Oh it seems quicker with it off... that would be because I am allowed to use my hard drive again.
Windows 7
- Thread starter Samlaptop
- Start date
Oh it seems quicker with it off... that would be because I am allowed to use my hard drive again.
Did you run it in normal use for several weeks before you went on your 'turning it into XP and complaining it's slower' feature cull?
Because the list of stuff you've disabled seriously points to why you don't find it faster...
To be honest you want 4GB of RAM to run Vista nicely.
And yeah turning off Superfetch is a poor idea, to stop disk thrashing turn off the indexing service.
A website that was doing malware tests had to disable UAC because not a single one of the malware they were testing could bypass UAC, so its useful. Anything that requires administrator privaleges to run locks and only continues running again if you accept the dialogue.
If that irritates you, you can turn UAC off totally.
I can't stand using XP anymore. A lot of games use Direct X 10 now too.
And yeah turning off Superfetch is a poor idea, to stop disk thrashing turn off the indexing service.
A website that was doing malware tests had to disable UAC because not a single one of the malware they were testing could bypass UAC, so its useful. Anything that requires administrator privaleges to run locks and only continues running again if you accept the dialogue.
If that irritates you, you can turn UAC off totally.
I can't stand using XP anymore. A lot of games use Direct X 10 now too.
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Soldato
Don't remember the time I explained Vista's I/O scheduling and prioritisation then?
PS: You NEED Superfetch if you want Vista to be fast.
Soldato
Me neither. It's so unbelievably dated. But then it is getting on for being, fundamentally at least, a decade old.
Shall we stop now?
We did this debate before and it was never resolved - suffice to say I know your position on Vista and its features, and how they are supposed to work and I know my own experience and that of others doesn't tally with that. I also maintain that many of Vista's features are anti-intuitive and/or simply broken.
As this thread is actually about Windows 7 perhaps we shouldn't let it get off topic like this
Of course you are the mod, if you don't mind discussing it at length again here, or in another thread then I am happy to do so.
I think it's best we agree to disagree though as it got heated last time didn't it?
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Soldato
We may as well stop because this really is a case of "facts versus subjective and slightly jilted opinion".
Soldato
I'm sure it is a fact that using superfetch speeds Vista up, it caches the most use applications right? And is also one of the things that make memory management different in Vista? Like it appears like you have hardly any ram left in the Task Manager as it all seems to be cached.
Soldato
Correct. Superfetch is actually something they wanted to add to XP but they run out of time. It is an awesome feature that basically keeps track of your usage habits (even down to which applications you use in week days and weekends...) and then without you realising it will pre-fetch those files into memory.
As an example... my mate has recently been playing Command & Conquer 3 this month a lot. So Superfetch noticed this and started to keep more and more of it in memory at all times (he has 4GB). Then my mate convinced me to have a multiplayer game. His game loaded 3x quicker than mine. Because I had not played it for ages and Superfetch was not prepared for it... Our PC's are more or less identical in specification.
As an example... my mate has recently been playing Command & Conquer 3 this month a lot. So Superfetch noticed this and started to keep more and more of it in memory at all times (he has 4GB). Then my mate convinced me to have a multiplayer game. His game loaded 3x quicker than mine. Because I had not played it for ages and Superfetch was not prepared for it... Our PC's are more or less identical in specification.
Soldato
For it to keep it in memory does it mean you have to keep the PC on all the time or in standby?
Yep - Vista cannot magically load anything quicker than XP does because the bottom line is, at some stage the hard drive needs to spin and be read, and that is no quicker on Vista obviously. So it is smoke and mirrors really.
Obviously, if you go to a Vista machine which has been on for a while and has all of your most used apps sitting in RAM, versus an XP machine which doesn't, the Vista machine will load those apps in a flash. But supposing you turn both machines on from a cold start and just want to load Firefox for example, it won't be one iota quicker in Vista than XP because they are both loading it off the hard drive.
But in XP as well, it doesn't purge its RAM the minute you quit a program anyway. Chances are if you run a game, quit it then go back to it later, it will still be in the RAM and will load in a flash too. Now I have 2 gigs in XP I find that regularly.
Well, unless you're using ready boost, which deals with this issue entirely.
just installed this today, got the new taskbar enabled and its activated (till aug 2009?)
pretty impressed with the peformance, and all the drivers were there cept for the nova hs-s2 which vista 64 ones worked no problems.
good stuff
pretty impressed with the peformance, and all the drivers were there cept for the nova hs-s2 which vista 64 ones worked no problems.
good stuff
Associate
Has anyone tried Windows 7 with a dual monitor setup? I wanna know if it's possible to span the new taskbar across both screens. If so can someone post a screenshot please?
Also, I'd thought I'd chip in my own experience on Vista and hard drive thrashing. I personally have found that Vista performs a lot better than XP, and also find a lot of the new features useful too. On boot up I do experience a lot of hard drive thrashing (especially cause I use 8GB of RAM), however this is Superfetch doing it's thing (caching), once Vista has finished caching completely it stops thrashing the hard drive. From that moment on, I find the operating system performs better than XP, and I do not experience any hard drive thrashing, even after turning the computer back on from sleep. However if I were to completely shut down the computer and then reboot, it will do the whole caching thing again. I believe Vista was designed with long up time in mind, and sleep mode being used instead of shut down (hence it's the default power button on the start menu). Superfetch does indeed make more efficient use of available resources, and because of this I think it is generally much needed feature.
On another note: I do find UAC annoying so I deactivate this, and I also deactivate System Restore - but I always did that in XP too, I found it of no use. If UAC has greatly improved in Windows 7 then I'm sure I would use it, as it was a function I was looking forward to using in Vista - until I found it too annoying cos it'd pop up way too much than really needed.
Also, I'd thought I'd chip in my own experience on Vista and hard drive thrashing. I personally have found that Vista performs a lot better than XP, and also find a lot of the new features useful too. On boot up I do experience a lot of hard drive thrashing (especially cause I use 8GB of RAM), however this is Superfetch doing it's thing (caching), once Vista has finished caching completely it stops thrashing the hard drive. From that moment on, I find the operating system performs better than XP, and I do not experience any hard drive thrashing, even after turning the computer back on from sleep. However if I were to completely shut down the computer and then reboot, it will do the whole caching thing again. I believe Vista was designed with long up time in mind, and sleep mode being used instead of shut down (hence it's the default power button on the start menu). Superfetch does indeed make more efficient use of available resources, and because of this I think it is generally much needed feature.
On another note: I do find UAC annoying so I deactivate this, and I also deactivate System Restore - but I always did that in XP too, I found it of no use. If UAC has greatly improved in Windows 7 then I'm sure I would use it, as it was a function I was looking forward to using in Vista - until I found it too annoying cos it'd pop up way too much than really needed.
I leave my machine on 24/7 but Windows is still designed that you HAVE to reboot regularly, if you are installing software, Windows updates, drivers etc. A lot of the time those require a reboot.
I suppose if every time Vista boots, you go and make a cup of tea and then come back to it, it'll seem nice and fast. For the rest of us though, it is no faster after a reboot than XP is. In fact in my experience it's slower.
Also one has to wonder what it does to hard drive longevity versus XP, for it to thrash the drive so much - often needlessly because you won't always want to run all the programs it 'fetches' into RAM.
I played UT2004 yesterday in XP. I've just tried it again and it loaded in about two seconds because it is still sitting in the RAM from then. XP's use of RAM is not so bad.
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with modern hdd's and failure rate I don't think it makes any difference at all.
I find vista all though boots in about the same time, you can start opening software faster. Just because vista is caching doesn't mean you can't get on with work.
Associate
How often do you install software and drivers? Everyday? For most people it's not a regular occurence, and updates are like once a week.
Also when you say about making a cup of tea while vista boots up - I find no reduction in performance on boot, even with a bit of hard drive thrashing - so I'm definitely not waiting around making cups of tea
Of course you can't - think about it. Vista can't pull the data off the hard drive any quicker than XP can. It doesn't make the drive spin any faster. The only way it could be quicker is with ReadyBoost.
I've said this loads of times but some people are fooled by smoke and mirrors / snake oil I guess.
Soldato
You seem intent on saying Windows Vista is no faster/better than XP, people who think it are not fooled by smoke and mirrors, I know for a fact it IS faster on my machine and as far as the lifespan of it goes until I feel a need to re install, Vista is the best there too,