Windows Vista Tweaks/Performance FAQ Thread *LONG*

[ChronoReverse]

Props for the OP post. One of the few guides out there that actually has legitimate information.

Incidentally, try out InfraRecorder for CD and DVD burning. It opensourced and seems to work under Vista.




I've also noticed a couple of things. First is the System Restore. Besides the obvious part about leaving it on, it might be worth mentioning that on a Laptop, you may want to consider modifying the schedule in Task Scheduler for it.

By default, SR will run at 12AM every day (which is good). It will also run after 15 minutes of idle whenever you boot your system (not always good). I've kept the first part and disabled the second part while giving the task the ability to wake the machine from Sleep to run SR on my Laptop but not my desktop.


It is also worth mentioning how to disable the Auto-tuning for the network. While not recommended for the general case, there are edge-cases where it causes severe network access issues.


Another thing to note is that the transparency part of Aero Glass consumes more memory and uses more power. It is a (small) benefit to turn off just transparencies for a notebook computer.


OpenGL is fully supported under Vista to the point that it can operate within a Aero Glass window. The quality (or lack thereof) is completely dependent on the quality of the vendor's OGL driver.

 

[chrysalis]

for the auto tuning I went to speedguide.net and with auto tuning enabled my tcp rwin windows was NOT a multiple of mss this is bad, when I disabled it then WAS a multiple of mss which is good. The rwin value when disabled was 64240 which is the most optimal setting without tcp1323 on mtu 1500 better than XP default.

What I havent been able to find out is if the auto tuning is disabled do the old registry keys work for tuning the value.

 

[jonmcc33]

Shouldn't you delete this thread because according to some people Vista is flawless and doesn't need any tweaking or performance improvements?

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
Shouldn't you delete this thread because according to some people Vista is flawless and doesn't need any tweaking or performance improvements?

The first rule of tweaking: you are not smarter than the people that designed the software. Thats why the vast majority of those stupid tweak programs do more harm than good. If there was a setting that was better than the default for most users, than it would actually be the default instead.

There is room for customization to suit your own needs and to strip away those things that are useless to you, but if you think you know something about windows that the windows engineers don't, you're delusional.

There is nothing in this thread of that sort, merely pointing out where one can strip away stuff that they might not need, etc.

 

[Mem]

I always think its a good idea to keep DX9.0c updated even in Vista,remember it gets updated often and some games like to have latest version installed.

You can get the latest version from here .

System Requirements

* Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 2000 Advanced Server; Windows 2000 Professional Edition ; Windows 2000 Server; Windows 2000 Service Pack 2; Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows 98; Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1; Windows Server 2003, Datacenter x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows Small Business Server 2003 ; Windows Vista; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Business N; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Home Basic; Windows Vista Home Basic 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Home Basic N; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Starter; Windows Vista Starter N; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition; Windows XP; Windows XP 64-bit; Windows XP Home Edition ; Windows XP Home Edition N; Windows XP Media Center Edition; Windows XP Professional Edition ; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition ; Windows XP Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows XP Starter Edition; Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

 

[QuixoticOne]

Four things that were problems for my latest Vista install nightmare:

1) I had two drives, one with LINUX, one with blank NTFS partitions all ready for
a VISTA install onto that 2nd drive. The installer gave a generic (and inaccurate)
error about not being able to find any suitable partition to install Vista on and REFUSED
to put it on the blank NTFS partition. Even reformatting the install target partition didn't
help. SOLUTION: I had to mark the install target partition ACTIVE (gee couldn't
the installer do that??) AND change the *BIOS default boot order of the drives* to
make the Vista-install-target drive "come first". There's no GOOD reason for the latter
bit since I'd intented to just use the LINUX boot loader to switch between OSs
or use the BIOS "F8 for boot selection popup" option to select the actual boot drive
dynamically.

2) Despite coming with several DVD authoring utilities BUILT IN, and the capability
to burn DVDs/CDs of files, videos, music tracks in Vista Home Premium / Ultimate,
apparently there's NO FSCKING WAY TO BURN AN ISO IMAGE TO CD/DVD!
So yes though I can make a home video and author it to DVD/CD I apparently
can't do the even simpler process of just burning an ISO image without some
3rd party tool in their 2008 flagship OS. Way to go microsoft, real progress,
there's an official free CD burning add in for XP, but Vista, Nooooooo.
Solution: use a 3rd party ISO image burner / mounter / whatever; thank
GNU for LINUX!

3) I installed the current SP1 release candidate successfully. Then I was trying
to manually install subsequent security patches that were NOT (per the SP1 documentation)
included in SP1 to get the system fully up to date in its patches. The manual patch
installations for every one of the December 2007 and January 2008 security patches
fail with the error:
"The update does not apply to your system"
...I have no idea if SP1-RC broke it, or if Vista is just broken, but this is a show-stopper
for people trying to manually apply patches. I didn't try Windows Update, I just
downloaded all the updates to install at once.
I'm not sure if there's a tweak to fix it, but it's a HUGE performance / security
problem that people will have to work-around somehow.

December 2007 Security Releases ISO Image
http://www.microsoft.com/downl...3590F96&displaylang=en

January 2008 Security Releases ISO Image
http://www.microsoft.com/downl...53cece2&DisplayLang=en

These are listed as updates that should apply to Vista x64 and which ARE NOT in the
list of what's "inside" SP1-RC:

KB942624 / (MS07-063)
KB941568 / (MS07-064)
KB943078 / (MS07-066)
KB941569 / (MS07-068)
KB942615 / (MS07-069)
KB941644 / (MS08-001)


4) I seem to have a problem where Vista can put the computer to sleep OK
but the USB keyboard / mouse (going through external USB hubs) doesn't work
to resume once I've unplugged them temporarily from the Vista PC. I guess maybe
it isn't reinitializing the USB hub or something when it's "sleeping". It needs some
"tweak" to fix somehow; I'm not sure if VISTA or BIOS or the HUBs could help /
change that situation at all. Seems like I've had this work better in the past,
probably under LINUX, but it's not something I did a lot and I'm fuzzy on the details.
A quick tap to the soft-power-button on the PC case helps it wake up though
at least the way I have my power management stuff configured on my system.

 

[Andvari]

I just found this thread, since I just installed Vista 64. I haven't read much yet, but I wanted to say thank goodness for number 2. Disk Grinding. I had my itchy trigger finger ready to disable superfetch, indexing, and all that stuff.

But if you say it's not such a bad thing in Vista, I'll take your word for it for now. At least util I read the rest of this thread. >=)

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Andvari
I just found this thread, since I just installed Vista 64. I haven't read much yet, but I wanted to say thank goodness for number 2. Disk Grinding. I had my itchy trigger finger ready to disable superfetch, indexing, and all that stuff.

But if you say it's not such a bad thing in Vista, I'll take your word for it for now. At least util I read the rest of this thread. >=)

Trust me on this one. Pay no mind to the grinding, or else the placebo effect will get you.

Of all the grindaholic services, I'd never disable superfetch or the auto defrag.

You could make a case for the indexer (just set it not to scan any folders) if you dont think you'll ever need that functionality, but you'll rarely hear the indexer kick in while you're using it.

System restore, on the other hand, is the prime culprit for grinding while you're using the PC, and I personally don't find the feature all too useful given that I have my own backup system. Disable that, and the grinding for no apparent reason will be cut to a minimum. I didnt find it to have any real performance drag while SR was shadow copying (even while gaming), but it was so rhythmic and went on for minutes at a time that the sound alone just annoyed the hell out of me.

 

[Andvari]

Yeah I just finished reading your whole first post. Useful stuff in there, nice job.

And you're right. I turned off indexing, as I read your comments on it, I realized I would never use it. I never have. I do a search about once a year I think, and you mentioned you would only want to search for your documents and media files etc. I'm a bit OCD, so I spend lots of time keeping all that organized in the first place. I know where it all is without searching. =)

As for System Restore, yeah I turned that off mainly to get back the up-to-15% of the disk space it was using. I've never once used it in XP anyway. I typically know what I'm doing, and in the off chance that I don't, I reformat heh. I'm getting an external HDD soon though, and I might look into some good imaging software like Acronis to make an image or something. Then I wouldn't need SR anyway.

I kept Superfetch on.

The most useful thing, for me, was your info about hibernation and standby. Some Windows users probably already knew that stuff, but I never used either of those features. As I just built a new whopper of a PC, I should possibly start considering such power-bill lowering features like standby. =p

 

[JustaGeek]

The best FREE Search utility working in XP and Vista 32 and 64 is Agent Ransack.

It will scan the entire drive searching for files in seconds, and searching for a word within a file in several minutes. And it does not require indexing, which I have turned off.

You will never need any other Search Utility with faster engine.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
The best FREE Search utility working in XP and Vista 32 and 64 is Agent Ransack.

It will scan the entire drive searching for files in seconds, and searching for a word within a file in several minutes. And it does not require indexing, which I have turned off.

You will never need any other Search Utility with faster engine.

Well, if you're actually searching for words in a file, you might want to consider turning indexing on.

 

[imported_MadHatter]

Is it possible to create a shortcut that executes sleep, rather than hibernate? All scripts that I've seen around the internet use powrprof.dll or shutdown.exe. Both cause my system to hibernate, rather than sleep.

 

[BD2003]

You can always hit the sleep button on your keyboard. If yours is ancient like mine and doesnt have one, the combination [Start, Right, Enter] will do the trick.

If you're building this into some sort of script or MUST double click an icon, build the command "%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState" into a shortcut.

 

[JustaGeek]

I think this thread belongs on top of the OS section...

 

[Andvari]

This used to be stickied, didn't it?