Vista Performance Tweaks - Epic thread

This is a list of 30 tips/tweaks which will enable you to remove all of the clutter or unused aspects of Vista to give you an immense performance boost! I tried just a few of these on my girlfriends laptop and played CS before and after.. Before i was getting 40/50fps and after it was about 130fps, not too shabby for a budget laptop.

These tips/tweaks were compiled from various sites and from my own knowledge, hope you manage to gain that extra 10fps that you crave in CS:S or play TF2 without lagging

I accept no responsiblity if you fuck up your own computer, These tweaks are tried and tested and work perfectly fine, if you mess up, its your own fault

If you are not confident about using any of these tweaks, Dont use them. Simple as.

Hope you like it


1. Improve Sata Performance

This tip “enhances” drive performance by allowing the drive in question to perform more write caching to system memory. The danger is if your system loses power and you do not have a backup power source (UPS), whatever data is cached to system memory will be lost. If you’re the adventurous type and want a bit more responsiveness out of your system,

click Start, type Device Manager in the Search box, click the Device Manager, open up the Disk drives tree, right-click a drive, and select Properties. Go to the Policies tab and check “Enable Advanced Performance.” Click OK.


2. Flip3D Animation

This tip will be useful for notebook owners or anyone whose PC is packing less than stellar graphics processing power. The Flip3D animation can bog down weaker graphics cards if it has to flip a lot of windows, so this is a tweak that lets you set the number of windows that will be rendered in 3D at one time.

Click on the Start Button, type regedit in the Search bar, and press Enter.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, and DWM.
Create a new DWORD and call it Max3DWindows.
Set the value of this to something between four and nine (“4” and “9”) depending on the performance of your card (a higher number requires more video card power). You should then feel free to experiment to find the best value for your computer. Restart your PC to finalize the change



3. Disabling Windows Features

Open up Control Panel and go to the Programs and Features section. Find the link for "Turn Windows features on or off"





The following is a huge list of what everything does, so if you are unsure, refer to it and it will give you an in-depth explanation as to what it does.
Here

4. Speed up windows vista start menu search

Right-click on the Start Button and select Properties.
Click on the Customize button.
Uncheck Search Communications.
Set Search Files to Don't Search for files.
Click OK.

5. Speed up Windows Aero interface

Method 1: Disable Transparent Glass Effect

1. Click on the Desktop and select Personalize.
2. Select Windows Color And Appearance.
3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

Method 2: Disable Windows Minimize/Maximize Animation

1. Click on the Start Menu, enter SystemPropertiesPerformance and hit Enter.
2. On the Visual Effects tab, uncheck Animate Windows When Minimizing/Maximizing.
3. Click OK.

6. Stop applications that auto-start on startup

Method 1: System Configuration Utility

1. Click on the Start Button, enter msconfig and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Startup tab.
3. Uncheck items that you do want to auto-start and click OK.

Method 2: Windows Defender

1. Click on the Start Button, enter Windows Defender and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Tools from the top menu bar.
3. Click on Software Explorer and select Show for All Users.
4. Select an application to either Remove or Disable.

7. Disable the windows sidebar

1. Right clicking the Windows Sidebar icon in the system tray
2. Click Properties
3. Uncheck the Start Sidebar when Windows starts checkbox
4. Click OK

8. Disable Indexing

Click Start then Computer
Right Click the C: Drive
On General Tab, Uncheck Index this drive for faster searching
On the subsequent dialog box, Select Include subfolders and files

9. Turn off Automatic Disk Defragmentation

Windows Vista and its always-on defragment feature isn’t really that necessary and can cause system slow down.
To disable this:
Click Start then Computer
Right Click the C: Drive
Click on Properties
Select the Tools Tab
Click on Defragment Now
Uncheck Run on a schedule

10. Turn off Windows Hibernation

Windows hibernation background services can use a large amount of system resources. If you don’t use the Hibernate feature on a regular basis you may want to disable it to give Vista a performance boost.
To disable Hibernation:
Select the Control Panel then Power Options
Click Change Plan Settings
Click on Change Advanced Power Settings
Expand the Sleep selection
Expand the Hibernate After selection
Crank the selector down to zero
Click Apply

11. Turn off System Restore

Analysis and restore point creation by Windows Vista can eat a fair amount of system resources. Disabling this service will obviously mean the system restore feature in Vista will not be available in the event of a system crash.


Change this at your own risk


To disable this service:
Control Panel > System
Click System Protection on the left panel
Uncheck the main system drive
Agree to the confirmation

12. Disable User Access Control (UAC)

This much-loathed new Vista feature attempts to protect your system from malware infection by making you manually confirm a whole host of everyday user operations. While it doesn’t directly impact performance, it can be annoying and might be more hassle than good.
To disable User Access Control:
Click Start then Control Panel
Select User Accounts
Select Turn User Account Control on or off
Uncheck User Account Control Box
Restart as recommended

13. Disable excess Windows Services that Auto-Launch at Startup

Just like Windows XP, Vista ships with all kinds of services enabled that load at startup and may never be used by most users.
To see what loads at startup and disable the ones you likely won’t be needing (they can always be started manually later)

Click Start then Control Panel
Select Administrative Tools
Choose System Configuration
Click the Services Tab
You can safely deselect:
Offline Files (unless you’re using Offline File Sync)
Tablet PC Input Service (unless you have a tablet PC)
Terminal Services
Windows Search (If you have already disabled indexing)
Fax (unless you’re using a fax modem)

14. Clearing out un-needed services

There are two options here. You can manually go through all 129 services with the aid of this In-depth Guide to help you determine if you might need a service (dependencies and what depends on a given service are listed), or you can run one of our custom Registry Files which will allow you to try out several tweaked settings. Don't worry, if you mess up your services, or you don't like the results of the tweaked settings, you can always go back to the default settings with one of the handy default reg files on the same page.
Thats pretty much it. Realize that:

Default: The service will not run on default, but if requested to by any other process, it will start up.
Automatic:Start up this service right on computer load.
Automatic (Delayed Start):Start up this service on computer boot, but starting it up can wait until after user is logged in. The startup of the process can be delayed/set to a lower priority.
Disabled: The service will not run, even if requested to.

15. Speed up external hard drives

This tweak is going to show you how to increase the performance of your external hard drives by turning write caching back on as well as activating advanced performance.

Let’s get started:

Click on the start button, then right click on Computer and select Manage.
Click on Device Manager on the side menu.
Expand Disk drives and locate your external drive from the list.
Right click on the drive and select Properties.
On the Policies tab, select Optimize for performance.
Next, check Enable write caching on the disk and Enable advanced performance as shown below.
Hit Ok and reboot


16. Speed up wireless Wan connections

In Windows Vista the networking components were designed to be much more intelligent and automatically adjust the network settings to optimize the connection speed. This is a great new feature. Your network components basically tweak themselves for optimal performance. In most situations, these components automatically adjust perfectly for best performance. However, with wireless WAN cards the detection of network conditions is flawed and can result in slower network performance.
To fix this problem, Microsoft has released a hotfix for users affected by this issue. If you have a Wireless WAN device, I suggest you give this hotfix a try.

32 Bit Version
64 Bit Version

17. Disable superfetch for computers with less memory

The Vista Superfetch feature is an interesting one. In theory, your Vista PC will 'learn' your typical activities in terms of file and application access, then preconfigure the most commonly used apps in its memory on startup, making them much faster to access. In practice, this works very well on computers with 2GB or more of memory, but leads to a lot of disk thrashing and sluggishness on systems below the magic 2GB line. If you are not happy with the startup speed of your Vista machine, why not try disabling the Superfetch feature?

To stop and disable Vista Superfetch:
Go to the 'start' menu and type 'services' in the search bar. Hit Enter.
In the services window, scroll down until you reach the 'superfetch' service. Right click and choose 'properties.Change the 'startup type' dropdown box to 'disabled' and click the 'stop' button to stop the service.
Hit 'OK'




18. Boot Vista with all available processors

While it takes good advantage of today's multiple core processors when it's loaded, Vista will still use only a single processor core when the OS itself is loading. Fortunately you can override this and force Vista to take advantage of all available processors when starting up.

To force Vista to use all processors during the startup process:

Right click on the 'start' menu and type 'msconfig.' Hit Enter.
Go to the 'boot' tab and click 'advanced options.'
Place a check next to the 'number of processors:' option and change the dropdown box to reflect the number of discrete processor cores in your computer.
Hit 'ok' to save. You will need to restart to take advantage of this tip, obviously.

19. Force 32-bit Windows Vista to use all your memory by enabling PAE

The 32-bit versions of Windows Vista will only recognize a maximum of a little more than 3GB of memory if you have 4GB of RAM physically installed. It is possible, however to gain access to the rest of your 4GB of memory by enabling Page Address Extension (PAE) mode within Vista.
This feature works with 64-bit Intel and AMD processors to add an extra memory address space over and above what is usually available to the operating system. This will not allow enough headroom to access much more than 4GB of physical memory, so you'll have to move to Vista 64 or Linux to go further, but for users who have 4GB and would like it all to be used by Vista, this tip is worth a try.
One caveat; the extra memory addresses added by PAE require some extra work by Vista in order to use them, so you need to balance the benefit of the extra memory compared to this extra overhead. When it comes to apps that are not really memory hungry, enabling PAE may only slow your computer down. Still, it's easy to enable and easy to remove again, so why not try?

To enable PAE mode in Windows Vista:

Open an administrative command prompt.
Type the following: 'bcdedit /set pae forceenable'. Restart the computer.
Vista should now see your full 4GB of memory.

If you find performance has not improved the way you would like, you can disable PAE again by opening the administrative command prompt and typing 'BCDedit /set PAE forcedisable' followed by a restart.

20. Move the Vista paging file for better performance

The page file is an area of hard disk space reserved by Windows for use as additional memory. By default, Windows manages and resizes this file dynamically to suit its needs. Vista does a very good job of optimizing the page file on its own, but there is one tweak you may be able to make which will considerably increase its performance. If you have more than one physical hard disk drive installed in your computer, you can move the page file onto the physical drive that does NOT have Windows Vista installed on it. Since most page file hits are related to Windows system operations, this will considerably reduce disk access on your OS drive, speeding everything up.

To move the Windows Vista Page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.
In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.
Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'
Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'
Uncheck the 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' checkbox.
In the window that shows the list of partitions (C:, D:, etc.) choose a partition that resides on the physical hard drive that does not have Windows installed and highlight it. Select the 'system managed size' option then click the 'set' button. This will create a paging file on the hard disk in question.
You will notice that the 'paging file size' for the highlighted drive now reads 'system managed'
Now highlight your C: partition (assuming that this is where Windows Vista is installed). Select the 'no paging file' option and click 'set'.
Your paging file has now been offloaded.


21. Rebuild the paging file to optimize performance

If you have noticed that game performance has diminished or that applications are loading slower than they once did on your Vista system, you may want to give this tip a try. By default, Vista does not clear the contents of the paging file (the area of the hard disk Vista reserves to act as extra RAM memory). Over time it can become fragmented and less efficient. One solution is to reset this file every so often, ensuring a fresh start for your applications and games.

To reset the Windows Vista page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.
In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.
Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'
Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'
Uncheck 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' at the top.
Highlight the drive that contains your paging file. Select the 'custom' size option below.
Change the minimum and maximum page file size to '0' and click set.
Restart the computer.
Reopen the paging file properties window and highlight the drive that contained your page file. Choose the 'system managed size' option and click 'set'. Confirm the overwrite and click 'ok'


22. Enable Windows classic desktop

If you just can't get used to the look of the Vista interface, or you are running under 1GB of memory and you need to speed up the desktop, try enabling the Windows Classic interface. This is a two step process involving changing both the desktop settings and the Start menu. Note that while in XP the 'classic interface' was that of Windows 2000, in Windows Vista it is the XP interface that is brought up when you make this change.
To revert to the Windows classic interface:
Right click on the 'start' menu and click 'properties'.
Select the 'classic start menu' option and click 'ok'.
Right click on an empty area of the desktop and choose 'personalize.'
Select the 'theme' option.
In the 'theme' dropdown box, choose 'Windows Classic.'
Click 'ok'.
All the bells and whistles are now gone completely

23. Disable mandatory thumbnail previews

By default, Windows Vista renders nearly every directory in thumbnails, which can be a good thing, but can also be a pain if you've got a lot of files and little memory. If you'd like to go back to the XP-centric explorer where thumbs where an option not a mandate, it's easy enough to do, fortunately.
To disable automatic thumbnail previews:
Go to 'start/computer.'
open the 'organize' menu and choose 'folder and search options.'
Choose the view tab and place a check next to the 'always show icons, never thumbnails' option at the top. Hit 'ok.'

24. Disable 'GUI boot' to speed startup

The little animated bar you see while loading Windows can be disabled, which will actually shave a few precious seconds off your startup time. Try it, it worked for us.

To disable the Vista GUI boot:

Open the 'start' menu and enter 'msconfig' in the search bar. Hit Enter.
When the MSConfig window opens, navigate to the 'boot' tab.
Place a checkmark next to the 'No GUI boot' option. Click 'ok'


25. Customize Vista desktop performance

Whether or not you use the Aero 3D interface, you can tweak a whole range of factors to customize your Windows Vista desktop, or drop features to gain speed on lower-end computer systems. All these options are available in one handy menu which can be found In the advanced properties of the 'computer' option in the Start menu.
To adjust Vista desktop performance settings:
Open the 'start' menu and right-click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.
Click on 'advanced system settings' on the left-hand pane.
Go to the 'advanced' tab and under the 'performance' heading, Click 'settings...'

In the 'visual effects' tab, you have a whole range of settings you can disable to boost desktop performance, or you can choose the 'adjust for best performance option' if your system is having great difficulty with Vista.

26. Enable more simultaneous downloads in Internet Explorer 7

As was the case with Windows XP, the version of Internet Explorer bundled with Windows Vista is limited to just two simultaneous connections to the same Internet server. This is generally fine, but it can mean that large complicated websites can take longer to open than they should, and it also means that you cannot download more than two files simultaneously from the same location. Fortunately this is easy enough to change.
To increase the number of simultaneous downloads in IE 7:

Open Regedit and navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings'
Create a new Dword value called 'MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server' and give it a decimal value between 3 and 5.
Create another new Dword called 'MaxConnectionsPerServer' and give it an identical decimal value.
Close Regedit and restart IE to take better advantage of your bandwidth.

27. Disable background features while gaming

If you want to try and wring a little more performance out of your games in Windows Vista, try modifying their executable files to disable some background desktop features. Vista allows you to nest commands within the executable file which will turn off the Vista 3D effects like the Aero desktop when you run the game.

To disable the 3D desktop while gaming:

Locate the executable file for the game. The best way to do this is to go directly to the 'c:\program files' directory and find the folder for the game in question. You can also use the search function.
Right click on the executable file and choose 'properties.'
Click the 'compatibility' tab.
Under the 'settings' heading, check 'disable visual themes'.
Click 'ok'
Note that this tip disables the Aero desktop only for the game you just modified.


28. Update Vista's DirectX9 files for better game compatibility

One of the fixes for getting games to run in Vista that do not normally (such as FEAR and 3Dmark06 as two examples) is relatively simple. These games require the latest version of Directx 9. Vista does not actually contain a full installation of Directx 9, just some elements for compatibility purposes. So, install Directx 9.

To install Directx 9c on Windows Vista:
Download the latest DirectX 9 redistributable file from Here
Unzip the file into a folder on your desktop or in your documents.
Run the DXSETUP file.
You can delete the folder after the install has finished.

29. Run DirectX 9 games in Windows XP compatibility mode

Pretty much everyone has heard by now that Vista has some compatibility issues with 'old' (read 'designed for XP' applications and games, and it's true. There are a lot of programs and games that really should work on Vista but don't for one reason or another.
Fortunately various patches added since the Vista release have helped the issue considerably, but many of your old games still just won't play 'out of the box' on Vista. There is a tip that can help you resolve this issue though. Try enabling the XP compatibility mode for your older games. Just as Windows XP had various compatibility modes included to mirror older OS environments, so Vista can mirror the XP environment to a degree. This is a setting that must be switched on specifically for each game individually, so let's look at how to do this:

To enable XP compatibility mode for a game:
Locate the executable file for the game. The best way to do this is to go directly to the c:\program files directory and find the folder for the game in question. You can also use the search function.
Right click on the executable file and choose 'properties.'
Click the 'compatibility' tab.
Check the 'run this program in compatibility mode for...: box and ensure that the dropdown box underneath is set to 'Windows XP Service pack 2'.
Click 'OK'
You must do this separately for each game.

30. Poor game performance? Try DirectX 9 mode

If you own some of the newer DirectX10-capable games like Bioshock or Crysis, but you are disappointed with the performance you are seeing when you run these games in their full DX10 glory, there's an option which you'll probably want to try. Navigate to the games folder ('start\games' and right click on the icon that starts your directX10 game. You should see a 'play DirectX 9' option. You may sacrifice a few of the visual bells and whistles, but your frame rates are almost guaranteed to be better

31. Shut down operating system services faster, for a faster shutdown

To shorten the service shutdown grace period:

Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.

Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control'

Double click the 'WaitToKillServiceTimeout' DWORD value to edit it. Give it a value between 5000 (5 seconds) and 12000 depending on how conservative you are feeling.

Your computer should now shutdown faster.


<3

n1 cheggers

ep1c thread indeed

nice
not that i use vista, but its still nice :3

nice, not that i read upto #30, i read the first 2 :X but yeah, sure it will help alot of people

Keith how do u change the settings for security i.e if i want to delete something from program files it gives me loads of hastle

what do you mean hassle?

you mean it comes up saying "Destination folder access denied" ? and you have to select continue?

You will have to take ownership of the folder by doing the following..

Turn off UAC (Tip #12)

Downloading TakeOwnership.reg

Right click on Program Files and click "Take ownership" of them, and next time you come to delete something from there, it shouldnt hastle you

ye thats what i mean but its the same for running exes and shit (its a good feature for inexperienced i think).
can i take control of the whole pc? seeing as i have an administration account its annoying that its asking me to click continue

I have recently being playing Crysis on windows XP, i was reading on a forum about the increase in quality with Vista and DX10.. Is Vista worth investing in now? I know there were a lot of complaints with it but it sounds like its the way forward atm!

alantis, you are an Administrator on the pc.. but not THE Administrator.. if you get me.. just one of those things really..

to do that you would have to login as THE administrator.. not your own account..

but that isnt recommended for security reasons and if you fook up your own account, the administrators account is there as a backup..

Some feedback would be nice, which tips you used, did you gain any extra fps? better performance?

(i jus wanted to know the time i spent making it wasnt wasted! haha)

Turning off UAC is a bad idea. I'ts like installing an anti virus and then turning it off. I think everyone knows im a vista fan and while im the first to admit it hasnt caught on - i have zero hassles with it. i get maybe 1 or 2 UAC prompts per day, a very small price for the security it offers.

The reason i get on so well with vista is simple - I have had a training course in it and hold a mcp specifically for it - ie - i know what everything does. the reason a lot of people hate it is simply they dont understand it as well as they might.

+ you all hate change. you hated 1.5 -> 1.6 update, you hated XP when it came out - the list goes on.

I have Vista. Only issues I have for it is it doesn't run my Quake 3, Farcry or Final Fantasy VII.

Which fucking sucks. Other than that... its awesome

But MaKas that isn't vista's problem, it's the fact that the game developer's haven't given support for it. you also missed one Andy there is also a way of allowing vista to shut down faster, as it can be a common problem where vista takes a while to shutdown.

I can't remember what it's call off the top of my head, but it vastyl speeds up shutdowns + restarts.

i was going to put that in but i didnt think it would be worth while.. and it would make it 31 instead of 30.. haha

il add it in a lil while =]

added

This thread is as epic as they come, thx alot Keith

hah, i try =D

that way ppl who are on vista.. and suffering with lag n ting can tweak it to fuck and get the best from it

ye this is really good just did it on my gfs laptop and its made a huge difference

looks awesome this like
going to try it when i get in from work.