Performance Tweaks for Vista

Depending on whom you ask, people around the world are either excited to upgrade to the new Vista operating system or are painfully dreading the experience. If you are in the latter, perhaps it is because you are not happy with the performance results. If that is indeed the case, there is help available. Here are just a few simple tricks that just about anyone can use to improve the performance of Vista:

1. Use a flash drive. If you already have a few lying around the house, dust them off and plug them in. If you do not already have one, it may be a good time to go out and buy one. Using a flash drive will greatly help improve speed if you are a Vista user. Vista’s ReadyBoost feature allows you to connect a flash drive to improve system performance. In order to utilize this feature, simply plug in your flash drive and select the “speed up my system” feature from the AutoPlay menu. This will launch ReadyBoost, and you will notice a significant improvement.
2. Make sure you enable advanced write caching features on your computer. Vista has capabilities to support serial ATA drives, but you need to make sure you change the default setting in order to maximize your performance. To change the write caching features, go to the Device Manager, open the disk drives section and right click on the hard drive. After selecting the policies tab, click on the “enable advanced performance option”, and you are all set.
3. Make sure you defragment your machine when necessary. Many people mistakenly think that they will no longer need to defragment when they upgrade to Vista, but this is simply not the case. Defragmenting is important if you want to extend the life of your machine, conserve memory and improve system performance. Vista is automatically configured to defragment once a month, but it is better if you do this manually. First, you will need to open the disk defragmenter and turn off the automatic feature. Then make it a point to manually defragment your disk once a month.
4. Keep your drivers current. Make it a habit to keep your drivers for all of your hardware current, and check for updates regularly. Having updated drivers not only will enhance your system performance, but it will also enable more features for your hardware.
5. Get rid of programs that you don’t need. This may sound overly obvious, but Vista users who are experiencing performance problems may not even realize how clogged their memory is. The reason for this is that when you upgrade, Vista will quickly analyze your computing habits based on the programs that are already in use and will automatically install companion programs that most people do not need. This is especially true for people who use their computers for gaming and storing music files. After you upgrade, go to the add or remove programs section and carefully examine each item on the list. If you see something that you don’t need or don’t use, get rid of it.