In my opinion Vista gets a bad rap in the forums and even the press. Based on my experience in repairs and installing 100s if not 1000s of new computers every year Vista is no worse than WinXP was when it was first released. The problems were with software or hardware that didn't work right with Vista. That's not necessarily Vista's problem, all of these changes were well published and many vendors failed to implement them. Did they need to make all those changes to Vista? I'm not sure but there are some great improvements.

That being said, I've listed some ways below that you can add a little more zip to the software. Some are hardware but many are simply turning off some software features that don't apply to many users. As usual, use caution in using any of these suggestions, especially if you are on a corporate network (your IT department may have valid reasons not to do these things).

When you are getting ready to buy a new computer with Vista on it, there are a couple of areas to check to make sure the computer has enough hardware power. First is RAM, go with at least 2 Gigs (max useable in the 32 bit version is 4 Gigs).

Next, make sure you have a separate Video card with it's own RAM, 128 is minimum but you can get up to 512 or more now. If you used shared RAM, at least make sure there are the enhanced video chipsets used if possible.

Duo processors and above are best suited for Vista. There are two many versions to differentiate any further. AMD and Intel are the two most popular brands and both work well. 

If you already have a Vista on a computer you can easily upgrade both RAM and video card. RAM is very reasonable (under $40 per gig) and video cards go from $40 and up with at least 256 megs of RAM (example is ATI Radeon X1300 Pro / 256MB GDDR2 / AGP 8x / DVI / VGA / TV Out / Video Card).

OK, lets look at some basic settings that are turned on by default that may not be worth the drain on speed. Most of these settings can be switched off and on at will and won't have any dire impact on operation.

There are four versions of Vista. Most basic is, well, Home Basic. The next is Home Premium, then Business, Enterprise, Ultimate. And you can get each of these in 32 bit or 64 bit. OK, lets cut to the chase. Home Premium is the best for a home computer, the business versions won't be up to the user so let your IT department worry about it. I don't recommend 64 bit versions yet since they don't have a lot of software out there that can use the power and 64 bit has a few quirks that you don't want to deal with right now. So we'll be using Home Premium for most of the info below.

Search Indexing

All versions of Vista have Search Indexing enabled by default which is not necessary for most users. It's designed to continuously update files on your system so that they can be made available for faster searching. This is a terrible drain on system resources and really doesn't speed up searches. 

To disable Windows indexing: 

1. Click Start, then computer; 
2. Right click on Local Disk 'C:' 
3. Left click on Properties; 
4. Uncheck 'Index this Drive for Faster Searching'; 
5. Let it complete and select 'Include subfolders and files' in any subsequent dialog box 

You can go one step further and turn off Windows Search in your services. 

1. Click on start/run and type in 'MSConfig' and hit ok; 
2. Click on Services tab and find Windows Search 
3. Uncheck/Apply and Ok...that's it.

User Account Control

One of the new "features" in Vista is the protection of your system through UAC.  The idea behind UAC is to ask you to confirm a number of everyday functions in order to protect your system from spyware  or malware infections. Here's how to shut it off and turn it on. 

1. Click on start and then click on your username picture top right of the start menu. 
2. Click on 'Turn User Account Control on or off.' 
3. Uncheck (or check) User Account Control, select ok and restart. 

I have mixed feelings about turning this feature off for new users. It is a good warning system, and makes the user aware that something is happening. So it's up to you to make the choice. I'm not sure it speeds up the system, but for experienced users it is very irritating.

Power Settings

If you use a desktop you can turn off most power settings since you won't be running on a battery. But if you have a laptop, you can go in and make several adjustments that can enhance your operating speed. Remember there is a trade off in speed and time the laptop will last on battery power.

To help you in balance performance and battery power, Vista has an option that lets you decide at what level you want your system to perform. You simply 'left click' on the battery icon in your system tray and decide whether you want your system running in balanced, power saver or high performance mode.

Vista Aero

Vista has some advanced visual effects that allow windows to be transparent (you can see through to multiple windows). This slick visual effect is a resource hog and can slow down a system. 

1. Right click on the desktop background and select 'Personalize' and 'Windows Color and Appearance'. 
2. Experiment with turning off Vista Aero by checking and un-checking 'Enable Transparency'. 

If you have minimum RAM and no video card this can have a huge impact on system performance. Try it out and see if you can feel the difference and decide if the visual effect is worth the drain.

OK, these next few are for the more experienced and adventurous users. They require a little more savvy user and involve more serious changes. Definitely use at your own risk!

TuneXP

As the name implies, this utility that was designed for WinXP but works for Vista only in the Ultra-Fast booting feature ***Warning - Do Not Use Any Other Feature!!!***. This feature takes all your boot files and places them at the front of the disk. 

This offers a huge improvement on boot times for all Vista systems I've tried it on and has always worked. That being said, this is moving files on your hard drive and that can always be risky.  

1. Install Program and if asked to select a drive, select 'C' (boot drive); 
2. Go to Memory and File System and Click on Ultra-Fast booting. This may appear to freeze but it is working. 
3. Once its finished, it will tell you not to reboot your system until defragmenting the hard drive is complete.
4. Bring up your Task Manager from your system tray by right clicking in the tray bottom right and select Task Manager 
5. Go to processes
6. You will see two processes relating to defrag. Don't restart your machine until they disappear (this confirms that the tasks are complete).

TMM

Transient Multimon Manager (TMM) is a Microsoft Windows Vista operating system feature targeted at improving the user experience of connecting and disconnecting displays, particularly for the mobile user. TMM responsible for about a 3-5 second delay and blank screen flash when you start Vista. It searches for external monitors 

If you are not using an external monitor you can turn TMM off. TMM is responsible for that 3-5 sec pause and blank flash you get when turning your computer on. 

Here's how to remove that delay: 

Go start/control panel/administrative options/task scheduler. 

On the left-hand side, click "Task Scheduler Local". 
Expand "Task Scheduler Library," then "Microsoft," then "Windows," then click "MobilePC." 
At top, you'll see a task called "TMM." Click on it, and on the right-hand side, click "Disable." That's it, you just turned it off.

Startup Inspector

Startup Inspector for Windows helps manage your startup applications and provides information on programs that run when you start up Windows. It can tell whether a program is necessary to the system or if it is spyware. The application scans all programs in the Windows startup folder and registry, and provides you with background information. There are more than 4,300 programs in the database. The application's features also include the ability to remove harmful programs such as spyware, viruses, and dialers, as well as remove unnecessary programs like reminders and monitors, thus improving your system's performance and health. The beaty of this is much of the research has been done for you so that's a big time saver.

iws2.exe  670 KB

That should help most systems a lot. Stay tuned as we will add more Vista  speedup tips as we find them.

WinXP SpeedUp Tips

One of the big complaints I usually get when making a service call is that my computer is so slow. There are multiple issues that can slow down your computer running WinXP.

First and foremost, early units back in 2000 were underpowered in the hardware area. This is due to Microsoft's base configuration of hardware requirements. It was way to low, especially older chipsets and 128 megs of ram.

Then add on installing all sorts of heavy duty applications like Office 2000 (and later 2003) and above and the software starts bloating up to over a Gig and a half for basic installs. When your system runs out of available ram, it goes to a swapfile on the hard drive and slows down access.

Take a huge operating system, add in a few huge and power hungry applications like MS Office and low end hardware just can't handle it well.

When you first get your new computer or install Windows XP for the first time, there are several default settings that are designed for a wide range of users and this older equipment.

This is normally a good thing since there are quite a few settings each user may need in his/her daily computing. But for the faster more hardware capable machines now, many of these settings can be customized based on your hardware and daily computing chores, and faster hardware.

The best example I can give on hardware capabilities is the difference between a laptop and a desktop user. Laptop users need the ability to automatically mount and use smart cards (for modems, network cards, whatever). Desktop users rarely need this capability. Another big difference in users usage is the stand alone home system and a corporate workstation. If you are a one man (or woman) band at home, you don't need lots of the automated workgroup and domain services.

The hardware components also have a big impact on what you may or may not need to have available. If you have at least a PIII chip set, with 256 or more megs of ram, there are several important settings on ram and cache that you can change to improve performance.

So if we can adapt your hardware and daily activities requirements to your computer, we can determine what settings can be changed to help your computer run faster.

If you are a corporate user, at work, do not make any changes unless you check with your local IT department!!! I've been responsible for running large corporate IT departments and I guarantee they do not want you fiddling with the settings unless you get them approved or have them do it for you! And there can be many reasons they have the setup installed on your local machine that you are not aware of so always ask before doing anything.

OK, now my conscience is clear =8~). Most of my buyers are home and small office users so there is no problem with these suggested changes but I know how tough it is in a corporate environment and I don't want to cause the user or administrators any unnecessary grief. 

I also have some suggested reading from some great resources on the Internet about speeding up your computer. The more you know, the easier this gets.

There are a few basics that anyone should do to keep their computer running clean and fast. Some have more impact on performance than others but collectively you should see a noticeable improvement.

I've personally done these changes to many machines with great results. I normally go in and do these changes on almost every machine that I work on to help out the performance.

First and foremost, I strongly recommend a minimum of 512 megs of ram and whenever possible, 1 Gig. With the price of ram being so low these days, there is little reason (other than budget) not to have the 512 minimum.

Defragging and cleaning up your hard drive at least once a month. This is a simple process and it can help too. Just go to my computer and click on the icon on the desktop or through the start menu. This will bring up a screen with your C: drive showing. Right click on the C: drive and go into properties, then tools. Click on the check for errors on the volume. Once that's complete, click on the defragmentation icon. Be aware that this make take quite a long time so you may want to do this at the end of the day (don't try it at lunch, unless you take a long lunch). I've seen it take hours, especially if you have never done a defrag on that machine.

The next step is to reset your disk caching parameters. When WinXP first came out, lots of computers had small amounts of ram and slower chipsets. So the basic settings are not really designed for today's faster and better equipped computers. This is normally done through the registry by hand but our friends at Tech Nation have written a small program that run in HTML that does this for you. Anyone can now make these changes by clicking on a few buttons. This is a great little program and complete instructions come with it on why and how it works. You can download it here. This modification has had a very big impact on all the computers I've used it on with 256 megs or more of ram.

Then the next step is to address the services and programs that run when you start your computer. Services are simply programs that run in memory to provide a specific ability. Like I mentioned above, each user may have a little different set of requirements. And there are quite a few settings that no one needs. If you use Win XP Home, there are approximately 88 default services started upon boot. If you use WinXP Pro, there are around 93. I absolutely guarantee that you can eliminate many of these default services. And anytime you can run less, there's more ram and computer power available for your required tasks.

I'm going to give you my recommendations and some brief reasons how I arrived at these services to disable or change to manual (more on that feature later). But there is a fellow in Southern California that has made this area one of his missions in life. I strongly suggest you read the information and his recommendations too at his website. You can view his website here. We seem to agree on everything except Country Music. He doesn't like it and I do =8~). Not my first choice but I do live in Texas so it's part of life here.

There's a handy little utility that can help you with your start up programs and services called Startup Control Panel. Please read the manual methods below before you use this utility, it will help you understand a lot more about what's going on behind the scenes with this software.

Startup Control Panel allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts. It supports launching programs based on information in both the start-up menu and the Registry. Startup Control Panel is compatible with all modern versions of Windows through Windows XP. (Windows Vista, after all these years, finally has a very good startup manager built-in; go to Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools, and then click on Manage Startup Programs on the left.)

Installing
Run the setup program in the zip file.

Standalone EXE version: just extract the program wherever you want.

Starting
Double-click the Startup icon in the Control Panel. On Windows XP, you must switch the Control Panel to Classic View in order to see this icon.

Using
The dialog contains six to seven tabs, depending on your system configuration. Each tab represents one place where a program can be registered to run at system startup. These include:

Startup (user) - the current user's Startup folder in the Start Menu. 
Startup (common) - the common (all users) Startup folder in the Start Menu. 
HKLM / Run - the Run registry key located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. These apply for all users. 
HKCU / Run - the Run registry key located in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. These apply for the current user only. 
Services - system services that are started before the user logs in. This appears only in Win9x; on NT/2000/XP, use the Services control panel, or the Services item in Computer Management. 
Run Once - started once and once only at the next system startup. 
Deleted - programs go to the Deleted tab when you remove them from another location. They will not run at system startup, but will merely be stored should you ever want to use them again. If you delete an item from the Deleted tab, it is removed permanently. 

Each page contains a list of the programs registered at that location. Use the checkbox to enable or disable individual items. Additional operations are available by right-clicking an item. You can select multiple items using the Shift and Control keys. Options include:

New... - create a new entry. You can also drag & drop files from My Computer or Explorer. 
Edit... - edit an existing entry. 
Delete - delete the currently selected entry.
Disable / Enable - disable or enable the selected entry. A disabled program will appear in the list with a special icon, and will not run at system startup. You can also use the checkbox next to an item to enable or disable it. 
Run Now - executes the program now. 
Send To - moves the entry from the current location to another. 
Press F5 to refresh the list at any time.

StartupCPL.zip -  58KB

The system configuration can tell you what programs are starting upon bootup. You can start the program by going to the run command and typing msconfig, then press enter.

Here's what you'll see:

You want to click on the startup tab to see the programs that are currently starting when you bootup. The illustration below shows what it will look like:

The problem with using the System Configuration Utility is twofold. One, it doesn't show all the services, and second, you can actually disable some important programs (like virus protection, etc.). So I don't recommend using this utility for our purposes.

A much better choice is an Admin utility called Services Computer Management Console. You can go to your control panel and look for admin tools and click on that. Then click on services. Or just go to the run command and type services.msc and click on enter. Either way will bring up the utility. The utility looks like the illustration below:

Warning, you stop a service that's necessary for basic operations and you will be in trouble. Don't stop or disable any services until you've read this complete article and other resources mentioned!!!

OK, you have two views, one for standard which just lists the services running. And extended, which explains what each service is when you click on the service like in the above example.

There are several scenarios on which services to run based on your particular hardware and use. And you can pick and choose from each one of these if you think it will better fit your situation. None are written in stone, just suggested.

Also remember that you can choose to set the service on manual, that means when the software needs the service it will start automatically but will not start upon bootup. That's the safest setting if you aren't sure if you will use that service sometime during your daily computing.

Here's the suggestions for a stand alone machine that is used at home or the office, no network or sharing.

Disable the following: 

Alerter 
Clipbook 
Computer Browser 
Fast User Switching 
Human Interface Access Devices 
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down) 
Messenger 
Net Logon (unnecessary unless networked on a Domain) 
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security) 
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security) 
Remote Procedure Call Locator 
Remote Registry (disabled for extra security) 
Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security) 
Server 
SSDP Discovery Service (this is for the utterly pointless "Universal P'n'P", & leaves TCP Port 5000 wide open) 
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper 
Telnet (disabled for extra security) 
Universal Plug and Play Device Host 
Upload Manager 
Windows Time 
Wireless Zero Configuration (for wireless networks) 
Workstation

If you are using a home or small office network, here's the recommendations:

Alerter 
Clipbook 
Fast User Switching 
Human Interface Access Devices 
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down) 
Messenger 
Net Logon (unnecessary unless networked on a Domain) 
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security) 
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security) 
Remote Procedure Call Locator 
Remote Registry (disabled for extra security) 
Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security) 
Server 
SSDP Discovery Service (this is for the utterly pointless "Universal P'n'P", & leaves TCP Port 5000 wide open) 
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper 
Telnet (disabled for extra security) 
Universal Plug and Play Device Host 
Upload Manager 
Windows Time 
Wireless Zero Configuration (unless you are using wireless network) 
Workstation

Now if you don't use Windows Messaging, that's one you can add to the disable list. If you don't use a laptop or smart cards, that's another you can disable. It becomes pretty clear once you read the description as to what you might not need or want running as a service.

And remember that you can put any non basic service under manual start just to be safe. That way if you need it, it will be available. Take your time reviewing different services and make your own list.

I've seen some users get down to about 25 services and really improve their everyday performance. I run about 34 right now based on my needs and have no problems.

Another way to help run faster and clean is to always unload any .DLL file that is not needed. Dynamic Link Libraries, or DLLs, are files containing data or functions that Windows programs can call when needed by linking to them. Every piece of windows software will include instructions to the operating system as to which DLLs it will need to access, and XP will cache these particular files in memory for faster access. But due to sloppy programming and system issues, many don't unload when you close the application.

That's not nice and takes up ram. This is a common slow down that you tend to notice if you open and close applications all day or rarely turn off your computer. You can fix this problem by making a a change in your registry, which will force Windows XP to unload DLLs used by a specific program when that program halts.

To do this, first run REGEDIT then:

Navigate to 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. 

create a new key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1.'

That's it, now unnecessary .DLLs will unload automatically.

Another important issue with performance is the video card and setup. The new Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), which lets the video processor access the system memory for doing graphics calculations, but keeps a dedicated video memory for the frame buffer. This allows for more flexible memory use without sacrificing performance and is becoming a new standard. If you have an available AGP slot, and a few extra bucks, this can improve performance dramatically.

You can buy one of these AGP video cards with 128 (nVIDIA GeForce FX5200 Video Card, 128MB DDR) for under $50 on eBay.

Video cards that share the system ram but have a dedicated amount is the next best choice. But since the ram that's on the video card is much faster than system ram, the performance is less on this style of video card. 

Another point in the video card area is to make sure you have the most current software driver. I've seen a big boost in screen refresh rate jsut with changing to the proper and most current driver.

Your display properties can play a big role in performance. If you have the maximum setting of 32 bit color (or whatever your video card is capable of at max), this takes up a lot of juice. Depending on your needs, you might want to step down and see if that effects your performance. If you need that kind of resolution for the type of work you do, definitely get a good AGP video card with lots of memory.

Speaking of video and display settings, I often see 100's of icons setting on the desktop view when I'm out making service calls. It's always a good thing to limit the number of Icons since they take up resources in the video area. The number of fonts installed can drag down a system too. Keep it to the most used fonts and add only when necessary. You may want to un-lode any unused fonts too. 

Well, that about raps up the easy changes you can make to help increase your Win XP and application performance. These changes have helped in about 98% of the computers I've worked on in the field. If you have any questions on any of the above information, just drop me a note or even give me a call. I'll be glad to help in anyway I can.