Now I’m not advocating that as a gamer you should run vista, as the last few updates have been awful. But there are a few things you can do if you are lumbered with this beast. There are a few little things you can do to make Vista feel a lot faster.

Turn of “Network Auto Tuning”
In a command window run this command as an administrator.

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
or
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted

Turn off “Super Fetch”;
Run “services.msc” as an administrator and turn off the service SuperFetch, set it to manual. Also turn of any other obvious ones like “tablet pc” processes when you are on a desktop pc.

Turn off UAC
Because frankly unless you’re stupid and accept every file that is ever sent to you without virus scanning it first, then you will never need it (Talking of virus scanning clamav rocks!!). And here is a thought, will it stop you from installing that file anyway? Surely once you have made the choice to click “install” or “extract and run” the irritation that is UAC wont stop you getting mashed by Mr Virus.

So run msconfig as administrator and then go to the tools option and then run the “Disable UAC” tool (it’s a script). Your pain wont end there, Vista will now tell you over and over again that UAC is off!! So you now have to click on the little shield in the security center (you wont miss it, it shouts) and select the option to change the way windows notifies me! And TURN IT OFF!

Turn off “Aero Desktop”
…If it doesn’t float your boat. I like it so I left it in but if the memory usage drives you nuts click ‘Start >Control Panel, then click Appearance > Personalization’, and then pick and choose what you like

Power options
Vista wants to be all green and save you money but it instead makes your computer run slow when you use it, and sleep when you don’t. Sleep is like putting the TV on standby… that’s green!?! If you want the most out of your machine set your power profile as such… ‘Click Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Power Options’. Choose ‘High performance’ and then tweak all the little things like what your windows power button does under ‘Change plan settings’. Now you should be running full throttle while your machine is on and then when its off its off!

Also another little tip is to make sure the graphics drivers and sound drivers are up-to-date. Most manufacturers will release new versions every month or so.

There are many other little things you can do if you have a spare USB stick, let it be used by ReadyBoost unless it has some really important secret stuff on it *COUGH* Naked Ladies!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 23:21 and is filed under Technical Woffle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.