IT Dojo: Speed up Windows Vista with these performance tweaks

Bill Detwiler: Windows Vista has additional security features, new functionality, and a lot of cool graphics, but depending on how powerful your computer is, you might not be that impressed with its performance.

Now, even if you're running Vista on something less powerful than say -- an $8000 Alienware Area 51 ALX (with three video cards) -- you can do some tweaking to make the operating system run a bit faster. I'm Bill Detwiler, and in this IT Dojo video, I'll give you several performance-enhancing tips to speed up Windows Vista.

If you use Windows Vista, but you're getting frustrated with performance issues, there are several things you can do to gain a little speed.

There's no doubt that Vista is a RAM-hungry system, so the first thing you should consider is adding more memory.

You really need a minimum of a gigabyte to run Vista acceptably. Two gigs is even better, and if you turn on all the graphical features and keep a lot of programs open, four gigs isn't overkill.

If you can't add more physical memory, you can fool your computer into thinking it has more RAM than it does, with Vista's ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost lets you use a flash memory card or USB key to boost the system memory.

Now if you're going to do this, you should use a high performance flash card or USB drive. When you insert the device, Windows will ask if you want to use it to speed up system performance. If you answer yes, you can specify how much memory you want to use for that purpose, and you're ready to go. Just remember, if you remove the memory card or USB drive, you loose the boost.

Next, if you have enough RAM, the most likely hardware culprit on a slow-moving Vista machine is the video card. In short, if you want to run Aero and be happy doing it, get a card that's Vista Premium Certified.

You can find out whether your video card is the bottleneck by checking your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score from the Performance Information and Tools applet in Control Panel. To access this tool, click Start | Control Panel | Performance Information And Tools.

If your card returns a low score, you'll need to turn of the Aero interface or upgrade your video card.

Now, getting away from hardware changes, it's time to look at Vista's settings in Performance Options.

You'll want to start with the settings for visual effects and be willing to trade off some of the bling for increased speed.

Access the Performance Options dialog box from the Control Panel | System | Advanced System Settings | Settings button in the Performance section. This opens the Performance Options dialog box.

On the Visual Effects tab, you have four choices:

1.           Let Windows choose the best settings for your computer
2.           Adjust for best appearance
3.           Adjust for best performance
4.           Custom

If you choose the option to adjust for best performance, all of the visual effects will be disabled. By using the Custom option, you can choose your options. For example, you might want to turn off the ones that are purely aesthetic, such as transparent glass and fading or sliding menus, while leaving on those that are more functional, such as showing thumbnails instead of icons.

Now, switch to the Advanced tab in Performance Options. In the top section, you can control processor scheduling. Here, you can adjust for best performance of applications or background services. For the most responsiveness, you'll want to adjust for best performance of applications.

In the second section, you can make changes to the paging file location and size that can improve performance. Click the Change button to display the Virtual Memory settings dialog box.

By default, Windows automatically manages the paging file. If you deselect this check box, you can change the location of the paging file, spreading it out among multiple physical disks if you have them. This can speed access to paged data.

You can also increase the size of the paging file and/or make it static, so that instead of using the resources to increase and decrease the size, it always stays the same size. This can also slightly increase overall performance but will tie up more of your disk space. To set a static paging file, click the Custom Size button and enter the same number (file size in MB) in the Initial Size and Maximum Size fields.

Another place you can customize settings for Vista is in the Indexing Options section of the Performance Information and Tools dialog box.

Indexing can take a lot of resources and put a drag on other running applications if you have a low-powered computer.

In this dialog box, select Indexing Options in the left pane. Then, click the Modify button in the Indexing Options dialog box and click the Show All Locations button at the bottom of the Indexed Locations dialog box. Now you can individually select and deselect the locations to be indexed.

These should give you a good start on improving Windows Vista's performance, but if you want to explore even more alternatives to revving up vista, check out Deb Shinder's full list of tips and tricks for improving performance, which I've linked to from the IT Dojo blog.

And as always, for more teachings on your path to becoming an IT Ninja, visit itdojo.techrepublic.com. And please let us know if this tip was helpful.

You can also submit your favorite IT Ninja tips by e-mailing them to us at itdojo@techrepublic.com. If we use them for an episode of IT Dojo, we'll send you a TechRepublic coffee mug. I'm Bill Detwiler. Thanks for visiting TechRepublic's IT Dojo.