Improve performance of Vista – PC or Mac

This is yet another post on Mac related topics; and playing a bit to get Windows Vista to run for regular development. After spending lot of time in tweaking the Vista by collecting the information from web, I thought I will have some information posted here, so that I can reuse it later on or can be useful for someone. The tweaks can be used on PC laptop, Mac, Macbook, Macbook Pro or PC desktop as well.

Once you have Windows Vista running in either in your PC, Mac through Boot Camp or through any virtual machine on Mac (Parallels or Vmware, I currently run Vista over Parallels along with Boot Camp), follow these steps:

1. Create a restore point
   First and foremost, before doing any modifications, create restore point, so that in worst case, you can restore back your Windows Vista.

   Start -> Control Panel -> System -> On left side, click on ‘System Protection’ -> Click on ‘Create’ and name it -> Click on create..it takes 5-10 secs to create it.

2. User Account Control:
   Turn off the User Control Unit, so that you don’t get a popup window every time you try to open an application.

   Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Click on Turn User Account Control On or Off from left pane -> Uncheck ‘Use User Account Control to help protect your computer’

3. Extra Programs:
   Get rid of extra programs, which are never used (atleast majority of people).

   Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ from left pane ->

   It opens a Windows Features dialog, and get uncheck the following programs which are not needed along with other programs that you dont ever use it. If you are not sure what each of this programs are, get a quick look from Wikipedia.

   • Games -> Chess Titans, FreeCell, Hearts, InkBall, Mahjong Titans, Minsweaper, Purble place, Spider Solitaire (by leaving Solitaire as thats the only one I use)
   • .NET Framework -> XPS Viewer
   • Remote Differential Compression
   • Windows Fax and Scan (I never attach a scanner to my laptop)
   • Windows Meeting Space
   • Windows Ultimate Extras

   Once you have unchecked the programs that you dont want, click OK…it will take couple of minutes and leave it aside and once done, it will ask you reboot…don’t do it at this time, as you can do it at the end of all tweaks.

4. Install Free Antivirus:
   This is not a performance enhancer, but worth to have so that the system will not be affected as we will be disabling the builtin security alerts. I installed free AVG Anti Virus Free Edition, which works fine on Vista and does not consume the CPU like others.

5. Windows Sidebar
   Windows Sidebar, which I never wanted to use as I dont have patience to go and download the gadgets and keep them up2date and not worth the resources that this sidebar uses.

   Start -> Control Panel -> Windows Sidebar Properties -> Uncheck ‘Start Sidebar when Windows starts’

6. Security Notifications:
   Get rid of the security notifications, which are not needed as you may have other tools to monitor.

   Start -> Control Panel -> Security Center -> On left side click on ‘Change the way Security Center alerts me’ -> choose Don’t notify me and don’t display the icon

7. Menu Items
   Customize the list of items to be displayed on menu

   Right click on Windows Taskbar, select on properties and select the following and uncheck rest

   • Lock the taskbar
   • Keep the taskbar on top of other windows
   • Show Quicklaunch
   • Show window previews (not needed, but I needed it)

   and then select ‘Start Menu’ tab and click on customize it and select the things how you wanted it and ensure to select ‘run command’ and click apply.

8. Services
   Get rid of unwanted services which are not needed in your laptops and or in modern computers.

   Start -> Run (Win + R ) -> type msconfig and hit enter -> navigate to ‘services’ tab (you can even do this with services.msc)

   and uncheck the following services:

   • Bluetooth support service (I dont use this on parallels)
   • Computer Browser
   • DFS Replication
   • Distributed Link Tracking Client
   • IP Helper
   • IPSec policy agent
   • KtmRm for Distributed trasaction coordinator
   • Offline files
   • Remote registry (no point for a laptop)
   • Secondary Logon ( am the only one on laptop)
   • Security Center
   • SSDP Discovery
   • Tablet PC Input Service
   • Terminal Services ( I dont need terminal service server on laptop)
   • Terminal Services Configuration
   • Terminal Services UserMode port redirector
   • Windows Defender ( I manage it myself, I dont want to this keep running and taking my CPU)
   • Windows Error Reporting Service (I care when system crashes with blue screen)
   • Windows Media Center (all 3 services, I dont need them in virtual machine)
     

   and click Apply, and do not restart at this time as some more to go.

9. Startup Applications:
   Get rid of unwanted startup applications which you dont want to see them running.

   Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type msconfig and hit enter -> navigate to ‘startup’ tab and uncheck any unnecessary programs (like adobe, Windows Defender) and click apply..do not restart yet

10. Menu display
    Speed up the way the menu items are displayed with this registry tweak

    Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type regedit and enter -> and nagivate to

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop

    Find and right click on ‘MenuShowDelay’ and select modify (or double click). Set the value from 400 to 100.

11. Menu Search
    Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type regedit and enter -> and nagivate to

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Advanced

    Find and right click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify (or double click). Set the Value from 2 to 0.

12. ReadyBoost
    Even though its talked at the end; but its one of the performance enhancement thats introduced in Vista to take advantage of flash drives which has good memory. For more information on how to select and configure it, check Microsoft website and my earlier post here.

Now, finally you restart your system; and you can see that the system operates much better then how it was earlier.