VISTA TWEAKS

khulershaker · 11 Sep 2009 at 15:44

Hi
Looking for vista tweak guide - seen loads for XP but really need one for Vista
all the things you can do to speed it up in one place.
I looked on here but couldnt find one - mayne be someone knows a link to a good one - thanks a lot.

JEL8 · 11 Sep 2009 at 16:20

Hi, Here is a tweak guide for Vista. it can be D/loaded in PDF format.http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

mmj_uk · 11 Sep 2009 at 18:38

Turning off Superfetch is the best tweak I know.

mrk · 11 Sep 2009 at 19:09

Turning superfetch off is NOT a tweak...unless you have an SSD.

bledd · 11 Sep 2009 at 19:44

mmj_uk said:
Turning off Superfetch is the best tweak I know.

funniest post of the year :rolleyes:

superfetch is what makes vista better than XP imo.

Craig321 · 11 Sep 2009 at 19:47

bledd. said:
funniest post of the year

superfetch is what makes vista better than XP imo.

Definitely. Superfetch is one of the main features that's made me stick with Vista all this time.

mmj_uk · 11 Sep 2009 at 19:58

bledd. said:
funniest post of the year

superfetch is what makes vista better than XP imo.

Depends if you want your hard drive loading gigs of data into memory at random, run a program that needs 3gigs of memory and your memory will be flushed of 3gigs of data it just spent 5mins caching, close that program and then it starts re-caching the data it just flushed, total waste of HD thrashing.

Windows 7 has a far less aggressive prefetcher but I don't see people crying about its lack of performance, in fact quite the opposite.

mrk · 11 Sep 2009 at 20:03

Superfetch doesn't load gigs of stuff randomly...I suggest you do some research.

Fanatic · 11 Sep 2009 at 20:07

My C:\Windows\Prefetch is a vast 65MB.

mrk · 11 Sep 2009 at 20:12

Mine is 38MB.... Prefetch folder will dynamically increase and reduce in content there is no need to ever venture into there or do anything...Windows will do it the fastest at all times.

Seriously the best tweak is to disable Windows Defender, install a proper AV like AVAST, reduce system restore's drive allocation to around 2-3% only and then don't touch anything else.

anti5580 · 11 Sep 2009 at 20:58

JEL8 said:
Hi, Here is a tweak guide for Vista. it can be D/loaded in PDF format.http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

That's the guide that I use ... probably the best one in regards to tweaks.

dbmzk1 · 11 Sep 2009 at 22:55

Vista doesn't really need any tweaks in my opinion. Works great right out of the box. As mrk said, just disable Defender. I personally put UAC on silent and disable system restore too.

mrk · 11 Sep 2009 at 23:47

Don't disable system restore, it is a key part of Windows and is the difference between complete reinstall when something goes wrong or a simple system restore to a previous day.

By all means knock down system restore drive reserve to 2% from the default 15 or whatever it is but do NOT disable it. Disabling it makes NO performance difference whatsoever.

Caged · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:05

mmj_uk said:
total waste of HD thrashing

The amount of use a hard drive gets doesn't affect it's failure rate to any statistically significant level, they can thrash all they want and it won't kill them quicker. If the noise bothers you then you should have bought a quieter drive.

mrk · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:07

The thrashing is not constant either, over the course of a few weeks the Superfetch system will train itself and once fully up and running and up to speed with your usage habits will almost completely cease and run silently in the BG speeding up Windows bit by bit.

That is its purpose and some people don't realise there is a sort of training period where it learns the usage habits.

dbmzk1 · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:30

mrk said:
Don't disable system restore, it is a key part of Windows and is the difference between complete reinstall when something goes wrong or a simple system restore to a previous day.

By all means knock down system restore drive reserve to 2% from the default 15 or whatever it is but do NOT disable it. Disabling it makes NO performance difference whatsoever.

I've always disabled it for as long as I can remember, even back on XP. Never needed it. Even so there are not many problems that can't be fixed to be honest.

It speeds up the installation of some software as it doesn't have to make a save point. Also frees up a lot of hard drive space.

TheVoice · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:38

Not a performance tweak, but I reduce the window border padding, gets rid of the silly thick borders that MS thinks Vista should have.

anti5580 · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:40

TheVoice said:
Not a performance tweak, but I reduce the window border padding, gets rid of the silly thick borders that MS thinks Vista should have.

Yup that's the first thing I do every time I reinstall Vista/Win7.

mrk · 12 Sep 2009 at 00:53

dbmzk1 said:
I've always disabled it for as long as I can remember, even back on XP. Never needed it. Even so there are not many problems that can't be fixed to be honest.

It speeds up the installation of some software as it doesn't have to make a save point. Also frees up a lot of hard drive space.

Like I said, it need to take up HD space, 2-3% is a few GB of usage only, maybe 4 or 5 which is nothing and creating a restore point takes seconds. Not every app install does it either only ones that make core system changes or ones that give you the option to create one.

It is a headache saver and many on this forum have posted about how it has saved a lot of time from doing a reinstall and messing around with the ASR recovery mode to get core system files back.

Ratbag · 12 Sep 2009 at 09:28

System restore is for fart knockers. When people deliver me a malware riddled PC to fix, the malware is almost inevitably present in restore points too. Making an backup image via acronis or whatever is the way forward.