How2 Tweak Your Windows Vista PC

Top 10 Windows Vista Performance Tweaks

1. Turn off Windows Search Indexing.
2. Turn off Remote Differential Compression. 
3. Turn off Automatic Windows Defender Operation.
4. Turn off Automatic Disk Defragmentation.
5. Add a 2GB or higher USB Flash drive to take advantage of Windows Ready Boost (Additional Memory Cache).
6. Turn off Windows Hibernation. 
7. Turn off System Restore [*warning*]. 
8. Disable User Access Control (UAC).
9. Disable excess Windows Services that Auto-Launch at Startup. 
10. Disable Excess Windows Features

Read the How2 and just as importantly the ‘Why’ at PCTuneups.  Its important

that you understand why because there are some ‘tweaks’ that you might not want to do such as turning off System Restore. 

System Restore Points: As cumbersome as it is I find that the most cumbersome feature is how much hard drive space it uses up, but this can be overcome by watching your hard drives free space available and doing the following:

1. Click the Start button
2. Right click you hard drive [OS Drive]
3. Select Properties
4. Click the Dick Cleanup button
5. Make you selection on the Save Options window
6. If a Permission Window opens Grant Permission
7. In the Disk Cleanup For OS window select the More Options tab.  [For this example we are ignoring the default tab ‘Disk Cleanup’ tab.  You can select or deselect the Files To Delete items at your discretion.  The default selection of files to delete are usually safe, but to be sure highlight each selection to read a brief description.]
8. On the More Options tab, in the System Restore and Shadow Copies box select the Cleanup button.
9. When the ‘Are You Sure….’ window come up select Delete.

When Vista creates a restore point it doesn’t delete the older restore points and these add up overtime, eating up hard drive free space.  By doing the above you will delete the older, but not the latest, which will free up space.  Review the choices in the Disk Cleanup tab’s Files To Delete box and make it and the above part of your routine maintenance.

After reading the explanation of each tweak don’t execute them if you don’t feel comfortable with them.  They are suggestions, not requirements.   gdl