available disk space will make only a little impact- you can have many programs installed as long as they are not running in the background.)
2. Edit the Bios and turn off serial and parallel ports if you think you'll never use them. Some motherboards also have memory tweaks in the bios as well. (I'm not recommending overclocking here.)
3. Just as or more important than nos. 1 and 2 is the removal of spyware and viruses! Spyware is pernicious, especially trojans! Warning: You can get bad things without visiting bad sites!
4. Cleaning the junk files plus the registry and defragmenting the hard drive will help performance, but this will not have a major impact unless there are a LARGE amount of junk files, unnecessary registry entries, and fragmented files. Diskkeeper is a great program towards making your hard drive last longer.
What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine?
by patsat - 1/7/08 12:43 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In my humble opinion, you have two options -
1. Rollback to XP
2. Buy a Mac (you won't regret it!) 
3rd option, Lee..
by the_rajah - 1/7/08 2:15 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by patsatUbuntu or your choice of flavors of Linux.
I've been using Ubuntu for the majority of my computing at home since 6.06 and have found it surprisingly easy to move over to. I'm not some old unix guru that made the transition, I'm a DOS/Windows user from DOS 2.1 days that decided that I didn't want to keep paying the MS tax and have to deal with their restrictive EULAs and non-ownership licenses. Linux has run nicely on everything from Celerons and P-IIIs right on up the C2D Dell that is under my desk at home now.
No, I'm not a gamer. Gamers are stuck at the moment. I still have an XP machine to run such as Quickbooks, Visio and a couple odd legacy DOS programs that I have to dust off from time to time.
My XP machine is about to become a virtual one inside VirtualBox with Ubuntu as the host.
Here's a suggestion for you...
by peter_b123 - 1/7/08 4:04 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First off, to improve Vista's speed, go to your Control Panel, select "Windows Classic". See if that helps. I don't think it will, but it's one option.
Second, look at your Windows Defender settings - Start Menu/All Programs/Windows Defender. In the Windows Defender settings, click on the "Tools" setting near the top, to into "Options", turn off "Automatically scan my computer..." and under Real Time Protection Options, turn off "Use real time protection (recommended)".
Thirdly, what Antivirus software is loaded on the PC? My experience is that most of the first tier AV vendors have software that just doesn't seem to do the trick yet. If you can, uninstall Norton, McAfee, AVG or Kaspersky.
See if that helps. If that does, then great! I'd kick the tires a bit to make sure everything else plays out and then reinstall your AV choice. When prompted, I'd attempt to install your AV choice in limited mode, enabling real time file protection and email protection, eschewing anti-hacking or web site scanning.
pb
Dangit I screwed that last one up...
by peter_b123 - 1/7/08 4:11 PM In reply to: Here's a suggestion for you... by peter_b123First off, to improve Vista's speed, go to your Control Panel, go to "Personalization", select "Themes", select "Windows Classic". See if that helps. I don't think it will, but it's one option.
Second, look at your Windows Defender settings - Start Menu/All Programs/Windows Defender. In the Windows Defender settings, click on the "Tools" setting near the top, to into "Options", turn off "Automatically scan my computer..." and under Real Time Protection Options, turn off "Use real time protection (recommended)".
Thirdly, what Antivirus software is loaded on the PC? My experience is that most of the first tier AV vendors have software that just doesn't seem to do the trick yet. If you can, uninstall Norton, McAfee, AVG or Kaspersky.
See if that helps. If that does, then great! I'd kick the tires a bit to make sure everything else plays out and then reinstall your AV choice. When prompted, I'd attempt to install your AV choice in limited mode, enabling real time file protection and email protection, eschewing anti-hacking or web site scanning.
pb
Power Options can slow CPU to 5% of max! Please try this:
by dabruro - 1/7/08 6:04 PM In reply to: What can I do to improve the speed of my Vista machine? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Check your Power Options and try changing it to "High Performance" to see if it helps (especially if it's set to "Power Saver" now). According to this newsletter it can make a HUGE difference:
http://www.heritagecollector.com/Newsletter/SpdVista.pdf (pdf)
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