NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide

Would be a great idea and speed up the whole process up

 

A reg file would be an "all or nothing" "one size fits all" solution. Not a good idea, in my opinion.

Gary

 

Except that it would assume that everybody wanted, needed and could use all of the same tweaks.

Sounds like just the sort of thing Lennin would suggest.


Gary

 

One registry tweak is:
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, double-click MenuShowDelay in the right-hand pane, and change the value from 400 to 5

why wouldn't anyone want a faster start menu? of course some tweaks will be laptop specific but i will not include this if i do end up posting a reg file

 

I never suggested that someone would not want a faster start menu. All I said was if you lump a lot of tweaks into a single registry file, then folks would have to accept the entire list of tweaks. Or at the very least have to edit the registry file before they apply it.

As long as you made a very generic list of tweaks this concept might work. But if you propose to include the entire list from this thread, I don't think it would apply to many folks.

Gary

 

I did that reg tweak. I didnt notice a difference though

 

jisaac...

Can I suggest maybe you start a new thread with that? I get a bit nervous with such things because it opens up a whole new 'canundrum' when the tweaks do not work or an ill effect is experience by someone who didn't do something correctly.

Making a 'one step' solution would deserve its own thread in any case and, after a successful response pattern, I would gladly throw it on here. This is what should occur.

Can we remove that thread and create a post that deserves its own specific responses??

 

ye sure no problem,
link to new forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=251154
you said in your guide that you have a weekly tune-up schedule. Les would you be interested in testing out a batch file made by me, that automates this schedule and so makes it faster?
i just thinking why do something yourself when a single file can do it for you in a fraction of the time lol

 

hmmm... seems a proper gui program would be the only solution to the 'one size fits all' problem. I might try it soon, i have a bit of experience in c++

 

I tried to tell you that! [big ol' grin]

If you do the "proper gui" program I highly encourage you to have it not only perform the tweak but to show EXACTLY what it is going to do to the registry, even to the point of letting the user save off a copy of that info.

If I were specing this out I'd have a list of all the patches with a checkbox by each. Hovering the mouse over any of them would bring up a description of what the patch does. Then I'd have three buttons at the bottom. One would read "Make the selected changes", the second would read "Make a registry update file to apply the selected changes" and the third would read "Make a registry update file to UNDO the selected changes". Oh wait how about a fourth button "Undo the selected changes".

The two registry update files would satisfy the paranoid folks like me, who can't afford to have their development environment hosed. And it would give complete transparency into what the app is really doing, something no other tweak app has, that I know of.

I have encouraged Lawrence of WinBubbles to do this sort of thing (transparency) for months, to no avail. All I ever get back is some lip service about "all will be revealed". It's a lot of BS. He has no intention of revealing what his app does. All he cares about is seeing his name show up on shareware sites. He thinks that because they list his app or give it a high rating that they think it is good, and his ego grows further. He has no clue that 90% of such sites will highly rate anything that anyone submits. They don't care about truthful ratings, they are only concerned with driving traffic to their own sites. Now having said that, his app has gotten some good ratings from a few reputable sites, but I refuse to recommend a tweak app to anyone that doesn't completely document what the tweaks do.

Gary

 

Hey Ji, another suggestion for you would be to mimic a feature i love in msconfig, if you could put a little box that reads "Disabled on xx/xx/xx" or patch/fix applied xx/xx/xx it would help when you are trying to figure out which disabled service is causing your problem or which tweak helped/hurt when you are applying 10s and 100s of tweaks.

 

i just started , here is what i have done so far.
is this the sort of thing people want?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*check box should say UAC off*

 

UAC stands for User Account Control...not w/e you have. And you have some typos...plus UAC doesn't do that...faster browsing? wtf.

 

lol soz i wasn't really concentrating, i just wanted to create somethin quick to see if i was on the right track- i've made the changes

 

We should move this discussion to jisaac's other thread on his tweaks. This has little to do with this thread that Les started long ago, at least for now.

Gary

 

But MIT hopefuls shouldn't be like this.

 

I have posted a guide on how to use minlogon, an embedded feature to halve boot time :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=252599

 

What does this have to do with Vista tips? Your guide is for XP, this thread is labeled "Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide".

Gary

 

I can't beleive how fast Shadow Copies eat free space. I cleaned today after four days (my notebook and system are just week old - this is the second time I cleaned) and I got 5 GB!!!

 

It won't eat up the whole hard drive, only 15% (default max).

 

And thats 30 Gb on a 200Gb hd...which is tons.

 

So???? Where is there a problem in that? Shadow copies are designed to use space making backup copies of files. It's only doing its job. By "getting" 5gb, you lost 5gb of possible recovery if there is any problem.

Gary

 

And that unused space is used for something useful.

 

You guys are splitting hairs, IMHO. 30gb is only important "if" you need it. Reclaiming 5gb is great, "if" you need it. It is all relative, again IMHO. This is probably more important to Les since he is on a smaller SSD drive, but it is less important to me as I have a 160gb drive with almost 100gb of free space - I don't really care what, or how much, Vista wants to save!

 

Should I clean up this file? I have three blue screens (don't ask why ), and I am pretty sure I can safely do it. CCleaner already deleted dump files (over 600 MB).

One copy (the latest one) is enough. I don't need xy numbers of copies .

 

It appears you don't understand the way Shadow copies works. It only keeps a copy of each unique version of a file that has changed. In the case of a user file, under Shadow Copy protection, for example let's say you create a Power Point presentation on Monday, Wednesday you add a few slides and take out a few. On Thursday you add three more. Then on Friday as you review these with a client, you realize that one of the slides you deleted was really required. With the multiple instances Shadow copy saves you can go back and recover that slide.

This same notion applies to other files Shadow Copy provides. Instead of a single roll back option you have multiple points in time where you can go back to.

As was said earlier, if you absolutely need the 5 gb it's one thing, but if it is just extra space leaving it for Shadow Copy to do its job can save your butt some day.

Gary

 

Hmm, I must have been doing something wrong when I was running Vista x64. I have downgraded to 32 bit and I have basically everything set up to the level it was at before. While my boot time before was a little bit over a minute from button push to desktop, it is now a blazing fast 37 seconds! This can't merely be because of the switch in operating systems, can it? Either way, I'm thrilled.

 

lol yeah x64 is meant to be faster ! :0

 

i tired most of the tweaks listed here, to be honest I didn't notice much difference in start up or shutdown, is the increase suppose to be that drastic though?

 

it should improve boot up/shutdown speed by about 25%, as well as improving general system speed (e.g. app load times) which is more important imo. If u applied the tweaks correctly you should feel a difference

 

What is your before tweaks/after tweaks startup time?

 

Les-
Loved the Tips with Vista from '07 reguarding tuneXP. And for the Pagefile.sys - I ditched that a while back and performance has soared. I run a a gateway with 2 GB ddr2 in Windows Vista Home Premium and I found that things just went smoother. I also found that messing with the registry helped with a few of my other issues. Ive been using this config for about 2 weeks.

I reccommend that if you have 2 gb ram or more to ditch the Pagefile. Being, probably recanting here, you get your pagefile space back when you disable it as well as getting better seek times instead of everything being divided between pagefile and ram because ram is far quicker IMHO for running the whole Windows Shell, Services and all the Bells. I do have a flash drive on hand for Rapid boost always plugged in. I like the way it runs. Finally now I do.

 

You should NOT use tuneXP on a Vista machine. Les had that on the list originally to allow for defregging the boot files. NONE of the other options in TuneXP are safe to use with Vista. (TuneXP really hosed up some folks Vista installs.)

Subsequently Les pulled TuneXP from the official tweak list and replaced it with a simple batch file I created that does the EXACT SAME bootfile defrag that tuneXP did.

See my signature line below for details.

Gary

 

Hey guys, i did this tweak, and all my file names changed to blue color which i hate in Windows explorer. any way to change it back to black without enabling indexing?

Thanks in advance.

 

Disabling indexing doesn't have to do anything with your problem. You could change that in the advanced system properties - appearance.

 

Where is it it the advanced option. I mean, which one complies to the text color?

 

Benna, I'm wondering if while unchecking the box for "Index this drive", you also checked the box for "compress this drive." This would result in files in your C:/ being compressed. If so, files will appear blue. Try right-clicking on C:/, and then click properties. See if "compress this drive to save disk space" is checked, and if it is, uncheck it.


If that doesn't get rid of the blue text, try this:

Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View Tab > Uncheck the "Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color" box > Click Apply, Ok.

 

Thank you so much darthsat, that fixed it !!

 

@ ScuderiaConchiglia
Thanks For the tip. TuneXP was used primarily for the defragging of the boot files but I will use your method henceforth. A few Questions...
1. does Vista load faster with your method rather than the tune xp?
2 in your opinion, is is better to not have a pagefile- mines disabled and it works fine.
3. Is it possible to use a prior version of explorer for a windows shell to the best of your knowledge?

For Q3 I do know that you can open explorer with a hacking tool called ResHack.

Thanks in advance!
-Dan

 

1. What my method does and what tunexp did are EXACTLY the same thing. Read through the thread a bit and you will see I did a full analysis of what TuneXP was doing so I could create the new batch file.
2. I am NOT a fan of turning off the pagefile. I have yet to see any REAL data that it makes things faster. I have challenged someone to prove this and still no one has done so. I want a pagefile, so no apps crash if I run out of memory. I run Vitrual PC, MS Project, Visio and other things all at the same time. I am a developer and a crash because I have turned off the pagefile would be a BIG headache for me.
3. I have no idea. Why would you want to?

Gary

 

@ ScuderiaConchiglia
Thanks again! The reason I was curious about this was because I just wanted to know if this could be done. I know that you can replace explorer with another program to operate as windows shell and I wanted to mod a Vista Explorer.exe and replace it with a slightly changed one. I keep getting stopped by a window that says that I have no permissions to replace explorer. So I go to Windows File folder and click on properties and try to add permissions to the Administrator Account that I use for changing things out and it denied me. Could this be a DEP issue or is there a deeper security system behind Vista that needs to be shut off? How would you suggest that I do this?

 

just to toss in 2 cents from a bubba - I have turned pagefile completely off for a few weeks and turned it back on - I see no real difference in performance. Now, if I was like Les and had a 32gb SSD in me lappy - I would tweak the heck out of it to get very bit of drive space I could. Otherwise, I don't really see a difference in speed and performance. Keep pagefile and shadow copy running - more good than bad as Gary always points out.

 

Thanks Bubba,
I have not worked with shadow copy but i might turn my page file back on. I might forget also about my Explorer change out. A pity though, I spent an hour and a half working on it.

-Dan

 

Know I don't get here much and Scud and I differ on this but there is a very visible performance difference when Pagefil.sys is turned off and deleted "in the right circumstances". I run 64bit and 4Gb ram. I have tested my system limits in several fashions (multiple explorer use, multiple video, multiple large file etc)and yet to experience a system crash or program failure....or any loss of information in program use.

I believe the 4Gb ram running under 64bit is the key.

 

Oops - Sorry Les, thought you had a 32gb!

Maybe it DOES make a difference with an SSD/4gb RAM/64-bit environment?

 

If anything, there should be less difference with a ssd because running a pagefile from a ssd is quicker than running it from a regular hd.

I did my background on this only after having learned this by seeing it for myself.

Regardless of how much ram you have, you will not realize any increase by reducing pagefile alone or increasing ram. This is because, by default, pagefile is used rather than ram for certain system activities, thus slowing your system through additional disk activity.

Only if you shut it off completely do you force the system to use your ram to the point that the speed increase is realized. Lets face it...I moved to 64bit and increased to 4Gb in order to realize the advantages of use of the full 4Gb.

This is the only way it can be achieved if you think about it.

For the naysayers...its a very simple calculation of what is faster...utilizing programs held in ram or that stored in pagefil.sys on the hd(or ssd in my case).

 

so tune xp is unsupported anymore what happened ?

 

XP is soooo 2007...you gotta get with it! =P

 

Tune XP was designed for use with XP. It has not been changed at all for Vista's environment, and thus cannot be counted on to safely perform its functions within Vista.

 

It seemed to work ok on my system. It is good for moving your boot files to the front of your drive. ScuderiaConchiglia had a batch file that does the same thing and runs when your computer is idle. The link is one page back.