clean-ups for Vista

Has anybody made a good shareware/freeware disk and registry cleaner for Vista yet?

The only related things I've found are the helpful but piecemeal fixes on the various Vista geek sites, but seems like it's all still relatively new and untested. Maybe we're all in the same boat with this...

Hours after boot-up I still have 92 freakin' background processes going, using 53% my 2GBs of RAM (OK, now down to 87 items and 47%). Makes setting the OS to 'maximise performance/minimise appearance' deal a bit of a joke!

This damn Vista thing is a bloody monster.

[PS - some of it of course is Thinkpad support-related activity, which is probably all good ]

Dave

 

I had 90+ processes before clean install and less than 60 after.

CCleaner works with Vista, but I don't trust those registry cleaners very much. Some people have major issues with them removing necessary components.

 

The best way to get your processes down is by doing a clean install.

After that, there are many unnecessary windows processes you can disable (e.g. tablet PC stuff if you have a regular laptop). I recommend the two links below for tried and true tweaks.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2110595,00.asp
and
http://mostlysavingmoney.com/2007/06/top-10-windows-vista-speed-tweaks/

I was able to get it down to below 50 processes prior to installing brand specific software.

Also see this thread for startup tweaks:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

Vista is indeed a monster but you can tame it. Good luck.

 

^^^ as redzapper stated, I didn't want to mess around with too many of Vistas default processes, but if you are not using a tablet pc then that is one you can disable for sure.

 

Be aware that if you turn off the Tablet PC stuff you will also loose the Snipping Tool.

 

Huh.. that's interesting. I didn't know that tool existed.

I am still able to do screenshots the old fashioned way and then manipulate them in photoshop.

Is the snipping tool basically a shortcut for that? Or is there more to it than what I'm seeing here: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/1337cdba-52a2-4704-ad4d-2d7bace605b41033.mspx

 

I sometimes do the functionkey+printscreen the paste it into PhotoShop, too. Particularly when I want full screen. But find the Snipping Tool handy to have on my custom toolbar (which I place at the bottom of my screen) for quick snapshots.

 

Well you might be teaching me something else. Where did you get the custom toolbar? Is that the Office toolbar or does Vista have one built-in? I've been looking for something like this. I would prefer to have something like that instead of a half a dozen icons on my desktop.

 

I created a folder (directory) and populated it with the shortcuts I wanted on my toolbar. Right-click in the toolbar area, New ToolBar, browse to your newly created folder, use it! I turn off the captions and such so that only the icons show. And I named my folder "Toolbar" so it would be intuitive. This is no different from how it was done in XP.

I like an uncluttered desktop.

 

repped... thanks for the tip!

 

You can also re-order the icons in the toolbar, independent of the order in the folder. I recommend locking the toolbar whenever not making changes to prevent inadvertent changes.

 

AKAJohnDoe:
Question: How is this different from adding the shortcuts to the Quick Launch toolbar? In other words: I am curious as to why you decided to create an extra toolbar.

 

I wanted total control over it, which I do not have with the Quick Launch Bar. Also, the Quick Launch Bar didn't let me position it where I wanted it.

 

How do I find these options. I've got it on my taskbar but I can't seem to move it or take away captions.

 

You should have both the title of the toolbar and the captions for each icon on the tool bar initiallly.

Right click on each icon's caption and turn it off.

Right click on the toolbar title and hide that. Be sure to do this last.

 

So I'm either blind or these are not options in Vista 64-bit.

This is what I get when i right click on any of the captions.



If I click on properties I get the same options as if I were clicking on a desktop icon.

 

It looks like you may already have captions turned off. Right click on the title and hide that, then drag the left edge of the bar further to the left to make it all fit.

 

captions? what are you talking about?

 

With the toolbar unlocked, right-click between the left bar and the first icon and it will bring up this menu. Show Text is the captions; Show title is the title.

 

And, of course, you can change the icons as with any shortcut.

 

ahem... Hello?
Damn thread hijackers. why I oughta...

Vista cleanups?



Dave

 

Sorry!

I read a lot about CCleaner, but have not used it.

I had RegSupreme when I ran XP, and found it to be good. It claims to be Vista ready, but I was a bit concerned about how much V1.4 found on my Vista machine, so I didn't run it. I now see that there is a updated V1.7, so I'll download it and see what it looks like.

 

I cannot get RegSupreme V1.7 to work, so I asked A Question.

In the meantime, I downloaded and installed CCleaner and it seems to work so far.

 

Thanks John D(!)

I almost tried CC but didn't know if or how well it (or other cleaners) work with Vista.

Dave

 

thanks for the info.

 

So far, the only issue I have with CCleaner is that it only looks at the currently logged on user's data, so it won't let me define a Custom File/Folder for C:\USERS\All USERS\... data for systemic cleanups. But I can get there with my CLEANUP.CMD file, which isn't as elegant, but works!

 

Thanks John D.

IE froze up 5 times in the last 24 hours...

Dave

/now fantasizing about installing XP...

 

You've cleaned up after IE7?

IE7/Tools/Internet Options/Browsing History - Delete/Delete All/Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons/Yes


Or, use Firefox

 

AKAJohnDoe, has the registry scanning and deleting worked for you in CC? For some reason, it'll search out all the issues for me, and when I click "Fix selected Issues" it'll show it as all deleted, BUT when I scan for issues once more, all the old issues will show up again.. sorry if that was a little incoherent.

 

Well, every couple of days I used to go into IE7 /Tools and delete all the temporary files (that was with XP). And me and Windows lived happily together for three years or so...

Then came Vista. Now I need to do MORE cleaning?? What the hell are we paying Bill Gates for, anyway???

PS - The IE7 /Tools options on my new machine seem to be different than the version (still 7) on my old laptop with XP; I don't know why that would be. Looks like now I have to delete remembered passwords and saved internet forms, along with the temporary files?!! If that's the case, that really sucks. Oh wait, i see you can still access them separately if you go through 'Delete Browsing History' ... (sorry. It must be late!)


Dave

 

Yes, it does work for me.

However, I did right-click on the installer exe and selected "Run as administrator", and then did the right-click for the first run of the actual program from the Start Menu. You only need to do this once, subsequent invocations of the program will retain the administrator rights. I've found that utility programs in particular like to have full administrator rights.

 

Back to the secondary off-topic topic of this thread, Toolbars, I changed mine. I now have three, so that I can group like items better. I created a folder (Toolbars) and then created three sub-folders (Tools, Folders, Apps) and populated each of those sub-folders with the shortcuts. I then iteratively did the right-click, New Toolbar, and built the three, placing them as I wanted them placed. I still prefer using toolbars to having my screen cluttered up with icons.