Windows Vista has some great new features, security and visual enhancements but these all affect how your machine performs.

If you find that your PC is slower than you had hoped for here are some tips to help things get moving along a little faster.

1) Add More RAM

  • If your PC has the recommended system requirements of RAM (512Mb for Home Basic or 1Gb for all others) then this will adversely affect the performance of your machine.

    Windows Vista, with all it’s “bells and whistles”, is definitely “resource hungry” and a good starting point to improving your PC’s performance would be to throw some memory at it. Doubling the recommended system requirements for your particular flavour of Windows Vista would be a good start.

    If you regularly leave programs running in the background down on the task bar then doubling the amount of RAM available to Windows Vista isn’t beyond the realms of possiblility (2Gb for Home Basic or 4Gb for all others) especially if you use a lot of graphics software or are a high end gamer!!

2) Check Which Programs Are Run At Startup

  • If you take a look down by your system clock you’ll be able to see some of the programs that run automatically every time you turn your PC on. This is all fine and dandy but I bet that most of them sit there “just in case” they’re ever called and are never used. Good examples of this are printer control programs, Apple’s Quick Time, other monitoring programs for all kinds of devices and even some Spyware!!

    If you don’t use these little programs everytime you use your PC turn them off! All they are doing is slowing your PC down (especially the spyware).

    Another area that you can look for programs that start automatically every time you turn your PC on is the Start-Up folder (All Programs > Startup). Any shortcuts found in here should be investigated to see if you really need the programs they refer to running in the background consuming your valuable resources.

    Shortcuts in the Start-Up folder can just be deleted (Right Click > Delete) whereas other start-up programs can be modified using Windows Defender’s Software Explorer from the “Manage Startup Programs” found on the left hand side of the window.

3) Turn Off Visual Enhancements

  • Vista comes with a whole host of visual enhancements … that’s what makes it look different to Windows XP! Items such as shadows under menu’s and mouse pointers, animations when minimising / maximising windows, fading and sliding menus and thumbnails instead of icons for different file types. If performance is of concern all of these “visual enhancements” do nothing to keep your PC running as fast as it possibly can.

    If you’d like less bling and more zing then visit the “Performance Information & Tools” applet in Control Panel. Click on the “Adjust Visual Effects” link on the left hand side of the page and select the “Visual Effects” tab. From here you’ll be able to adjust the visual effects that are eating away at your PC’s resources or turn them off altogether using the “Adjust For Best Performance” option.

4) Get A Good Video Card

  • If you have checked your RAM (see item above) and your PC is still under-performing then this may be due to the video card. To run Vista’s Aero interface you need a fairly high spec card and some vendors are selling computers with graphics cards that are low spec or even painfully inadequate. To find out if your video card could be the bottleneck slowing your PC down check your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score from the Performance Information and Tools applet in Control Panel.

    Onboard video adapters in most systems aren’t powerful enough to run Vista properly and this will be reflected in your WEI. In-order to run Windows Vista Aero satisfactorily get a card that’s Vista Premium Certified, preferably with the most onboard RAM you can afford. The more video RAM the better. If your a gamer running Windows Vista make sure the video card you buy supports the latest Direct X technologies (Direct X 10 at this time).

5) Adjust Your Power Settings

  • By default the power settings in Windows Vista is set to Balanced, which limits the amount of work that your CPU can perform to 50% during normal operation. If you’d like to use more of your CPU’s potential then you can boost its performance by changing this setting to High Performance. To do this open Control Panel and select the Power Control icon. Once you have applied the seting then you should notice a change in your PC’s performance.

6) Clean Up Your PC’s Hard Disk(s)

  • Windows tends to write a lot of temporary files to the hard disk as part of it’s normal operation. This can leave a lot of unnecessary extra files on the disk which will waste hard drive space and slow down performance.

    Windows Vista provides a disk cleanup tool which will remove most of these unnecessary files from your hard drive safely.

    In-order to use Disk Cleanup goto:

    1. Start
    2. All Programs
    3. Accessories
    4. System Tools
    5. Disk Cleanup.

    From here you can specify a drive you want to clean up (if you have more than one) and Disk Cleanup will estimate the amount of space you can recover by running the cleanup process.

7) Defragment Your PC’s Hard Drive(s)

  • Over time the files on your hard drive will become defragmented. This is where files become dis-jointed and spread out over the surface of your hard drive. Defragmenting the disk rearranges data on it so that all the parts of a file are together.

    Think of it like someone taking a filing cabinet, turning it upside down and throwing the files back in! Defragmenting the filing cabinet would mean putting all the files back into alphabetical order. As I’m sure you can appreciate this makes things a lot easier and quicker to find. The same can be said of your PC’s hard drive.

    When you run Disk Defragmenter this allows Vista to find and access files more quickly.

    In-order to use Disk Defragmenter goto:

    1. Start
    2. All Programs
    3. Accessories
    4. System Tools
    5. Disk Defragmenter

    During disk defragmentation you may find your computer extremely slow to respond to requests. I tend to run this operation when I’m not going to be using my PC for a while – over lunch for example.

8) Adjust Indexing Options

  • Windows Vista indexes the files and programs on your hard disk so they can be found quickly when you perform a search of your hard drive. However, the indexing process can slow down other programs whilst it is running.

    You can fine tune how the disk indexing works by selecting fewer locations. This will result in better overall performance but reduced searching performance. If you index all locations you’ll get reduced overall performance but better search performance.

    It’s a bit of a trade off depending on how you work.

    1. Do you search your hard drive fequently? In that case full indexing and reduced performance is probably best for you.
    2. If you rarely search your hard drive? In this case reduced indexing and better overall performance is probably best for you.
  • Unfortuantely you can’t turn the indexing feature off completely, but you can fine tune it’s indexing from the following location:
    1. Start
    2. Control Panel
    3. Performance Information and Tools
    4. Adjust Indexing Options on the left hand side

9) Turn Off The Sidebar

  • If you have no need to use Windows Vista Sidebar (or if your PC’s performance is really slow) you can save some resources by disabling it.

    In-order to disable the Windows Vista Sidebar:

    1. Right-click On The Sidebar
    2. Select Properties
    3. Deselect Start The Sidebar When Windows Starts
    4. Close the sidebar (Right-click it and select Close)

10) Turn Off Aero

  • if you don’t care for all the eye candy and/or have a sluggish PC but still want the functionality of Windows Vista (search, security, Explorer enhancements, etc.) you can speed things up by turning the Aero interface off altogether.

    In-order to select a different interface:

    1. Right-click The Desktop
    2. Select Personalize
    3. Select Windows Color And Appearance
    4. Open Classic Appearance Properties
    5. Select The Appearance Tab
    6. Select Open Classic Appearance Properties
    7. Select Any Theme Except Aero