Speeding up Vista

I was wondering if anyone can recommend some good guides to just simple basic things that make vista run faster. If anyone knows easy simple guides or can just tell me some basic default things I would greatly appretiate it.

If this helps I have an Acer laptop with amd athlon 64 x2 running at 1.7 ghx. I just upgraded the ram from 1 gig to 4 gigs which has made lightyears in changes to the overall performance of it. Now I just want to know some good Vista tips. Thanks

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Noob

For starters, get rid of unnecessary startup services and start programs.

I'm not sure if Acer packs those annoying preloaded demo's and all that garbage that PC laptops are usually loaded with, but if they have that...then get rid of those too.

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Spike

I usually reformat my computer if I order from a company that preloads software. Typically, the freebies are fine with me and some of the things that they load on there are thing you don't even need.

As spike said, use MSConfig to disable unwanted start up programs. This will decrease the downtime it takes to load and unload the operating system significantly.

I use CCleaner to clean out trash in my computer (Crap Cleaner) and to delete/fix unneeded entrys in my registry. The program itself is very light weight and easy to use.

Finally, make sure to defrag after installing a game or any big application. At the very least, defrag once every month or two.

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Temp signature

Disabling the Windows Sidebar will speed things up some too.

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Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network

You can also turn the theme back to Windows Classic and disable all the animation-thats been a huge boost for me.

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But thats all that vista has!! Without its eye candy, it has nothing!

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Spike

Yeh I was going to suggest disabling the Areo theme... but Spike does have a point...

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Unfortunately, that pretty much gets right to the point.

I really want to like Vista. I even bought Vista Ultimate from my university for $29 because I wanted it. It's the Ultimate edition for less than thirty bucks. I couldn't pass it up. I want to use it, and I want to like it. I just like how it works. My laptop came with Vista Home Premium, and I found it more intuitive than XP. I liked being asked every 5 seconds if I was willing to let this and that process run. I wish I had that option with XP, I'd have avoided some virus infections in the past. I like how when you create a folder, it automatically takes you in it. It's the little bells and whistles. I like the awesome default skin. I like how it looks and feels.

But I hate the speed. It's just fine the first two days. Maybe even a week. A month later, it takes 3-5 minutes to power off. This is unacceptable - to be sitting there for minutes like a fool after lecture, just waiting for your laptop to power down. Or how it would not recover from sleep mode, and required a hard reset to get functioning again. Or how Word takes twice as long to start as it does on XP. Or how copying 2 gigs of data from one hard drive partition to another takes over 19 hours. And why does it keep hammering my hard drive even when nothing's being used? The laptop was constantly running so hot I couldn't touch some parts of it.

But it sure is pretty. It's young, it's sexy. It's got the goods and it ain't afraid to show 'em. But it keeps me from getting stuff done (and with computers, that's a bad thing.)

I have high hopes for SP1, but I hear they're trying to get Vienna out in 2009. I don't think that's going to happen, but if there is even a lick of truth to it then perhaps Microsoft itself has given up on Vista. I remember reading somewhere about how the devs said that SP1 is going to be pretty much all they can do to speed it up. So, I have high hopes for it. I want to stick that Ultimate disc in one day and not have to regret that call two weeks later.

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Hello, World!

Sorry to bring up such an old thread but how do I do this?

Also how do I disable the Areo theme? Although I dont really think I need to do this as my I think my laptop can handle it with an AMD Athlong 64 x2 1.7ghz and 4GB of ram(Although Windows currently only reads it at 2.25?)

Also is 58 processes running in the background a lot? I have disabled most programs that start up in msconfig. I also want to get rid of a lot of the programs that come with it but am confused as to which ones are programs I need from windows and which ones i dont need at all. I dont want to uninstall something and then not have my computer work properly.

The main reason I am trying to get the best performance out of my computer is I was trying to play World of Warcraft on it after my friend gave me an account and it was lagging at the main menu of the game.

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Noob

If you do figure out what is causing this let me know. I have an Acer too with specs that rival my desktop but I lag when playing WoW on my laptop (wired or wireless connection doesn't matter) and my desktop plays it fine.

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