Increasing Performance With Minimum Loss Of Quality – Speed Up Windows Vista

A little bit of history: Microsoft is the leading manufacturer of different hardware and software, but of course their most famous creation is the Windows operating system. It has had a majority of changes since its first release of Windows 1.0 in the far November of 1983. Of course the first versions didn’t have most of the extras and programs we know today, however, some of the most commonly seen features in today’s Windows operating systems were also interpreted in the first versions of this operating system. Some of these features are:

•  Calculator
•  Calendar
•  Control Panel
•  Notepad
•  Paint
•  Terminal
•  Clipboard Viewer
•  Clock

However these are just some of the features, there also others which now known by different names, but still have the same main function. Still these are just the old versions which were mainly used for office purposes, but with time different user written programs and games started to appear and thus the community was able to improve the quality of Windows. Here is an example on how Windows 1.0 looked after its first release: Windows 1.0. Later in the article you will be able to see the progress which Windows operating systems have made.

The future of operating systems: But this time passed long ago and nowadays the Windows XP dominates the operating system markets. However there is a newer version than it which is quite good, but requires a lot of computer resources. This is the Windows Vista. Although this operating is a hungry beast when it comes for system resources, it is still the second most widely used operating system in the world. This hunger for resources comes from the fact that it provides a much more beautiful graphic environment than the ordinary operating systems. It also provides support for many new hardware features which cannot be implemented in other operating systems. Due to this it is expected that Windows Vista will be the new most commonly used operating system, but many people don’t have a computer strong enough to withstand the resource consumption which the Vista performs. However these resources are wisely used and they give you amazingly beautiful 3D windows and tiles. You can see these effects on the internet and here is an example of the Vista Aero graphic environment: Vista Aero graphic environment. Due to this there are many official and unofficial tips on how to improve the performance of your Vista by minimizing or maximizing the graphics quality.

The art of performance boosting – applications and services: There are hundreds of official tips provided by renowned hardware and software companies that explain you how to make your Windows Vista runs faster, but there are also many hints found out by ordinary users, who were more innovative and improvised in order to find the things that can help us. Of course the most common tip for improving Windows Vista performance is also used for any other operating systems you can think of – removing the unnecessary applications which you are running, but not using. This way you will allow the RAM and CPU power to be used for the right purposes, instead of just wasting them on unused applications.

The operating systems which Microsoft produces always have a number of extras and services which aren’t needed by the regular used, but are still running in the background. This is why it is recommended to swiftly search the Internet and find the services which Vista runs and which of them you don’t need. You can go to the services type by going to Start > Run > Type services.msc in the dialog box > Press ok. After this a window containing all the services will pop-up and you can disable each one of them by double clicking on them and then setting the startup type to disabled. Of course you should carefully search for any service you intent to disable, so that you can find out if you need it or not. Here are some examples of services you probably don’t need:

• Remote Registry
• Secondary Logon
• Computer Browser (don’t turn off if you are using computers in your local network)
• Tablet PC Input Service (don’t turn off if using a tablet peripheral with your PC!)
• Distributed Link Tracking Client
• KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator

There are also many other services which you may disable in order to increase the performance. Services are basically background applications which provide different extras which you probably don’t use, but they still consume resources. By disabling such unused services you will increase the RAM and CPU which are available for the use of applications that you use and require a lot of computer power.

Faster, better, stronger: Many people don’t give the required attention to their hard-drives and their maintenance. However this is a big mistake, because the presence of a lot of unused files that just consume hard-disk space will result in a higher usage of CPU and RAM in order to index and read these files. This is why it is recommended to occasionally clean your hard-disk of unused and unwanted applications which just sit there being useless. If you want to make this even easier you can find the application called CCleaner (Computer Cleaner) which automatically cleans all files that are unused and is much more functional than the integrated Add/Remove features in Windows Vista. Although CCleaner is a simple program here is a video with educational purposes which allow you to see the way that CCLeaner is operated and the function it serves: CCLeaner is operated and the function it serves

Another thing that is important for the overall performance of the computer with Windows Vista is to reduce the number of applications which are executed on start up. This will highly reduce the startup time for the Windows Vista. And it isn’t very hard to do that – you will just have to follow three simple steps:

• Click Start > Run > Type msconfig in the dialog box > A new window will pop-up
• Go to the Startup Tab that is located in the upper right corner
• There you will see all the programs which are executed at start-up – Just disable the auto-load of applications you don’t want and click Ok.

Fragmentation, defragmentation – What’s that!? : Another good tip is the defragmentation of your hard-disk. Hard-disks fragment when you write files which your computer can’t keep together. For example you created a large video file and saved it on your hard-disk. But when you saved it, one part of it went in the beginning of the disk space, while another one went to the end of the disk. This will cause the disk to have problems finding both of the matching pieces and your performance will suffer from that. Defragmentation finds such files and puts them together so that the computer won’t have to torment himself in order to find the files. But in Windows Vista defragmentation has also a bad part – it is scheduled to be automatically run every week. It is usually run at approximately 1am every Wednesday. If you are using your computer at this time you will suffer from low performance. This is why it is recommended to disable automatic defragmentation or just change the time:

• Open Windows Task Scheduler
• Go to Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows
• Find the Defragmentation Tasks and either disable it or change the time to one that suits you.

If you choose to disable automatic fragmentation, you should manually defragment your hard-drives by going to My Computer > Right click on the disk you want to defragment > Properties > Tools > Defragment Now and the disk will defragment.

Slim down your Vista: Windows Vista comes with a lot of applications which you may not need or just won’t use. This way they will just take hard-disk space without having any purpose. You can either manually remove such applications, which however will take some time and effort or you can just download the software named vLite which will show you a window containing all of the applications that came by default with the Windows Vista. From there you can choose the ones you don’t need and they will be automatically removed. However be careful when doing this, because the process is irreversible and you will need to do a fresh re-install of Vista in order to have the applications again.

Is this all? Of course these are just a small number of the ways you can use to improve the performance of your Windows Vista. There are hundreds of more ways you can find on the Internet and specifically on different forums that discuss Vista. Although Vista is quite a big consumer of computer resources, now you know that all this can be neglected by doing a few small fixes and tweaks that will remove things that you don’t need and you will receive a major boost in performance.