Minimal Windows Vista

By dmd3x
in Microsoft (Windows)

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jesseinsf

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Look, stick with XP with service pack 3. When you strip Vista down with vLite and then you install something and find out that it doesn't work properly you'll then wonder why is doesn't work. XP with SP3 has added Vista networking features. And XP with SP3 is fully compatible with connecting to Server 2008. What does the stripped down Vista you have that XP with SP3 doesn't have? I really would like to know.

When nLite came out it was not stable for about 3-4 years. vLite doesn't even seem like it's stable to use since SP1 came out.

And yes in my prior post I was referring to Vista Home Basic. I noticed that you were able to the blanks...haha.

Edited by jesseinsf
Grand Master

aussiefloyd_fan

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i find that on a 4000 MaH bettery amd turion tl52 x2 64 2048 ram ddr 333 (cpu z actually shows it at 200 mhz)

160gig 4200 rpm hitachie hard drive and a 15.4 inch screen vista ultimate

disabling aero just give me an extra hour to use my laptop.. no speed difference....

you could always get a vista transformation pack for xp?

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devHead

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Who would start a Vista Minimum install using the most feature rich version, Ultimate? I've run Vista Business and it's great on my AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1.8 Ghz machine with 2 GB of DDR400 memory.

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dmd3x

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Who would start a Vista Minimum install using the most feature rich version, Ultimate? I've run Vista Business and it's great on my AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1.8 Ghz machine with 2 GB of DDR400 memory.

Good suggestion, I may try to do that with my next vLite build. This time I will also be able to slipstream SP1 onto it as well because I am going to run vLite under Vista.

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soldier1st

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Who would start a Vista Minimum install using the most feature rich version, Ultimate? I've run Vista Business and it's great on my AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1.8 Ghz machine with 2 GB of DDR400 memory.

i have similar specs but i found 2GB was not enough so when i went to 3GB is was fine(pagefile was being used heavily)

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dmd3x

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i have similar specs but i found 2GB was not enough so when i went to 3GB is was fine(pagefile was being used heavily)

That's something I haven't really checked yet. I usually set my page file manually to 150% physical RAM so that Windows doesn't have to adjust it all the time. The physical memory usage is about 275MB after bootup, not too shabby.

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soldier1st

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That's something I haven't really checked yet. I usually set my page file manually to 150% physical RAM so that Windows doesn't have to adjust it all the time. The physical memory usage is about 275MB after bootup, not too shabby.

i let windows manage it.you could try to disable some of the scheduled tasks using vista manager.

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dmd3x

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i let windows manage it.you could try to disable some of the scheduled tasks using vista manager.

Good point.. I should check the task manager for stuff.

I usually manually set the page file, because I read that a constantly auto-adjusting page file causes the disk to fragment faster. :p

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soldier1st

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Good point.. I should check the task manager for stuff.

I usually manually set the page file, because I read that a constantly auto-adjusting page file causes the disk to fragment faster. :p

that is a myth,windows will adjust it as needed and if it needs more it will give more but if it does not it won't resize,i had problems when i manualy set it and when i let windows manage it i had no problems.

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HeartsOfWar

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I didn't read this entire thread, but I have to wonder what some of you people complain about. The only difference in my laptop and the OP is mine uses 1GB of DDR533 and a Geforce 6800 GO video card - Vista Ultimate x86 runs BEAUTIFULLY. No tweaking...

Even though I'm on DDR533, I can't see DDR333 causing enough performance lag for it to be noticeable.

There's no reason your machine should be having trouble with Vista to the point where you're having to strip it down. You need to look into better drivers and possibly getting rid of that ATI card.

Proficient

bradavon

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You could always disable Indexing. The simple truth is Vista needs a more powerful PC, with 2GB or more of RAM it's perfectly happy.

BTW it's the Windows 9x look, which is now 13 years old.

Why not run Windows 3.1? :D. Seriously I can understand why people turn off the theme but going back to the Windows 9x Start Menu still seems strange. Their's nothing wrong with the XP/Vista Start Menu and in fact it gives you access to My Computer too.

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tsupersonic

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sure you can - if you know what you're doing... I've done it twice now on my friend's laptop, it's just not as simple as unscrwing a back-plate, removing, and putting a new one in. Usually you have to remove the entire laptop case...

It all depends on the manufacturer and the laptop itself...

Proficient

bradavon

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That's a neat link thanks. I didn't know about "Remote Differential Compression". I don't run Vista on a Network so can turn that one off. I've already disabled Windows Defender too.

The rest though are pretty handy and it's worth seeing if you like them before just disabling them. Windows Search would be probably the first feature I'd turn off but it does make searching in Outlook much better, it's still pants when searching the System though. I always have to tick to search Non-Indexed files anyway (who indexes their entire system?) making it pretty pointless.

I wouldn't disable Superfetch, that works. Why disable Defrag too? It's there for a purpose, it's scheduled time can be changed and it only runs once a week (or whenever you set it). I just set it and forget it, most third part defrag tools are bloated and completely unnecessary for home users.

Hibernation and System Restore are both handy features too.

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ViperAFK

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I've just turned SuperFetch off and my PC ground to a halt. For me it's much speedier enabled. I've disabled Indexing though, it's only marginally slower searching without it.

Yeah if you have 2+ gb of ram turning off superfetch is just pointless and detrimental to performance.

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dmd3x

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Yeah if you have 2+ gb of ram turning off superfetch is just pointless and detrimental to performance.

:huh:

It depends on how you look at it, but it's not pointless. If you just prefer the maximum amount memory available to applications that you only currently have open, then you want superfetch disabled.

If you want faster application launch times, and don't mind the extra memory usage, then superfetch should stay enabled.

Personally, I want the minimal amount of things to be in memory as possible, so all resources are available to currently open applications. It is a specific preference and I'm sure many prefer to leave it enabled, the minimalist in me just doesn't want it. :p

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soldier1st

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Yeah if you have 2+ gb of ram turning off superfetch is just pointless and detrimental to performance.

+1 and the windows vista defrag is all you need as it runs in low i/o so you won't notice it when it runs.

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Linkinfamous

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:huh:

It depends on how you look at it, but it's not pointless. If you just prefer the maximum amount memory available to applications that you only currently have open, then you want superfetch disabled.

Sigh.

Freeing up cached memory is one of the fastest things your operating system can do. It's not like it has to page any of it back to disk, it just has to drop it.

The moment an application makes the request to allocate memory, it's given up. There should be no performance loss involved in having Superfetch enabled when an app goes to allocate some memory. You're only going to hurt performance with it off by going to your hard disk more often. Your hard drive seek time works in milliseconds. Your RAM works in nanoseconds. That's about 5 orders of magnitude of difference.

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