Performence Tips For Vista? (Support Tips)

[legacyfan]

I'm working on speeding up my vista install more (kind of like an early spring cleaning) and was wondering what the best methods to do this are (with out registry cleaners and removers) if anyone could help with this would be much appreciated 

Edited March 12, 2023 by legacyfan

[NotHereToPlayGames]

It's been a long time since I've used Vista but I do recall that the very VERY first thing I did after each and EVERY startup was to go into Task Manager and manually disable two (three?) Task Scheduler processes because I never hunted down a method to disable it permanently.

[mjd79]

In my opinion, you should buy an SSD or at least make RAID 0 of two HDDs (not very safe for data). Try to disable indexing and automatic defragmentation (and do it for the system drive, by the way) 

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Dug up my ancient Vista VirtualBox VM.

It runs the same config that I ran when I had Vista on one of my laptops (that laptop died and I opted to not bring it back to life due to it only having Vista [was never really a fan of Vista]).

My VM has two Task Scheduler processes that I kill on startup (this also disables "auto defrag" [I hate hate hate auto defrag!]).

My number of processes via Task Manager is 29.  But two of those are VirtualBox processes.  So my laptop would have been running 27.

The lower you can get your process count, the better!  (OT - my real-world XP only runs 14!)

[mjd79]

My Vista x64 has almost 100 processes at this moment and runs poorly on an overclocked Pentium E6600 CPU. I need to upgrade this computer to a Quad Q6600, which I also own.

Edited March 10, 2023 by mjd79

[legacyfan]

1 hour ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

It's been a long time since I've used Vista but I do recall that the very VERY first thing I did after each and EVERY startup was to go into Task Manager and manually disable two (three?) Task Scheduler processes because I never hunted down a method to disable it permanently.

do you have the list of what you turned off still?

[NotHereToPlayGames]

11 hours ago, mjd79 said:

My Vista x64 has almost 100 processes at this moment and runs poorly on an overclocked Pentium E6600 CPU. I need to upgrade this computer to a Quad Q6600, which I also own.

You don't need an upgrade!  You need to knock down "almost 100 processes" by MORE THAN HALF.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

10 hours ago, legacyfan said:

do you have the list of what you turned off still?

It's easier to go the other way.

You show us the full list of what processes you are running and MSFN Members can tell you which ones you do not need.

[Sergiaws]

I mainly dissable the Sidebar and use the classic theme. Of course I disable all kind of animations I can. Someone told me that my Vista computer look like Windows 98

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Disable "transparency".  Axe "aero".

[mjd79]

1 hour ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

You don't need an upgrade!  You need to knock down "almost 100 processes" by MORE THAN HALF.

Actually, you are right. Unfortunately today the cheap and crappy SSD with Vista decided to crash, so I will have to reinstall it on HDD

[Bella8Corey]

On 3/9/2023 at 12:05 AM, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Dug up my ancient Vista VirtualBox VM.

It runs the same config that I ran when I had Vista on one of my laptops (that laptop died and I opted to not bring it back to life due to it only having Vista [was never really a fan of Vista]).

My VM has two Task Scheduler processes that I kill on startup (this also disables "auto defrag" [I hate hate hate auto defrag!]). Here.

My number of processes via Task Manager is 29.  But two of those are VirtualBox processes.  So my laptop would have been running 27.

The lower you can get your process count, the better!  (OT - my real-world XP only runs 14!)

Everything needs to be tested first, disable unnecessary processes! And if that doesn't help, then you need to change the SSD!

Edited March 16, 2023 by Bella8Corey
Error

[Jody Thornton]

On 3/10/2023 at 7:29 AM, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Disable "transparency".  Axe "aero".

Unless he has a good GPU.  In such a case, the heavy lifting is shifted to the GPU, and not the CPU.

I was using Vista x64 Ultimate on an HP xw8200 (a dual Xeon system, based on Netburst P4),  I had 7 GB of DDR2 RAM in it, and my PCI-e slot was knackered, so I put in a nicely accelerated PCI dadapter.  Aero sang sweetly on that, and I had no issues with Vista.  This was especcailly the case with SP2 built in and the Platform update.

On an XP-era computer?  Sure disabe Aero.

[legacyfan]

thank you everyone for the usefully tips! I will have to use these the next time I install vista

[mjd79]

I see that you have changed to Windows 7. Good decision, because at the moment even XP x86 is already better than Vista x86 due to the existence of Open Core API.

Edited March 12, 2023 by mjd79