NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide

Install the slim version of CCleaner though. The regular and lite version have some bloatware with them, but slim doesn't at all.

EDIT: To find the slim version, you need to go to the download page and click on "Other Builds" but it looks like the slim version isn't up yet. It should be soon though.

 

bloatware=yahoo toolbar?

 

All you have to do is click custom install and un-click yahoo toolbar. It's that simple.

 

Excellent write-up my friend. I hope to see it grow even more as time goes by. I used tuneXP, battery saver, and other things on that list (turning indexing off, etc). Very few did I know about beforehand! +Rep

 

Actually, the best thing to do is go into Programs (Control Panel) and delete it completely from there.

DMAN Bluesfreak...tx...returned.

 

Oh yeah, i forgot to rep you for all your help. I think turning off UAC, and Indexing were the two biggest helpers. Thanks Flamenko!

 

I ran tuneXP and got a slight improvement from 45 to 35 secs.. also tried the reg edit for shut down. I dont have the modiifed time yet.. so far so good.. I will continue using UAC coz i love those cute little pop ups.. /grr, its a necessary evil..

now to the matter, i had tunred off indexing.. and now i think i will be needing it.. but m gonna be choosy this time.. If i select only those folders/files which i think i need to search often (docs, music, videos blah blah), will that be helpful than indexing my whole drive? (or will that be helpful at all?). I know indexing is at its worst when it is creating first index.

Also i was wondering if i can opt for a semi-automatic indexing (using task scheduler to run indexing service once in one or two week at say, 2AM) This is of atmost importance because i never leave my system idle for more than 10 min, (switch on - work/game -shut down) which might cause either indexing not to run or to run when i need my system resources..

Does that make any technical sense?

 

thanks a TON for this info. I used the TMM, tunexp, the regedit for shutdown, UAC, and a few more.... I had originally used TweakVista to turn UAC to low settings so it wouldn't prompt me, but it still took up so much time!!!!! with all those tweaks, i got my startup to go from 1min 5sec to about 39sec, and 5sec after it gets to the screen the anti-virus finishes loading and i can use it. i can say turning off sidebar helps speed things up a ton too. and w/ the regedit my shutdown went from somewhere in the min-2min range down to 29sec, which is AMAZING for when i go from class to class.

what i wanna know is, i heard McAfee and Norton take up a lot of system resources and slow down the comp a lot, are there any (quality wise) other anti-virus/internet protection software programs as good as norton and mcafee that aren't as clunky as those 2? Free or otherwise. On top of McAfee i also use Spybot: S&D, and Ad-Aware SE, AIMfix occasionally too for when i think AIM is acting up, but i don't wanna use just spybot and Ad-aware.

 

I find that AVG Antivirus is a phenomenal program which takes up very little resources. Further, it updates daily and allows you to set a great deal of control over it. Its very user friendly. It can be found here:

AVG Antivirus

Oh...AND ITS FREE and there are no advertisements or limited use worries!!!

 

Or if you're willing to spend a few bucks, NOD32 is great. Set it to silenced mode, and it doesn't give you random pop ups that it's been updated. It uses very little resources. I've had experience with Norton. I deleted it after a few months, and went to AVG, and noticed a HUGE improvement in performance of my lappy(in sig). If you have a slow lappy, like mine, you can definitely notice the difference in performance.

 

about AVG free, a word of caution.. The free version will identify ONLY the known viruses.. it wont work on heuristics and find possible, unknown threats.. thats one reason it updates everyday..

 

Not entirely true, AVG Free does have heuristic abilities, or so I'm inclined to think, it's proactive detection rates though are horrendous check out http://www.av-comparatives.org/

That's why my preferred AV is Nod32/Avira

 

Real Life review... I have been using AVG for at least 4 years. Not one Virus!!!

 

I've heard that NOD32 is the best but it's not free. =\ Plus flamenko is your only running AVG then you should seriously check out Avast, Antivir, Spybot search a nd destroy, ccleaner, ad-aware 2007 and if you've been sleeping under a rock for 3 years Firefox.

 

Thanks to everyone for the tweaks! I did the semi-clean install and a few of the tweaks listed here on my brand new vgn-n365e/b and it seems to have worked wonders. Initial boot time (measured until the cpu light was pretty much done) 3:48 ...shutdown was :40. 70 processes running. After an hour I had a boot time of 1:11 and shutdown of :16 with 56 processes running and I haven't done the tweakxp or ccleaner yet!

 

Well you should hurry up and do them if you want even faster results. A boot time of 1:11 is really slow. =\

 

Well compared to 3:48 it's really fast!

 

Yeah, but if it's 45 then you'll always want to shutdown your computer to show off it's fast start up/shut down speeds.

 

as for the laptopvideo2go...what video card's are supported by those drivers?

 

Good Point!!!! I never noticed that little err in my post. Its for NVidia Drivers. I am going to have to find simiilar for others to add.

 

You might want to include information on finding out what your current video drivers are, and maybe what, if any, advantages there are to updating them to the newest betas.

 

I agree, nod32 is the best, but with that, the least compatible with things. I've stepped down one level to Kaspersky internet security (find discount on www.afdriver.com under computer section) because it is about as good as it gets with compatibility. I may end up getting nod32 if a few bugs are worked out.

 

What are the compatibility problems? I used to run NOD32 and loved it. Now I have Vista Ultimate and not using any AV, but if I did it'd be NOD32 again... unless there are real issues with it.

 

Why would you suddenly go without an AV app?

Gary

 

A few questions about updating my driver...

Was I supposed to uninstall my old driver first? If so, I didn't do this, am I going to encounter problems?

I downloaded the 163.44 driver. Was that a good choice?

One last thing, I noticed my startup time has increased by about 10 seconds. I never updated my video card driver before. Does this mean my computer is actually performing WORSE with the new driver?

Thank you in advance. I appreciate it.

 

There is alot of controversy over whether you really need to uninstall your old driver. There is no hard and firm facts that not doing it will hurt anything. I've done it both ways with no problem.

You say your start time has decreased by 10 seconds and that is a bad thing??? There is nothing wrong with that. Updated drivers are no different than any other software updates; they may do exactly as that because they are not so demanding on your system.

Congrats!!

 

Alright, that's good to know.

Woops, I meant INCREASED by 10 seconds.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1720, 8600m gt, 3gb ram, t7300

 

If you used the TuneXP tweak, you can use it again as the video driver, technically, will be placed closer to the beginning of the boot loading programs. This may get your start time back up again.

 

There are certain internet connection software that nod32 will block and it will not give you an option to unblock it completely...or I just haven't found how yet. KIS is a bit easier.

 

Found ;-) But how many not found?

I am using AVG free too. One thing I am not clear on is whether it scans USB media when they are inserted. I think that is probably my biggest risk of infection - McAfee on my work laptop saved me there recently.

 

I want to know, if i down;pad a new Bios update, will all these tweaks need re-doing if i've already done them?

 

What bios do you have? If there is nothing wrong with your bios, dont change it. Other than that, no...the system remains intact as you built it.

 

I have the Vostro 1400 with the A01 BIOS. I cant see anyhing wrong is with it but i thought that as Dell released a new one then theres probbaly something wrong with the A01 Bios.

 

NO...if you are going to download a new bios go to Dells driver section and open it, it will tell you what has been fixed. It is not always for the best.

For example, I find with the M1330 A06 bios, my fan runs much more (at a low leverl) than with the A05. I cant find the latter to go back now.

 

To speed up the boot even more, you can go into your system configuration and disable the boot screen...

Run (Ctrl + R) Msconfig

After it loads, go to the boot tab. At the bottom, there's a checkbox that says No GUI boot. Check it, and then reboot to see the changes.

 

WOW!
where have i been?
this thread is GENIUS!

if i turn on 'Write Caching for Better SATA Disk Performance' will that diminish battery time when in power saver mode?
do we really need perfectdisk 8 or is vista defrag good enough?

because perfectdisk also rearranges startup files for faster boot!
also, vista scheduled defrag never seems to come on ever!

 

my COMBO

Turn off Indexing
Turn off UAC
Turn on Write Caching (SATA)
Turn off System Restore

just felt like it!

 

To Flamenko: Add mine to the list! =)

 

Gonna check it out tomorrow at work now k??

Brampton eh...Safest City in Canada lol...I still have a hard time with that one.

 

While I may only have a T2250 processor at 1.73 GHz, dissabling the GUI boot up did nothing to my bootime. Its exactly the same, no faster or slower. Maybe it will work for someone with a better setup than mine but it did nothing for me.

 

I'm going to do it because i don't like the current boot-up and want something different. I don't really care about performance, but if it gets faster that's a huge plus.

 

flamenko, can you do us a favor and add the date to the thread title whenever you add a new tweak?

 

I tried the turn of boot GUI tip, and it ended up increasing my boot time by about 5 seconds. It doesnt seem to actually do anything but change the image displayed during the boot sequence.

 

loesjoel...Sorry, I havent got the status to change the thread title at all. its safe to check every 3 days or so now as i am involved in other projects as well.

 

Vista defrag is a dummed down version of diskeeper, which does not have any real advanced features. I personally run perfectdisk 8 and will endorse that, I also have my eye on ultimate defrag by disktrix which is more of an advanced version of perfectdisk...a bit more complicated to use, though.

The write caching will, in theory, extend your battery life by probably one minute. All disk caching is in a nutshell is another memory cache between the hard drive and your computer's memory. The computer sends the file to memory and gives priorities to files that are called. When the disk is done reading whatever, then it will write whatever file you have saved/changed. The problem is, if you lose power, you may lose that file because it resides in a temporary memory section rather than the disk until it writes.

 

Trebuin are you sure that write caching will increase or batery life?

 

I don't see how. The data eventually has to get written to the hard drive. It will APPEAR to speed up writing to the hard drive because the app writing data will think the IO is complete once the data is in the cache. Then the writing of the data from cache to the hard drive will take place as a background task.

Yeah the tweak works, but for me it falls into the category of "I dare you to try and measure it with a stop watch". It will scrape milliseconds off a disk write. Ever try to measure milliseconds with a stop watch? The ONLY time this will be perceptible at all is if you are writing a LARGE audio or video file to disk.

Gary

 

I was surprised to learn write caching was not on by default... didn't older operating systems use write caching on fixed disks?

Perhaps today the disks themselves have larger internal caches so the disk itself may be caching the writes and the OS doesn't need to?

 

YEAH!
the "turn off GUI boot" tweak only seems to
1. add about 10sec to boot time
2. change boot image

 

If it only adds time to the boot then why did you recommend it? Were trying to get things faster, not slower.