NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide

Great thread

 

Great thread flamenko.. amazing job on your part and others for adding all these tweaks. I too did find my Vista to be a slow loader and I didn't think I had that many processes to begin with, but after this I've really been able to streamline my system.

Much faster boot times after using TuneXp and shutting down unnecessary services.

I gave +1 rep.

 

bmnotpls and Dell 6400 fan:

Thank you for the support. Don't be afraid to pm any ideas you may have.

To all: I ask that ideas are pm'd so they can be tested by myself as well as a few other 'helpers' before I post them. We all must be aware that anyone can post anything on here and should be careful to just grab and test because of that.

We may not get what is purported if it is untested.
Thanks again

 

Is anyone else hearing MUSIC when they come to THIS page?

Something odd is going on. This only occurs on page 51 of this thread.

Gary

 

What the heck???? Lionel Ritchie!!! I never did that!!!

This has got to be a challenge. Listen to the words!!!

"Hello, is it me your looking for?"

Can anyone figure this out?

 

You guys might try a virus or trojan scan, because I'm not hearing anything under either Firefox or IE.

 

Whoa, I was getting this a little bit ago myself!

I was playing a YouTube music video in another tab and heard a Lionel Richie bleedthrough. Lionel did not stop singing until I logged out of NBR.

 

No viruses or trojans...that was odd.

Dare i say i actually was amused by that.

 

I hear nothing.

 

Well whatever it was it is gone now! Quite strange. I dug through the SOURCE for the page as rendered in IE and didn't immediately find anything. But unfortunately I didn't save the source so I can't examine it more carefully. It was VERY odd. Defintely originated from JUST this page (#51) of this thread.

Gary

 

Just out of curiosity, can a user's sig be set up to play streamed music? It is the only thing I can think of...........

 

I thought of that as well, but WHILE the music was still playing there were only four signatures on this page. Mine, Flamenko and two others. I went to messages by each of them on ANOTHER thread and there was no music. So I think that eliminates the signatures as the culprit. (My understanding of signatures is that they are rendered each time a message is displayed. They are not stored with the message. So if I change my signature right now and go back and view a message I created a month ago it would show my NEW signature not the old one.)

Gary

 

I was hering music a while ago from an ad on NBR, is that what you're talking about? If you have adblocker or something enabled, you wouldn't hear it.

 

I didn't measure any time difference in boots, except that with the GUI off it did seem slower. Maybe I was just more impatient. The boot image that was there was kinda neat though. Not neat enough to look at if it's going to be there for too long though! GUI boot is back on.

 

No this was definitely not from an ad. I thought of that too. It was the entire Lionel Ritchie song "Hello" set to repeat when it finished. Really weird.

Gary

 

I'm pretty sure that's what I heard too, and I'm pretty sure it was an ad, as it stopped in the middle when I turned adblocker on.

 

If you have noscript and block the ad provider you don't have to turn anything on, but just browse.

 

At the time I heard it I thought it might be an ad. I scrolled to the top and the only ads showing were ones that look like the attachment. I guess one of them MIGHT have had music attached but those appear to be just text ads. I wish I had saved the rendered HTML source.

Gary

 

Well if it isn't an Ad and not a sig then it is probably a posting.
If it isn't playing now it has probably been removed.
There is only one posting on page 51 that has been edited.

 

Did you check out the Ad on the left hand column? It was a flash ad for me, not a text one (like it appears to be now).

 

This was a very odd experience. It was the Lionel Ritchie Song with the words "Is it me your looking for?". I think we are in agreeance that it was intentionally inserted specifically into that page for a certain period of time, the page which we ripped apart and could no find.

It was an occurrence that would be very interesting to figure out because it was not a virus, worm, trojan and not a 'carry over' from any other add. For about 20 minutes, it was just the same song on Page 51 of this thread playing over and over and very clear.

I have been in computers for well over 20 years as has Scud and I think we both agree that this was an experience we haven't really seen.

EDIT: Yes we checked the adds to include changing pages and coming back to different adds...same occurrence.

 

I don't remember what was in the left column, but I did refresh the page a few times which I think should have changed the ads, but I can't say for sure. At this point I guess it could have been an ad on the left column. It sure was strange. I didn't really suspect an ad after the song played all the way through and repeated. Most ads with music use a short snippet. But I really can't think of any other explanation. It was certainly not a signature and there is no way to embed sound in a message (or none I know of). So that only leaves the ads.

Gary

 

great info thx.

 

I have adblocker in FF, so no ad's, and I heard the song as well....very odd....at first I thought my machine was infected with a virus XD

EDIT: bmnotpls - this person's post was THE ONLY one on page 51 when I heard the song....and now post has been edited........

 

For some reason when I use EasyCleaner and search for unnecessary files, the always program crashes when the search reaches 150mb+. I'm currently using Vista Home Premium. Has anyone had the same problem?

 

This is exactly why I state to go into the Internet and delete all your browsing history first. Many people haven't cleaned their system in so long that their is an enormous amount to delete.

You can stop the program before it crashes and delete just what it has found. It may take a bit as I have found there seems like there is no response initially when deleting a large amount of files. It will eventually show itself on the lower left.

 

Hi all, I'm a newbie to this site but before subscribing i went and tried the TuneXP trick on my XP SP2 1.4 centrino fujitsu. (ok i know, its getting replaced by an XPS M1730 so dont laugh at me!)

My XP load-up time is 15 seconds now from about...what was 5 minutes? lol it seems like an eternity! It actually makes this little ticker enjoyable to use now!

So thanks flamenko your tips are extremely handy and be sure i'm going to use most if not ALL of them as soon as my XPS comes in..If I could rep you'd get a +1 from me for sure.

 

thanks so much for these valuable tips

my new vaio sz430n/b with vista ultimate now is a damn fast machine after using ur tips

 

Please don't quote huge posts like that, in the future. Just reply in the thread, everyone will know what you're referring to.

Thanks.

 

Yes.It's really annoying to scroll down

 

sorry guys.......didnt realise that

edited my post

 

ok this thread is getting off topic and way too big, can we get a mod to clean this thread up a bit? i am interested in tips and tweaks not Lionel Richie playing ads or spyware/spam.

 

I agree, i think that most of these pages aren't helpful at all, and maybe there should be this thread which is locked except for when flamenko wants to add to it, and another for discussion so people can get further help. That way this thread stays clean, and people can still ask for help.

 

Thanks for the support Guys. Yes this seems to be the downfall of this type of thread and I am planning on getting a few more tweaks in before asking the Mods if I can restructure it into an organized article, if you will. I can then probably organize the Tweaks into sub-topics such as Performance/Appearance/Optimization/etc...

The good part is, through a suggestion, I put the update date right on the first page to assist everyone along.

Another fear I have with the general discussion is someone throwing a tweak in thats not proven or something that may be maliciious and used before it can be verified. Myself and a few others go through alot of tests on every tweak and, as anyone can see, they are not afraid to put me through the ringer to make sure it is safe and I describe it in the best way possible.

 

Yeah like the guy who recommended turning of windows vista gui boot and it only ended up adding time to the boot of others. =\

 

Perfect example!

 

Yeah i definately agree about this thread having to many off-topic, un-needed comments that just clutters it up.

I've found that one of the best tweaks is too turn of the animations when maximizing and minimizing windows it adds like a 1 second wait wich just makes it seems like the laptop is lagging eventhough its not.

 

I havent experienced that slowing at all...Are you in High Performance mode on your battery indicator? (system tray)

 

What i mean is that the animation itself takes too long for me and it just gives the impression to my sister (who wants the laptop to be ultra fast) that its taking its time to min/max the window when infact its just the animation playing out. Hence i turned the animation off.

 

The windows animation only slow down a system that doesn't have the optimal hardware for it. I have vista set to set up visual effects based on my system performance and i have all of them checked and i experience no slow downs. Of course my system if pretty well equipped for the simple tasks i use it for. (Check my profile)

 

I understand but my system does not slow down when the animation is turned on. Basically when its turned of the window straight away maxs/mins but with the animation it takes 0.5sec longer as the anomation itself has to be played.

 

Okay, now i see what you are saying. I guess that would be a tweak even if it is .5 seconds. I mean .5 seconds for about 3 years equals like 10 minutes you could have used to do something else.

 

ACtually, Im going to through a program in in a few days that throws a huge speed boost in exactly what your speaking of without turning anything off.

Many of the things we do such as presing the start button and going tinto control panel as well as opening up my computer properties...all have a time delay attached to them of a few milliseconds. Some are longer. i have a program that, I find anyway, makes alot of the key presses instant.

Im working through the pros and cons with my alter egos presently however.

 

LoL its just that i find it more annoying than helpful, espcially after having that animation turned of my 5 year old desktop with 256mb ram, so I feel like its slower than my desktop at maxing and mining windows.

 

Ah thats exactly what im talk about, i too have noticed that theres a 0.5 second lag when clicking start etc. In the end it all adds up making the laptop feel slower. Actually if your program turns out to be good it may eliminate some need for a 7200 rpm hdd!

 

No we need the 7200rpm for many other things, but i don't see any significant cons to disabling the registry lag Flamenko but once your done testing we'll know.

 

BTW i always have my system on Power Saver and i've set the HHD on Quiet through the BIOS.

 

Your not talking about the system in your signature are you? AAAhhhhhh!

Thats a killer. It will do so much more. Go High performance and take the HDD off quiet. It is very minimal noise diff anyway.

 

Actually the animations slow ALL machines down regardless of the graphics power. Try turning them off to see the effect. It's not that it slows the machine down really, its that it animates the process of closing the window. Without the animation the window just disappears. But the length of the animation is soooooo short that the benefit of turning it off is marginal at best. It is no where near a second. Another one of my favorite, I dare you to measure it with a stop watch tweak. As I have said before, to me any tweak that can't be measured with a stop watch is not worth mentioning.

 

I still think it performs ok on Power Saver as its mainly used for Internet browsing and writing word docs. I only put it in High performance when I am playing games etc. I actallu did see quite a difference in hdd noise and my sister wants it to be fast, quiet etc so i just left it on Quiet.