Castrating Vista

Drunken Bastard

So I got my new machine today, with Vista on it.

I'm not too happy with having to get that OS but it was part of the deal, and short of XP x64 I can't access those awesome 4 Gigs of ram.

Anyway first thing I did was remove all the Bling. Set everything to classic, display to performance, tossed some "helper" software.

Now I just wonder if there is a guide somewhere to turn that sumo wrestler into a lean mean marathon runner (and maybe get some of that Big Brother stuff out) . Tried google, but all I got was general crap I already did.

FaceballMcDougal

What exactly are you looking to disable? Customer experience program is off by default....

Is your computer slow or something? Why turn off the pretty stuff if all it's doing is using unused resources?

JJ

there's some guide at tweakguides.com that might have shit it can tell you to increase performance.

GnomeTank

Turning off Aero does almost nothing for your system if you have that much RAM. Seriously, it disables itself when you play fullscreen games, and there is no reason not to use it.

It's total FUD that it somehow slugs your system out, and if it does, it's because you bought a shitty system. There are some services you can turn off, but Vista is always going to look like it's using a huge amount of RAM because it keeps a pre-allocated system cache (that it will freely give up when other programs require the memory).

FaceballMcDougal

If you want a boost find an unused USB memory stick for ReadyBoost

Sushisource

GnomeTank wrote: »

Turning off Aero does almost nothing for your system if you have that much RAM. Seriously, it disables itself when you play fullscreen games, and there is no reason not to use it.

It's total FUD that it somehow slugs your system out, and if it does, it's because you bought a shitty system. There are some services you can turn off, but Vista is always going to look like it's using a huge amount of RAM because it keeps a pre-allocated system cache (that it will freely give up when other programs require the memory).

He's right you know. The only stuff I turned off was Sidebar, the firewall, and UAC because it's fucking annoying.

gneGne

There's not much to tweak actually... aside from the Sidebar and the UAC.
Here's a guide that won't screw your computer up and explains some tweaks which are worth it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1999401&enterthread=y

mcdermott

GnomeTank wrote: »

Turning off Aero does almost nothing for your system if you have that much RAM. Seriously, it disables itself when you play fullscreen games, and there is no reason not to use it.

I run quite a few programs that aren't compatible with it, so every time I launch them (or sometimes only when they perform a certain function) suddenly the screen flickers as it stops Aero. Then flickers again when ever it comes back on. Over and over again.

Got annoying. Turned it off. It was pretty, but fuck it.

foursquareman

I'm liking the UAC. It only got annoying when I was copying a lot of files to the foobar components directory and I kept getting the messages.

FaceballMcDougal

I keep UAC on as well. I know how to manage it. Also it keeps my wife in check.

Drunken Bastard

Thanks for the tips.

I might turn Aero on somewhere down the road, but right now I'm just trying to get Vista as lean as humaneley possible.

To be honest I'm quite pleased with it right now...had zero problems. Color me surprised.

wunderbar

Aero really doesn't affect performance, at all. it runs straight off the GPU, then shuts off when you game.

Honestly, I've tried both, havent' seen a difference in performance. and you say you use a lot of programs that don't work with aero, time to upgrade. of all the software I use, only 1 or 2 things break aero. 99% of software works with it.

Daedalus

mcdermott wrote: »

GnomeTank wrote: »

Turning off Aero does almost nothing for your system if you have that much RAM. Seriously, it disables itself when you play fullscreen games, and there is no reason not to use it.

I run quite a few programs that aren't compatible with it, so every time I launch them (or sometimes only when they perform a certain function) suddenly the screen flickers as it stops Aero. Then flickers again when ever it comes back on. Over and over again.

Got annoying. Turned it off. It was pretty, but fuck it.

Yeah, DScaler did that for me back when I was trying out Vista.

Really, after you disable Sidebar you've solved half of the memory issues.

yoshamano

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php

I personally haven't read through the Vista sub-forum there, but the people there tend to be rather knowledgeable and helpful. So, you might be able to gleam something useful out of there.

Morskittar

Performance will notably increase after the first month's (or so) indexing and RAM prefetching "training" period.

You can also easily disable and manage startup programs without getting into the registry.

Win key > type "defender" > "Tools" at the top > "Software Explorer" > "Show for all users" in the lower left

I've disabled just about everything on startup, which has dropped my boot times to less than 30 seconds.

an_alt

gneGne wrote: »

There's not much to tweak actually... aside from the Sidebar and the UAC.
Here's a guide that won't screw your computer up and explains some tweaks which are worth it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1999401&enterthread=y

Thanks muchly for that link. I just installed Vista on a new box and reading through that saved me a lot of trouble.

theSquid

If you want to go nuts, give vLite a go. Make a custom Vista install... did you know that Japanese support takes up about a gig? The most bloat Vista really seems to have is hard drive space, and vLite will solve that for you (and if you really want to go the extra mile and completely remove all of those extra helper programs)

Other than that, a dose of CCleaner every day, really.

LoneIgadzra

I would take an extra gig of characters over the XP "go to foreign page, look at squares" system any day.

smallmouth

Vista requires an adjustment in approach because it handles memory so much better than XP. Vista actually uses your computer's resources as much as it can to make things more efficient, so you don't have to babysit it nearly as much.

Black viper also has suggestions on optimizing Vista services. If you look at the *tweaked* column, it has a lot less services on auto by default that he suggests disabling than XP. Maybe two or three. In XP there's probably 20.

Note: I wouldn't disable Tablet PC Input Device service. Despite the description—if I remember correctly—it's needed for Vista's snipping tool.