NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide

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got some question on compatible-program issue between 32bit and 64bit...

does the 32bit has much more program it compatible with than the 64bit???

 

Yes, as of now. 64 bit also has a lot of compatible programs, but not as much as 32, obviously.

 

Hi guys!

I have just discovered the topic and I have learned quite a few things (I really love the way you can resize your desktop icons!), so thanks a lot!
I have always liked to tweak XP then Vista and I have always tried to trim as many services/startup programs as I can.
I have just got a new Dell XPS 1330 with a 2.1 Ghz Penryn processor and a 64 Go SSD.
I have made a few tweaks, and I am still a bit disappointed at boot times, since it takes at least 45-50 seconds to reach the desktop. This is weird since I don't have many startup programs:
Java Platform
Synaptics Pointing...
C-major audio
Dell Wireless WLAN card Wireless network...
Avast Antivirus
Adobe Acrobat spped launcher
Quickset

I might consider remove the speed launcher and maybe the dell wireless utility. I have also removed many services, as well as the TMM. I have also disabled Aero and removed the sidebar. I don't really know what I can do to gain a few more seconds.

On to more important things: as to the pagefile.sys, I thought that some of it was used when the computer was put to sleep? Am I wrong? Or maybe it is only used when you hibernate. Well, since I have 3 Gb of Ram, I doubt that I will use more than that, so that I can try to reduce the size of the pagefile.sys, but I am not sure I can remove it altogether. Is it really safe?

Finally, I will post one "tweak" for PC-Mac networks:

1. Click Windows Visa Start Orb
2. In search box, type “regedit” and return
3. Once regedit opens, click File -> export to make a backup copy
4. Navigate to Computer HKEYLOCALMACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Lsa.
5. In the right pane, right-click the “LmCompatibilityLevel” key and select “modify”
6. Change the value from 3 to 1
7. Exit regedit and you should now be able to properly authenticate to your Mac OS X (or other Samba) share.

I don't know if this has already been said, but it has helped me quite a bit, since I was unable to connect my laptop to my iMac for a long time.

 

Your system, as described, should be down in the 30 second are to start very least. There is reasoning behind your slow start up time and it can be found. There is no need to shut aero off or your wireless utilities.

I start with sound drivers, antivirus, quikset, bluetooth, printer software,fingerprint reader as well as an SD card plugged in at under 30 seconds. My main screen is decked out with all the aero goodies and a dreamscene of the earth revolving with clouds revolving opposite that. The moon also moves around.

Thoughts..... Did you do a clean install before the tweaks? It is listed in my sig block. Also, have you shut sstem restore off? I ask the because system restore will run in the background after all your tweaking and restarting.

 

yep, I have reinstalled Vista from the DVD before doing anything.
I haven't removed neither system restore (just deleted oldest restauration points), nor indexing, but I have limited it to a few areas and I have reduced the type of files it is indexing.

As to Aero, I remove it because it uses a lot of battery.

 

Well, I have removed a few additional services as well as disabled indexing, and I hear the Vista sound after only 25 seconds, see my desktop after around 34 seconds, and everything is loaded after 40 seconds, so that I have gained at least 5-7 seconds!

 

disable logon sounds, change boot order sequence, disable seek floppy drive in BIOS, turn off system restore.
u save some more time

 

The rest sound right, but I am not sure that system restore is going to affect boot time at all. The only time it kicks in is when a file is changed/updated.

Gary

 

Could you please tell me how disabling seek floppy drive in BIOS will help my boot time, and any adverse affects it may have?

 

boost all around speed if u disable system restore, i think.

and Calvin, because no laptops have a floppy drive. if it looks for it, its wasting time. a second i guess. no effects at all.

 

Part #2 of this I agree with 100%. Part #1 however I DISAGREE with 10000%. System restore adds very little overhead and can save your @$$ if you have a driver issue or lose a file. If you look through the various threads here, you will find many occasions where folks have used system restore to recover their machines from a state where the machine was unstable or causing some serious problem.

There have been some benchmarks done on the actual overhead (I can't find the specific link at the moment, but I'll try to find it) and as I remember it the number was SURPRISINGLY low.

Gary

 

it takes up 15% of your HD. and its the main cause of high cpu usage.

i mean dont get me wrong, its very useful, i have it on, but i know some ppl who dont even use it, so yeah.

 

If the BIOS has the floppy in the boot sequence and there is no drive, it will take a moment to look for it. It's not a huge amount of time but time nonetheless. The same thing is true of the CD/DVD drive. If it is in the boot sequence before the hard drive, it takes a little bit of time for it to time out before the BIOS moves on the the next device. Some folks have the Hard drive as the first thing in the boot sequence for the absolute quickest boot time and then change the boot sequence when they NEED to boot from CD or DVD. There is no downside to doing this, but to me the amount of time difference is so very tiny, I don't see the point.


Gary

 

It does take up 15%, a cheap price to pay for the time it saves your butt. (BTW the 15% is configurable.)

I disagree totally about the high cpu use. The ONLY time it kicks in is when a file is updated, period. I'll look around for the benchmark numbers I had seen.

Gary

 

I disagree. Doesn't it make random restore pts EVERYDAY if the computer is on. Yes that is configurable but for default that is what the setting it set to. And thats what causes high cpu usage and slowdowns. And yes, I would like to see the benchmarks.

 

Looking at the System Restore task in Task Manager, it runs once a day, but in the Conditions tab it's set to run only if the computer has been idle for at least 10 minutes. In the History tab, it shows that on my machine, the task generally takes less than 1 minute to run.

The history also shows that on some days the task was "triggered" by the scheduler but never actually started... I guess those were days where I didn't leave the computer idle for 10 minutes while it was on.

It also generally runs when you install a program... so it might add a half minute or so to your program install times.

I haven't needed System Restore on my Vista machine yet, but it has saved my butt before on Windows XP... I definitely consider it worthwhile. Shrink the disk space if you want, make it run less often, whatever... but I wouldn't want to shut it off.

 

It doesn't make random ones, it does make scheduled ones per swarmers note above. And takes a minute to run.

The only other time it runs is when a system file is changed due to a app or driver install or update. Then the time depends on the size and number of files.

Bottom line is there is no contiuous overhead at all just the one a day restore point and the update triggered one.

Gary

 

Once it accumulates 5 restore pts, I turn it off so that it deletes all the ones its kept, then turn it back on and create one. Saves the disk space.

 

But that limits you to only one point in time that you can roll back to. If you are worried about the space, why not set it to another limit instead of the default 15%?

Gary

 

Yeah, it automatically deletes the oldest restore points after it's used up all the allotted disk space (which you can adjust with the "vssadmin" command). It's a first-in-first-out queue (where "out" means deleted here).

 

When you do decide to "restore" it recommends the LATEST one anyway.

 

Sure, but if the latest one ends up being jacked....


Still, I'd much rather have one restore point than none. In my limited experience using it, the latest restore point worked fine.

But... if some malware has been on your system for a while before you realized it, you could want to restore to something older. One restore point is still a whole lot better than none though.

 

Ah, but the OPERATIVE word there is "recommends". You still have others to fall back to if needed. I am not suggesting that you should NEVER delete the older ones. I always do so before I image my C: partition and I also turn off hibernation too just so I can reduce the size of the resulting image file. I am just saying I let System Restore manage the disk space I have granted it to use for its purpose, until I have a need to micromange it.

Gary

 

wow, huge kudos to you sir! I've spent so long trawling the vast quagmire that is the internet looking for a detailed and user friendly tweaking guide and finally I've found one, so huge thanks

 

I'm just saying that when I accumulate 5+, I delete the rest, and start a new streak of 5. ;o

 

I blocked some of the programs from starting when I boot up, but now I keep getting that stupid pop up telling me that Windows has stopped some programs from starting up every time I log into my system. Can someone tell me how to get rid of that?

 

Check the box that says something like "Don't tell me this, and don't start MSCONFIG when i startup."

 

You go to "Run blocked program">System Configuration>Press continue if UAC is enabled, let it open>uncheck dont show me this again>ok

 

Thank you Katayama...

 

Hmmm... I don't understand: the more I tweak my laptop, the slower the boot gets: now, I only get to see the Vista orb after something like 34 seconds and the desktop after 45 seconds; even tough I have disabled indexing and many different services and startup programs, removed the diskette from the boot list...

 

Did you try the boot defrag in the guide? Running that saved me atleast 10 seconds on my boot.

 

well, I have an SSD drive, is it really relevant?

 

Yes, even with a ssd boot defrag will arrange your startup files to boot immediately. I have 3 different systems with ssds on all and have found that, through use of various programs which contain this 'executable' all speed up after its use.

Having said that, 45 seconds is not unusual for an SSD start time although it is a bit high. You need to fine tune everything now. Follow my tweaking guide below and don't be afraid to follow Schuds advise regarding the boot defrag utility.

If you still cannot pull the start time up let me know. I have been successful at getting my start time below 30 seconds and it is still under that after some 5 months.

 

...every time you say that I salivate with envy...showoff!

 

Not intended...sorry. Not long now...I hope...before good news from at least one ssd manufacturer which will be pushing the pricing down through mlc technology.

I am surprised at the fact that maunfacturers aren't pushing forward as fast as I thought they would be.

 

Care to show us how you boot up in under 30 seconds? From power on to desktop takes me 50-55 seconds.

 

I really don't know how I would show you.

Parallel to my initial ssd testing, I decided to help out the site and come up with, what I thought, were needed guides. The result of this thought is the Clean Install Guide and Tweaking Guide, both hotlinked below. I cannot take sole credit for these as I was offered tons of support, especially with the Tweaking Guide.

If you follow both, you shouldn't have any problem if you are using a ssd as I. I will concede that the specific ssd may help as I regularly switch off between my Mtron and my Memoright, both being around 100MB/s read and write (see Benchmark Thread below).

In fact, in the benchmark thread, you will find that one of my benchmarks is the start time with different ssds and a hd.

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate to build my Memoright from scratch as I received the Dell Vista 64Bit Ultimate disk after some hard digging and pulling in of a favour or two. I simply followed the two guides, once again, to a tee and voila... I am around 27-28 seconds from push of the button to final internet confirmation which is the last activity in my bootup.

So... this also includes the starting of sidebar with a few programs, AVG antivirus (free edition), quickset, 465CN printer utilities, bluetooth, and I also start with a great dreamscene background. Oh...I also have the icons along the top from...oh shoot I can't remember the name of the program right now and I am at work.

My situation is not unusual. There are many posts on this and the 'Clean Install' thread of users who have come into the high 30 second area with a normal hd. I seem to recall someone stating they achieved 34 seconds in fact. Trebuin used to also boast to me that he was always low 20's as well.

I don't know if 64bit helps but, it sure doesn't hurt.

Hope this helps.

 

Ah. I see. Well I don't use a SSD nor do I have 64 bit. I didn't even do a clean install, so I guess 50-55 seconds isn't bad...

 

This is incredible. I've read the guide for tweaking a million times, but I'm afraid to do some of the things detailed in it (wimp ). I would love for my system to boot that fast. I might just go ahead and try anyway.

 

Two questions.
Tweak #22- Reduce or Eliminate the Size of Your Disk Cache
What are the pros and cons of this? I'm not quite sure what this does and how it boost performance and give you back disk space.

Tweak #6-Disable Vista Search Indexing
I have the unchecked part already done.
My question pertains to this:1. Click on start/run and type in 'MSConfig' and hit ok;
2. Click on Services tab and find Windows Search
3. Uncheck/Apply and Ok...Your done!!!

I did both msconfig and unchecked windows search and went to services.msc and disabled windows search. Same thing?

 

Hi Les, I have a question that I was hoping you, or anyone else, could answer. I found this thread that was originally posted a few years ago and I was wondering how relevant the information contained in it is today. I posed the question in the thread itself, but it appears like a thread that is rarely visited and I just didn't know if I would get an answer or not.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787

 

That's for Windows XP, in case you didn't know. It's similar...except TuneXp.
All that is basically in this new revamped tweak guide. o_o

 

I'm running XP on one of my desktops, so yes, it does apply to me. I figured that a lot of the information was here. I'm a little obsessive about things, so I was reading both. I guess I'll just stick to this guide. Thanks, Mac.

 

Don't I get any cred for tweak #10?

See post #79 on page 8.

 

Sorry.... There were alot of tweaks (as in this one) that I was trying to figure out when and how I would include and, as well, many that had several people send in....

You do very well on your computer tips website in any case I am sure.

 

Les, help me out.

 

Hey I have a quick question. Is there a thread like this for tweaks, but for WINDOWS XP? Where can I find some performance tweaks for XP OS. Thanks.

 

thaansa posted it above
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787

 

There might be one around but i think this is the only one. Some of these tweaks should work in XP but keep in mind this is made mainly for vista users.