So you are using Windows Vista and feel that its slower than Windows XP? Then you have come to the right place.
Following tutorial will help you in tweaking your Windows Vista to the max and you'll feel a significant improvement in your system performance. So without wasting any time lets start:

1. Following code contains a few registry modifications, which are completely safe and can increase the performance of Windows Vista. Just paste following code in Notepad, save the file with name "Vishal.reg" (including quotes) and then run it:


2. Right-click on My Computer icon on Desktop and select Properties (or press <WIN> key + <Pause/Break> key), click on Advanced system settings link in left side pane (You can also open it by typing sysdm.cpl in RUN or start menu search box and press Enter). Now click on Settings button in Performance section:



Now disable all unnecessary options in Visual Effects tab, you can remain following options enabled according to your requirements:

• Enable desktop composition (If you want to use Windows Aero theme)
• Enable transparent glass (If you want to use transparency in Windows)
• Show preview and filters in folder (If you use Details Pane in Explorer)
• Show thumbnails instead of icons (If you want to show thumbnails in Explorer)
• Show window contents while dragging (If you want windows to show content while moving them)
• Smooth edges of screen fonts (If you want to show smooth fonts)
• Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop (If you want to show shadows under desktop icon labels)
• Use visual styles on windows and buttons (If you want to use Windows Aero or Basic theme.)

3. Open Folder Options and click on View tab:



Now disable following options:

• Display file size information in folder tips.
• Display simple folder view in Navigation pane.
• Hide extensions for known file types.
• Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.
• Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items.

Other options don't affect the system performance. You can enable/disable them according to your requirements.

4. Right-click on My Computer icon on Desktop and select Manage (You can also open it by typing services.msc in RUN or start menu search box and press Enter).
Now goto Services & Applications -> Services. Here you can set a few unnecessary services to Manual, which will not start with windows and will decrease the boot time and will increase system performance.
Please follow the following tutorial to know about which services can be safely set to MANUAL:

Windows Vista Services that can be Safely set to MANUAL

5. Type msconfig in RUN or Startmenu search box and press Enter. Now goto Startup tab and deselect the unnecessary entries, which you don't want to start automatically with Windows, e.g. you can disable VGA driver utility, Sound Card utility, etc to speed up the startup time and to increase system performance.
You can also disable these items using Windows Defender. Open Windows Defender and click on Tools and then click on "Software Explorer".

6. Open Sound in Control Panel (or type mmsys.cpl in RUN or Startmenu search box and press Enter), goto Sounds tab and select No Sounds in Sound Scheme section. Or you can remain some of your favorite sounds but set Exit Windows, Windows Logoff, Windows Logon and Start Navigation to (None).

7. After following all above mentioned points, you'll see a big improvement in your Windows Vista performance. If you want to tweak more, then you can use 3rd party tools which are listed here:

Windows Vista Tweaking Software List

8. At last I'll advise to defrag the HDD regularly, install only necessary software, use the latest drivers and keep your Windows updated.

===================================

Following is a description of all above mentioned registry codes:

nice guide.. ill have a play when i get home

Will try it out

Good guide!

+1

Thank you guys.

very very nice

Nice work, ill give it a go when I get home

Thanks to both of you.

It's really not worth doing any of this. I can't imagine significantly better performance through these very minor tweaks, and they disable a large number of very minor niceties that users might miss when their loss is combined.

The only useful item is #4, and external guide to services.

yea I agree this is just another one of those "disable everything" guides that purport to be the best thing since sliced bread but really doesn't do much. And the external services guide is pretty pathetic. blackviper's guide is far superior.

Thanks to both of you for your so kind words. Thats really a nice way to appreciate others work.

Disable "Hide extensions for known file types."?
How could something as small as that make Vista faster?

IE 7 feels faster in Vista to me at startup.

I just looked at blackviper's guide, i like how it explains the services when you click them.

sorry but we get a ****load of these all the time and it's getting tiring that's all.

^^ Its OK.

@Doli
I have also included a few tweaks in this tutorial which must be applied like the one you have pointed out. It helps in rectifying malicious files in your system cause most of the times viruses make EXE files having yellow folder icons. If this option is not enabled user might get confused between normal folders and the malicious file.

^ User Account Control

Dunno, I've spent a bit of time customizing vista to suit me best and I'm quite happy with it, but you should check your power options under control panel and unless your on a laptop set it to high performance and check the plan settings. I found out that my Q6600 was running on 50% power. Also disable any Visual Effects that you don't want to leave on, I prefer to have some of them on because it looks nicer, but some stuff i would never use are eating valuable RAM.

Edit: Yeah, I cant stand that UAC, disabling it was the first thing I did when I got my pc.

No offense, but these tweaks will have very little, if any, speed impact on the system....And some of them are for things like turning on the notepad status bar?

Oh my god a vista tweak guide that's not

"Disable superfetch, Indexing, and all other usefull features"

Any kind of benchmark on this? Because, I left everything as defaults and I don't find my system to be sluggish or irresponsive at all.

I think its aimed at people with lesser systems, which probably shouldn't be running vista anyway...

I appreciate the work..but I have killed every service i don't use in vista, turned off most the effects, and done nearly ever little reg tweak I can find......Vista doesn't respond to tweaks like XP does...I barely had any improvement.

^^ Thanks.

I posted the things which I usually do in my system to speed up Windows. I also posted the same tutorial in a few other forums and got lots of positive feedbacks but here most of the ppl didnt like it. But its OK. I always welcome all kind of comments whether its appreciations or criticism. I believe in sharing and I'll keep sharing my tutorials in future.

maybe that's because here on neowin members generally tend to be far more knowledgeable than on other forums...

the tweaks you have detailed are misleading as they claim to improve vista performance, however, focus mainly on changing minor user preferences. for example, how would adding a shortcut to a command window in the context menu improve performance?

As stated previously, vista does not respond well in terms of performance to such 'tweaks'.

^^ Yep. I understand that. Its true here members have really impressive knowledge. No doubt.

I'm using Vista since 8 months, and I think this guide won't accelerate Vista a lot.

The little tweaks about displays informations or enhancement will only work if your computer isn't enough powerfull, but for a recent computer that's useless.

I've already tried to desactivate some Vista services, but there are pretty essential if you want a Vista and not a XP instead.

In my opinion, we can't do a lot if we want to have faster Vista.

Hmm, how come the swear filter didn't pick that one up?

Innacurate guide. Disabling minor functionality will not accelerate your system. You want to make Vista faster? Double your ram.
2GB is it's sweet spot.

cheers Vishal for some of the tips. Although i agree that these won't make any considerable speed impact on my vista system, i have to give you credit for your large contributions, whether it be vista visual styles, guides or advice

keep up the good work and dont let people easily put you off what you enjoy to do

one more thread wasted on VISTA ...........

@ Abhishel --> get a life, and try to say something that contributes to the thread

I think there are many threads which said same thing again and agian .... all these tips he sais is same leaving 1-2NEW ........

One more useless reply.

Anyone smell a troll?

Awesome Guide

You rock!

^^ Thanks.


Thats really so nice of you. I appreciate it. I'm sharing my work and I'll keep sharing in future. I respect all kind of comments whether its good or bad. ;)

I am not going to down on Vishal for making the attempt - insofar as I can tell, on someone's system these tweaks can actually make things a lot easier / faster to work with. Having run Vista for over a year (and retail since just at a year) I can see how some of the proposed 'tweaks' would be beneficial to someone who needed a very fast way to access them - such as an always on Command Prompt context menu.

That being said, though, let me also say that I am one of those people using Vista Ultimate on an 'older' machine - specifically:

MSI 865PE Neo-2 Platinum mobo with a P4 3.2E (Prescott) CPU
3 GB (3 x 1GB) Corsair XMS 3200 DDR RAM
triple 7200 RPM IDE HDs - 120 GB Seagate Barracuda, and 80/40 GB WDs
ATI Radeon x1650 Pro AGP GA with dual 19" CRTs running at 1600 X 1200 resolution (ViewSonic GS790 and Philips 109B)

Vista runs a bit slower in terms of rendering pages and such on my 20+ Mbit Cable connection, compared to a Dell Core2Duo E6400 Machine with 2 GB DDR2 and a 200 GB SATA drive running Vista Home Premium, but I have it going full blown Aero - Maximum Glass (even on maximized windows) and all of the options that Vishal 'turns off' running - and I have no problems with it. It plays NFS:MW:Black and NFS:Carbon, The Witcher, and even renders Far Cry beautifully, as the GA should.

I also will *never* ever disable UAC - it's like trying to run as root all the time in *nix - just plain dumb. All of my apps run fine, and I have found fixes (early on, it was the inclusion on Manifest files for executables that would not run correctly) that have kept things going as I need them to throughout my experiences with Vista.

Perhaps a greater explanation of what each step does and *why* it provides an objective (or subjective) speedup would be beneficial to the readers here.

I find Black Viper's guide more complete and more informative.

BV's guide is for services. This goes a bit further.

Hey, this thread made me register on this site so i could post a reply.
Thanks to the original poster. This is a great guide especially where you explain all the registry hacks, I was about to dismiss them as a bunch of nonsense little piddly tweaks that don't even help performance until i read their descriptions and realized that these are some of the most helpful tweaks even just in terms of usability that I would like to use myself. Thanks for making it easy to pick and choose which ones are suited for me.

i am going to try it.
thankx

Will this still apply in SP1?

Wow! Nice tutorial Vishal Gupta!

not big difference with all those disables

I will try this, even with 4GB RAM sometimes Vista is a bit sluggish.

The unnecessary UI effects are a nice, cheap boost in performance. No harm done from making a mistake, just reapply them as needed. The only thing he mentioned that I would beware of is the services section. A lot of people make the mistake of disabling a few, getting hooked and guessing which others would be safe to turn off because they seem pointless. If you don't know what it is or what it does, leave it alone! I would also stay away from any tweaks involving virtual memory. There are a ton of conflicting arguements about the optimal settings because each system is different. Other than that, it's a great start for those looking for quick fixes.

I don't know if I'm breaking Neowin ettiquette or anything, but if you truly want a good Vista Tweaking guide, you can go here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

It contains a long list of excellent tweaks that will drop seconds off your boot and shutdown, as well as give you a peppier system.

Ciao

good work composing this guide

but on my personal opinion these registry settings are set the way they are for a reason, I mean honestly Microsoft would of made the most optimizations needed in Vista. In XP it was a different story.. but with SP3 on the horizon even those tweaks will be useless.

Just my 2 cents

Nice guide Vishal... Thanks for replying in my message.

Maybe users can add some of them in next version of Winbubble.



or maybe you can? it's your tips and tricks... I will contact you later

The members here at Neowin generally tend to "Think" that they are more knowledgeable than on other forums. What I have found to be the case is that the majority of them are a bunch of ungrateful, know it all types that love to blow their own horn.

When someone takes the time and effort to put together a a guide, they should not be treated in such a manner. I find it disgusting. IMHO.

Thank you Vishal for putting this guide together.

Oh God, there are far too many spelling errors and use of shorthand for me to really think that guy knows what he's talking about.
"omg get dis defrag tool rite! also get ccleaner kthx <3"

I did actually use some of the tweaks.. such as the shutdown wait timer and the external monitor check task.

Thanks for the tips. I was always too paranoid to dig around and disable things, but the Visual Effects and Services tweaks made my system feel a little more responsive. Thanks again.

That's the truest thing i've read on this forum in the longest time :thumbsup: