I know a lot of people around here think its a waste of time to tweak services now our pcs are so fast anyway but I'm still interested in seeing what the recommendations are even if I don't end up using any of them. Anyone have a link to a really good service tweak guide, perhaps one that explains exactly what a lot of the services do? I read through some when Vista first came out but only ended up disabling some things that were obvious like the Tablet pc service. Thanks.
best Vista service tweak guide
- Thread starter j0j081
- Start date
Out of all of the services, the only ones I'd recommend disabling is tablet PC (if you dont have one), offline files (if you dont use it), and windows search (if you RARELY search). Tweaking anything else is a waste of time, and you are going to cause more harm in good. I know thats what you dont want to hear, but theres really *nothing* to gain by disabling any other services (ESPECIALLY with 4gb ram).
There are plenty of nearly undocumented things some of these services do. Readyboost is a good example. You might think "hey, I never use a USB stick for readyboost, so I should disable it." But then youre also defeating readyBOOT, which speeds up your boot time and has nothing to do with USB sticks.
There are plenty of other things you might want to consider disabling for performance reasons if you dont use them (sys restore, defender, etc), but theyre not going to be found in services. Tweaking services is way misunderstood and overrated.
If you're concerned about performance/memory usage, you should be concerned with what programs you load, not services.
There are plenty of nearly undocumented things some of these services do. Readyboost is a good example. You might think "hey, I never use a USB stick for readyboost, so I should disable it." But then youre also defeating readyBOOT, which speeds up your boot time and has nothing to do with USB sticks.
There are plenty of other things you might want to consider disabling for performance reasons if you dont use them (sys restore, defender, etc), but theyre not going to be found in services. Tweaking services is way misunderstood and overrated.
If you're concerned about performance/memory usage, you should be concerned with what programs you load, not services.
Here is the best and most informative "tweaking guide" available on the web.
The TweakGuides Tweaking Companion by Koroush Ghazi
This guide is built upon actual knowledge of how Windows works and explains in detail what each component of Windows does and how and why it works before making suggestions on what to tweak. The Vista guide in particular does not carry over the suggested tweaks from XP for the sake of just tweaking like many other guides and sites. Instead the author has actually researched the changes in Vista and then built the guide according the specefic needs of the Vista user.
The services section of the guide does an excellent job of explaining each service and lets the end user make the decision if they need a particular service from an informed perspective. The only services that are recommended to be turned off in this guide are potential security exploits like Remote Registry.
The TweakGuides Tweaking Companion by Koroush Ghazi
This guide is built upon actual knowledge of how Windows works and explains in detail what each component of Windows does and how and why it works before making suggestions on what to tweak. The Vista guide in particular does not carry over the suggested tweaks from XP for the sake of just tweaking like many other guides and sites. Instead the author has actually researched the changes in Vista and then built the guide according the specefic needs of the Vista user.
The services section of the guide does an excellent job of explaining each service and lets the end user make the decision if they need a particular service from an informed perspective. The only services that are recommended to be turned off in this guide are potential security exploits like Remote Registry.
My problem with those tweak guides and sites is that while some might go to decent lengths to actually describe what youre turning on or off, virtually none of them give you any sort of idea as to how much memory you'll save or how much "faster" your computer will be.
Its not that I'm against tweaking...I've written my own guide that was once stickied here, and I do quite a bit of it for my older, weaker laptop, but its generally not worth the time or effort.
If you were to read either of the posted guides, you'd spend probably 1000x more time reading them than time you'd actually save from the faster PC. God forbid you run into some issues, you'll spend even more time trying to figure out wtf you did that caused the issue. Dont get me wrong, I love to tinker too, but if youre doing this in the name of actual performance, you're going to be disappointed...or worse.
Just make sure you backup (a real backup, not sys restore) before you start toying with it.
Its not that I'm against tweaking...I've written my own guide that was once stickied here, and I do quite a bit of it for my older, weaker laptop, but its generally not worth the time or effort.
If you were to read either of the posted guides, you'd spend probably 1000x more time reading them than time you'd actually save from the faster PC. God forbid you run into some issues, you'll spend even more time trying to figure out wtf you did that caused the issue. Dont get me wrong, I love to tinker too, but if youre doing this in the name of actual performance, you're going to be disappointed...or worse.
Just make sure you backup (a real backup, not sys restore) before you start toying with it.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/
-I really like this site for vista tweaks ,it has some real hard core tweaks ,and downloads for per item tweaking instead of registry tweaking your self if you want.eg. by default vista only uses two download threads if you find that lacking you can download the tweak to give you 10 or follow the giude to do it your self.
-also has install checks such as #number of cores vista boots with,how much $ your cpu has that's been detected by vista ,shutdown\bootup tweaks
-eg. by default vista does a restore everytime you boot and at 12:00 and everytime you install\uninstall a program by default and up to 15% of the drive space can be used so a 300 gig drive = 45 gigs in restores ,it can show you how to adjust that .
-BUT most of all it has close to instant reponse if you have a problem by a mod. most times-
-most guys here will know most of the tweaks ,but when I started with vista this site connected a lot of dots for me
This is the kind of nonsense I'm talking about.
Vista by default uses 2 download threads? wtf? That doesnt even make any sense.
You really think microsoft went through the trouble of spending millions (prob billions) of dollars on R&D, and forgot to enable the check for number of cores and left it up for random internet forums to find out the registry hack to enable it? What, did you think the benchmark that runs at the first boot was just for show or something?
I just dont understand the train of logic that leads people to believe that a company with thousands of people who do this for a living, and have developed arguably the most complex piece of software in the world, know less what theyre doing than a bunch of "tweakers" on the internet.
I'm not saying that Vista isnt a bit more bloated than it could have been, but if you want more performance, you need better hardware, period. I've been through this stuff and back, and it is not worth the effort or time.
Mem
Lifer
- Apr 23, 2000
- 21,476
- 13
- 81
Best Vista service tweak is really to leave Vista alone,only one or maybe two things you can try,first is Windows Defender real time scan which I've disabled and set it to scan once a week(no real need to have it on all the time),another thing you can do if you don't use search indexing then you can disable that too.
-"You really think microsoft went through the trouble of spending millions (prob billions)"
-these are the same people paying to provide the tweaks on that site ,so they are doing it why ? to fix something that is not broken.
-think what you want , but I know more about vista now than before reading the said waste of time Tutorials . Maybe your a expert , but I know I'am not. but I can tell when a system runs faster or not,
-and when my system go's to 60gigs with vista and two games only on it something was out of place.
-or the extra 30 second boot time because vista loads the wrong driver for my G15 USB keyboard and you have to reload vista's HID driver in device manager and every time you change USB ports. you can google that one it's a well known bug
-going from XP pro SP3 to vista sp1 64 I loss a thousand points in 3d06 and a .5 sec.loss in spi 1m. so I had that loss to make up and I did.
-I run a gaming computor not a file server or a media centre so I turn off everything I can unrelated to games and small work related programs. thats it , no pictures , no unneeded programs ,no looking for ET.
-so maybe what you are doing it doesn't matter , to me it does. drifferent stokes for drifferent folks.
Rhonda the Sly
Senior member
- Nov 22, 2007
- 818
- 4
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-also has install checks such as #number of cores vista boots with,how much $ your cpu has that's been detected by vista ,shutdown\bootup tweaksI've seen this increase boot times for people.
My system boot in around 28 seconds average*, you shouldn't need to tweak anything within Vista for a fast boot.
*Excluding BIOS while averaging my last 23 boots. With BIOS maybe another twelve seconds.
My system boot in around 28 seconds average*, you shouldn't need to tweak anything within Vista for a fast boot.
*Excluding BIOS while averaging my last 23 boots. With BIOS maybe another twelve seconds.
Like I said, there are certainly legitimate tweaks out there, usually involving disabling something large and visible such as aero or the indexer. There are just as many hoax tweaks that do more harm than good. Its very difficult if not impossible to tell between them.
Thats what I'm trying to get across - theres no free lunch here. You cant just download an optimizer program and click one button or change a few registry keys and voila, youre faster for free. Youre mostly on the right track - not installing unnecessary programs and not running things like defender or the indexer is certainly going to help. Disabling services and doing all of these silly registry tweaks wont do diddly.
Rhonda the Sly
Senior member
- Nov 22, 2007
- 818
- 4
- 76
QueBert
Lifer
- Jan 6, 2002
- 23,010
- 1,199
- 126
I disagree, some of the tweaks do make a difference in your systems performance. Throwing cash to upgrade to better hardware is fine. But even with that you can STILL get more performance with tweaks. So I spend a few hours one time to make my system boot fast and feel more responsive. It was worth it in my eyes.
There are problems with Vista, so your logic about "they have thousands of people doing this for a living..." I mean something as simple as xfering a file from my XP to my Vista box across a Network should just work. But, thanks to Vista it takes 10 times longer than it should. Maybe they need to hire thousands more programmers? Also I remember back in the days tweaking 98 and getting a nice jump in my internet speed, and hacking 98 to let explorer download more than 2 things at once (stupid limit)
well thanks for the tips everyone. I'll look through all those links but prob won't end up changing much like bd2003 suggested.
Tweakguides makes no promises on how much memory could be saved because reality is there are only a few real tweaks that actually save memory in Vista. If you take the time to read the entire guide, you will find that the majority of the tweaks are meant to fix many of the minor annoyances in Vista and some of the lame brained decisions on the UI that Microsoft made. The guide is also an excellent source for the less technical on how to better secure Vista, without taking a huge performance penalty.
Any guide that claims that they can save massive amounts of memory in Vista or make substandard hardware run like a quad core Intel system with a 4850 X2 is blowing smoke up people's asses.
Actually, going into msconfig and enabling Vista to use both processors during boot does shave a few seconds off boot time. On my system it is about 10 seconds, before readyboot builds a profile for faster boot times. After readyboot builds the profile the gap is closed by about five seconds.
It is not a lot faster to boot, but this one tweak does make a small difference.
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