NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide

It works flawlessly on X64 ...Im using it. It works flawlessly on X86...My son is using that.

 

That monitor tip is amazing. (1. Disable TMM (TY and Rep NinjaNoodles) I've been wondering why windows ALWAYS flickers when I turn it on.

One question. This only affects external monitors that are already plugged in right? If I was to plug my laptop into an external monitor, AFTER loading Vista, would it work okay? Or would I have to re-enable "TMM"?

 

Believe me, he is not the only one. Many even have it in their sigs (along with very oversized sigs).

 

Hello, guys, I'm glad that TuneXP is working for you. I'm also using this on 64-bit Vista and it hasn't had issues. I'd recommend checking to make sure you're running it as administrator and that you installed it as that if your profile isn't admin by default.

I'd also like to point out something else I do with indexing. I do exactly as Flamenko has described. After the computer is finished deleting the index caches, I do the following:
1) hit start and enter services in the search bar
2) Within services, I find "windows search"
3) I set "windows search" to disable

Through research, I found that this option is the index service. Your normal search will run just fine.

Also, I totally endorse disabling UAC as I find I will have to override it well over 100 times while installing different things. I also applied the disable TMM as I don't use an external monitor with this notebook.

Thank you very much for your hard work putting this together Flamenko and thanks for the credit

 

Repped, thank you for the tweaks!

 

I downloaded and installed TuneXP and it went through the steps but I am waiting for the 2 disk defragmenting processes to end. I see them and they are "defrag.exe" and "DfrgNtfs.exe"...are these the 2 processes to wait for? Its been an hour or so since I ran the TuneXP tweak so thats why I'm wondering.

 

Yes they will end and dissappear when they are finished. You will see their numbers change occasionally (00, 01, 05) which means they are still working.

 

Thanks...the CPU number is still changing occasionally...but its been over an hour...how long is this supposed to take before the two processes disappear?

 

It usually takes about a half hour but you may have a very fragmented system if you havent defragged prior.

Ive had defrags over an hour before.

 

I installed, rebooted and then tried to tweak some more and then it showed those .. "unable to open... " Didn't really see any change in start-up time. Actually my IE starts slower! Hmmm Oh well, keep those suggestions a comin' though. Hope nothing else got messed up.

 

right click, and run as administrator, then defrag and apply the options.

 

How much RAM does disabling Indexing save? I really like being able to search for files almost instant, so I don't want to disable unless it makes a big enough(noticeable) improvement.

 

The defrag processes ended and I restarted my laptop to see...noticeable improvement but I may go back to having the indexing service enabled.

 

Tweaks are everyones own preference.

I have never been able to find any negligible search difference with Search on or off. There is, however, more background activity with it enabled which slows system performance in the long run.

 

i read somewhere, that vista has it's own boot defrag thing, but it only comes on when the cpu/hard drive is idle. Which i'm pretty sure not many people leave their computers on long enough for the defrag to finish. =D and i never knew TuneXP worked with vista.

 

=(((( boot times inreased? it now takes about 100 sec to go from desktop to desktop on restart. 45-50 sec on cold boot.

 

As you are the only who has experienced this, Im going to bet you did something different. My guess would be that you never opened task manager and alowed it to defrag after it looked like it was complete.

Actually the way you describe is odd because 45 sec is a great start time for Vista. As for your hot reboot, boot it a few times and see what happens...someone stated something similar above then it fixed itself after a cold boot, then hot reset.

And as for the post above that.... it is fully compatible with 32/64 bit. I have received several pms/responses of and average of 35-40 second decrease in boot times. Sev are posted here.

 

I'm not sure how much RAM is being used by the indexing service, but keep in mind that the indexing service is an idle process, and its behavior can be adjusted on the power management where you can set it to index with higher priority (Performance, or something like that), or lower priority (Power saver).
Furthermore, the tedious process only occurs once, which is when it's building the database (you can leave it to index overnight when you're not using the computer). Once the indexing database is built, it will not degrade the performance *that* much. Unless you keep changing a large amount of your indexed files, there will be no noticable performance decrease. At least not in mine.
Therefore, if you do a lot of search, I'd keep the indexing service if I were you.

 

the boot time actually got worse after i booted it a couple of times. i did follow the instructions, but something did happen, i had the same prob as this guy-

so what i did was just wait for the two processes to go away and waited another 30 min before i restarted. i found it odd that tunexp never said it finished or anything, but nothing was going on. i didnt hear the hard drive moving, and both cores were'nt doing anything. im defragging my hard drive w/ vista atm to see if it changes anything.

 

Read the whole post. This was darthsats final result:

"Edit : Finished defragging. So all in all, these 2 tweaks lowered my power-on to fully loaded vista from 1min 7seconds down to 55seconds. Not bad."

So you are not in the same boat.

To clarify...

1. "Failed to get Data to Start" occurs when the initial installation gave you the opportunity to select C drive and you never highlighted and selected. It doesnt matter in any case.

2. When it finishes, the program defragments in the background. You have to open Task manager and wait until defrag.exe and NTFSDfrg.exe finish and dissappear.
I know the system doesnt tell you this so it is confusing but, nevertheless, thats how it works.

You are the only pers that has had this occur that I know of and not been able to figure it out. Sorry.

 

Also if it has been runing for a long time just let it keep running till the 2 items leave your task manager becuase sometimes it does take a while, my week old HP took a little over an hour to complete.

 

Just a few notes on TuneXP:

1) The "failed to get data on start" is due to vista
2) most of the tweaks are obsolete on it now, the ultrafast booting is still worthwhile
3) Vista/Win XP SP2 have a boot tweak function that runs rarely...this program actually forces windows to execute that function.
4) in windows XP, you actually can see the progress through command but you won't in vista.
5) This really helps if you reinstall while keeping old stuff on your hard disk or doing the microsoft initial install then upgrade install.

This program does not do a standard defrag...you'll need to run perfectdisk defrag or similar to maximize your booting.

 

hey is crap cleaner vista safe yet? i want to use it on my vista ultimate laptop but i don't want to screw up the registry by having something that vista needs removed because ccleaner didn't know it was a critical vista entry or something.

also in the process of using the tunexp defrag function. i haven't used this in a couple of years, it helped xp alot back then.

edit: the boot defrag worked, atleast 1 min to boot though after things appear to be fully booted the hard drive is still being accessed for a good 2-4 min or so. then again it has always done that. wish it wouldn't though.

 

I would never run any registry cleaner, I would hand delete the values of uninstalled programs if I had to. I would run a registry defragger. I'm attaching a shutdown script that I wrote with the stuff I have:crap cleaner, perfectdisk, ntregopt, and kaspersky anti-virus.

@ Echo off
cd c:\program files (x86)\ccleaner\
ccleaner /auto
Echo Running crap cleaner, please wait 45 secs.
ping 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 45000 >NUL
cls
del /s /q c:\programdata\"kaspersky lab"\*.dmp
del /s /q c:\users\"all users"\"kaspersky lab"\*.dmp
del /s /q c:\windows\temp\*
del /s /q c:\users\trebuin\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\wer\reportqueue\*
del /s /q c:\users\trebuin\appdata\roaming\azureus\*.tmp
echo Cleaning complete, defragging.
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Raxco\PerfectDisk\
pdcmd /sp /w c
pdcmd /sp /w d
cd c:\Program Files (x86)\"NT Registry Optimizer"\
NTREGOPT silent
shutdown /s

Put this in a batch file and edit it for your needs. This really only benefits you if you have a command line capable defragger.

 

RE: CCleaner...see my latest tweak!! And yes its Vista safe...

 

thanks for all this info, im going to try this.

 

you can force a quick defrag of the prefetched items (which will decrease startup times on cluttered drives) by using this command line - "defrag.exe 'systemdrive' -b". alternatively, task scheduler is set up automatically in Vista to do this.

 

ccleaner = best program ever made =D

 

Here's my contribution:

Open Device Manager. Expand the Disk Drive tree by clicking the "+" sign. Right click on your hard drive and select Properties, which will open a new window. Click the Policies tab at the top. "Enable Write Caching on the Disk" will be checked by default. Also check "Enable Advanced Performance". Click OK. Close Device Manager.

 

Nice. With all of these tweaks I currently have my boot up time at 32-33 seconds running Vista Business.

I have a problem though, whenever I boot up Vista, when it first gets to the desktop screen a window flashes. It flashes instantly in and out. I can't read or see anything on it. It's bugging me, does anyone know what this could possibly be?

 

+ Rep just for the first tip, that little delay ALWAYS annoyed me since I switched to Vista a few months ago. The faster boot-up tweak is very nice as well. Good job so far, I'm looking forward to some more tweaks!

 

lol i just did the defrag, and it took me under 5 min.... im going to reboot now and see the results.. and great tips.

on first reboot... much slower but going on what some people have said it will improve...

 

one last point, the best feature you can use on your desktop is the Vista's sleep. so long as your computer supports S3 sleep mode, it'll shut everything off on the computer except for 2-5 watts so that the RAM retains its data. from sleep to desktop, my computer takes no more than 5 seconds to be fully functional.

 

I'll ditto this post. I've used this, but keep in mind that this is extremely sensitive to forced power off or power outage. I would not use this on a desktop without a battery backup and I would make sure that you are finished messing with your computer.

 

Mine has been on "Rearranging boot files", "Do not reboot before degfragmation is done" & "cleaning up" at bottom of message for over an hour. Nothing to do with defrag in TM. What should i do?

 

Icedout...I have this as well and its my antivirus program (AVG); it may be something similar for you.

 

I want to thank everyone for the help in this thread but can I ask that any responses with new tweaks get pm'd to me and I will post them in time, giving the author appropriate credit.

The reason for this is because I wouldn't want to see a tweak get entered that isn't necessarily a healthy tweak, one which can't be undone before its too late.

Conversely, I wouldn't want to see a tweak get included that will cause a great deal of discussion before I can explain all sides to the particular tweak.

This would be the case with the Disk Caching Tweak as it is not available to everyone. For many, if Intel Matrix Storage Manager is installed, this tweak will not work. They can check off "Enable Write Caching' and 'Enable Advanced Performance' (photo below) as many times as their little heart desires but, as soon as they exit they are unchecked again by the Manager. Some may start to post thinking their is something wrong with their system when there actually is not.

This is the exact situation in my case yet, my disk performance is the best its ever been; I have attached HDTune results to verify.

This is also the case with RMClock where it is such a controversial fix. On one side, it eliminates the noise yet on the other, I have experienced all versions to significantly reduce battery life and we don't quite know the long term effects of preventing our systems from entering low power sleep modes.

PS. Having written this, I still want to encourage discussion and response about any of the tweaks that I post as this will be the strength of the thread itself. Many will become comfortable with tweaks knowing others have had such success, this being the case with Tweak #2.

 

is it safe to do this even on a laptop?

 

I addressed it in my above thread. yes its safe but it may not work if Intel Matrix has been installed.

 

Yes, it's safe. As Flamenko stated, there is an issue with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. This would also apply to any software RAID implementation or controller. In that case the option will be grayed out, or will revert to defualt.

 

ok i have that matrix thingie so it doesn't work. no problem though.

 

If anyone is interested in hard drive stats, a great program I use is HDTune. You will see it below in my hard disk results that I attached.

If anyone realy wants to see the difference in a HD and SSD, post a resilt and compare. The effeciency of a normal HD always drops as it is continually used; this surprised the heck out of me with the SSD as it remained constant for the whole test.

Compare but dont drool (lol)

 

i would use it but the site wont let me attach my images of the program.

 

these are the programs i currently use to keep my comp safe, if anyone know of anything that is free and better than what i have pleas let me know i want the best for my new comp.

firewall: Zone Alarm (was using comodo firewall pro on xp - no vista version yet)
Antivirus: avg
antispyware, spybot, avg antispyware, and windows defender (since i can't get rid of it).

I used to have windows live onecare installed but it caused nothing but problems for me and thanks to it not being able to remove 3 trojans that only it could find, i had to restore my computer using the store supplied recovery discs. sofar everything is running fine but the vista configuration and other things are slightly different from when the store setup the laptop for me.

 

When you are replying you will see, at the bottom, a part that says manage attachments. You attaach the file from your computer there.

 

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thats what it tells me, and there is no section for attaching images. maybe i haven't contributed enough or something.

anyhow, for tunexp are any of its other options safe for windows vista or is it only the boot defrag that is safe to use?

 

I havent fooled with it enough and i just noticed that with you...thats rather odd and maybe you should bring it up to a mod. You should have this ...

 

Are there any risks when applying "Enable Advanced Performance"? I THINK its safe for laptops because it can never run out of power, as desktops, right?

 

Hey, thanks for the tweaking information. I'm glad to finally get rid of that screen flash on boot-up. I am, however, not able to get TuneXP 1.5 to work right on my system. I am having a similar problem as a couple other reports on this thread. The program starts up, I run the "Ultra-Fast Booting" option which brings up a box that does various things. Then it says not to reboot until defragmenting is complete. I pull up Task Manager but there are no processes having to do with defragging. I have let it wait for around two hours but the processes never start. The program seems to have installed correctly and I am running the program as an administrator; I also have selected "Show processes from all users" in Task Manager. Also, the "Ultra-Fast Booting" doesn't appear to error out or anything - the defragging just never seems to start. I am wondering if anyone else (esp. those who reported similar problems) has found a solution to this. Specifically, I am wondering if there are any dependencies that the program needs to start defragging that I may have turned off and need to turn back on (so far, I haven't found any, but that certainly doesn't mean they don't exist). Thanks!!

 

AVG Free has got poor detection rates, the not free version (what ever it's called) has got better detection rates but still not great. you didn't specify which one you're using.
Avira Antivir is a free antivirus with very good detection rates, better than most not free AVs.
I currently use Active Virus Shield but I'm pretty sure that it isn't available anymore.
If you want to stick to avg be sure to download AVG anti rootkit.

I would recommend downloading Ad-Aware 2007 also.