Windows Vista, while having a sleek interface and several advanced OS features, is a relatively slow operating system overall.  With some simple tweaks, Vista can run much smoother and efficiently, let’s take a look at the top 5 tips for improving Vista’s speed and overall performance. 

Beyond the basic “clean-up” tactics that can speed up any OS, Vista contains many technical aspects that are very resource-intensive, but can disabled quickly to speed things up.

Incidentally, our sister site contains a much more detailed guide on how to speed up Windows Vista if you want even more than is provided here.

Let’s get started:

1.)  Disable Aero.  Aero is the unique feature in Vista that displays open windows in a “cover-flow”-type interface.  The problem is, to accomplish this takes a lot of resources in terms of CPU usage and memory.  During heavy usage, Aero can slow down your system by as much as 15 percent.  Luckily, it’s very simple to disable.  Go to “Start,” and “Run,” and type in “systempropertiesperformance.”  Go to the “Visual Effects” tab, and uncheck the box next to “Animate Windows When Minimizing and Maximizing.”  Beyond this, there’s other options in this window you can disable to speed things up a bit.

2.)  Indexing Services.  While it can be very handy, Vista’s indexing service can majorly hog system resources while working in the background.  To fully disable the indexing services completely, open up “My Computer,” and right click on your “C: Drive.” Go to the “General Tab,” and uncheck the box next to “Index This Drive.”  Alternatively, if you don’t want to completely disable indexing all together, you can modify what the service actually indexes to reduce the load on your system.

3.)  Disable Services.  Just like XP, Vista provides a lot of services that may be running in the background that you will never use.  Disabling these services will dramatically improve overall system efficiency.  To start, open your “Task Manager,” and click the “Processes Tab.”  Look at the sizes of the services running, and choose the ones that are particularly heavy.  Select them, and choose “Go To Service(s).”  This should take you to the “Services” tab where you can disable the processes you’ve chosen.  Disable any you think you’ll never use, especially if they’re large processes.

4.)  Use ReadyBoost.  ReadyBoost is a unique feature in Vista that allows you to use a solid state drive, such as a UBS drive, to offset its disk memory cache for improved performance.  To use this feature, just find the fastest possible USB drive you can find, plug it into your computer, and your system should automatically find the drive and ask if you want to use ReadyBoost.  It’s recommended that if you’re going to use this feature to find a USB drive with the same storage size as the memory on your computer- if you system has 2GB of memory, find a 2GB USB drive with the fastest speed possible. 

5.)  Modify Defragment Services.  Vista has a unique method for defragmentation of hard drives.  Vista’s default setting is to run a defragmentation every week in the background to keep things orderly and running as smoothly as it can.  The problem is, this is somewhat overkill, and can actually slow things down while it’s defragmenting.  Simply go to your “Defragmentation Settings,” and choose a schedule that’s a bit more spread out- maybe every month or every 2-3 months. 

While these are all simple tweaks and tips, they can make a huge difference in the overall speed of your system.  Keeping up on basic maintenance and “house-cleaning” on your system will go along way in extending the life of your system and making your life much easier in the long run.

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