features you disabled in Vista?

[Hani]

What major features/service did you turn off in Vista?

Mine are:

User Account Control

System Protection (Restore)

Superfetch

Windows Search (Indexing services)

Sidebar (it counts)

Edited August 29, 2008 by Hani

[Kenji]

None.

[Azusa]

the UAC and that's it.

[DavidM]

None.

[Srugie Veteran]

Windows Search and UAC

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

UAC and SuperFetch.

[Biotoxic_hazard_835]

UAC only, but I would like to know what other features or services I can safely disable.

[zhangm Supervisor]

None - it seems stupid to disable UAC, Superfetch, search, and the restore features.

[x3lumin8x]

None. No reason to do it.

[DJ-Light]

system restore

[Pupik]

UAC and Security Center (and its warnings).

Oh, and the Sidebar, if that counts.

[morphen]

the UAC and that's it.

+1

[ambiance]

System Restore.

[morphen]

What major features/service did you turn off in Vista?

Mine are:

User Account Control

System Protection (Restore)

Superfetch

Windows Search (Indexing services)

Why do people really disable superfetch? Your most used applications will start faster, and although it takes up ram, it will free it up if you need it. So there is no win situation in disabling it.

[ThisSiteHasLostItsCharm]

uac

system restore

readyboost

most of the scheduled tasks & the hidden ones

most of the services

uninstall 95% of the extra optional bits, like the games and other useless extras

windows defender

sidebar

search indexer

balloon tips

[Hani]

Why do people really disable superfetch? Your most used applications will start faster, and although it takes up ram, it will free it up if you need it. So there is no win situation in disabling it.

Honestly, I tried enabling it for about two weeks. After that, I disabled it. I have noticed performance gains, more free memory, less HDD thrashing. Also, I haven't noticed any slowdowns in applications I usually use.

[roadgeek9]

System Restore (its useless and hogs HD space)

Sidebar (hogs RAM and CPU)

[Srugie Veteran]

isn't system restore necessary if you have a provlem and you need to restore your computer to previous state?

[Guest]

UAC and that's it.

Everything else actually helps productivity for me.

[backdrifter]

Sidebar

and I put UAC into silent mode

[cykosis]

Just sidebar.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Sidebar

3dflip

UAC

and a slew of others. I have 37 services running.

[CPressland]

isn't system restore necessary if you have a provlem and you need to restore your computer to previous state?

Not really, It tends to cause more problems then it fixes, I just use Acronis True Image onto an external drive so I can restore my machine directly to a older date.

As for features I turn off, None, no reason to on a Modern PC.

[+allan MVC]

isn't system restore necessary if you have a provlem and you need to restore your computer to previous state?

Yes. System restore is useless - until the first time you need it - and then it's invaluable. Unless you have a third party backup or imaging utility (such as True Image or Ghost) you should leave System Restore enabled. And even if you do have one of those utilities, there's no advantage to disabling System Restore except for disk space. And of course there's a huge pinned thread on UAC and why it makes no sense to disable it - it should just be set to silent mode if the pop-up warnings bother you. And then there's Superfetch - why exactly would someone disable that?

Oh well, to each his own ;)

[A Clockwork Lime]

Why do people really disable superfetch? Your most used applications will start faster, and although it takes up ram, it will free it up if you need it. So there is no win situation in disabling it.

Because it slows down a lot of games and similar applications. It also sits there and crunches at your harddrives for no apparent reasons. The day I turned off, my performance increased for everything *but* the initial loading of programs. But a **** lot of good that does; I'd rather wait an extra second or two for the application to load and then have it run smoothly and effortlessly for the entirity of the session.

Your experiences may vary. Disabling Superfetch definitely speeds things up on my end for the applications I use the most.