Windows Vista Tweaks

Here are some tweaks to get you started. Feel free to submit more to me and to check back as well. Submit them on the forum or by email to me.

We also feature various other tweaks to speed up your system. I've run Vista on various hardware, and I do think that the reports of it requiring a super new computer are vastly overrated (except in the graphics card department, if you want Aero). The minimum system requirements only state 800mhz, which means most computers sold in the last 7 years. It may not be pretty, but it should run. Maybe right out of the box, it's a bit heavy, but hopefully with this site you can get it working smoothly and efficiently to suit your needs.

Performance

• Clean out unneeded Services quickly
• Find out what is Accessing your Hard Drive
• Speed up Aero with No Transparency
• Speed up Aero by Disabling Minimize/Maximize Animations
• Improve SATA Performance
• How to use ReadyBoost to uh Boost yourPerformance
• What do Various Areo Performance Settings do?

Screen

• Vista 2 screens background across multiple monitors

Data restoration/management

• System file checker

Indexing Service

• Tweak Indexing Options for Better Performance
• Allow other file extensions to be included in search

Drivers

• See/remove drivers installed for unused devices
• Driver Verifier

Boot settings

• Boot Configuration

Activation

• Extend activation time
• Non-Activated Accounts

Security

• Turn off security center
• Turn off defender
• Password Backup

Windows Experience Index

• Run winsat from commandline
• Fake WEI Score

Automatic Backups

• Turn off Automatic backups
• Change Backup Size

General

• run cmd always as administrator
• smaller icons as they are huge
• Speed up Shutdown speed
• 'Open with notepad' as menu item
• Turn off Thumbnails
• Change Owner of Computer