I need to make vista less of a resource hog.

L

lizard_king420

New Member
I have read alot of posts/webpages about disableing services, turning off windows features, disabeling performance options, etc. I have done almost all of these things but need it even faster. My pc is pretty good but it has high demands on it so even though i have done these things i need it to be less of a resource hog.
My system is a Gateway - FX7020: Windows Vista Home Premium 32 - bit, 4 GB DDR2 Dualchannel, Hard Drive has: 339 GB Free, GeForce 8800GT, AMD Phenom 9600 (Quad-Core.) I think I mentioned everything but I really need to tone down windows some how. I am using the classic theme with no performance features, possibly one windows feature (from the menu accessed in the program and features area.) A solid color desktop, no desktop windows manager , no themes, some other services turned off. I have done a full Virus scan, Spyware scan, and had windows defender do its scan and all turned up clean.
 
Why do you have vista in the first place? And what is it that youre gonna do that requires alot of resources from your computer? Why not get XP?
 
Even if you can make it use less resources but I doubt you'll find any noticeable difference. I fail to see how a computer with those specs would be running Vista slowly by any means...

Downgrading to XP will see some ram regained, but I doubt there will be any performance gains. I find XP kind of tops out once you get to a certain spec.
 
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Vista is a roller coaster for me. Sometimes it goes super fast and sometimes it runs like ass. It boots fine, and runs at times very fast. While others it runs like it will always come in last. My games have crashed, my processes have stopped running, but don't worry because Microsoft is collecting the error codes they hash. To the hive, the log goes, where it stops or if it does any good, no one knows. Memory leak oh my! I quit my programs but my memory usage is still sky high! Must reboot now to get it back, whomever thinks this is stable must be smoking crack. Ah, rebooted what glory, my memory is back and my programs can now run, end of story? Wait, what is this? A hour later and to much amiss, my memory leak is back! Oh god, maybe I should start smoking that crack. Then perhaps I would not care, nor would I perceive, that my computer is running up to it's steez. With a quad core and 4 gigs of RAM, why is my computer running like it did with Windows XP Sam? Sam replied, that is because son, it is not a performance upgrade - it is just simply another way to get Microsoft Paid.



/semi inspired by Dr Seus
 
what is a registry defrag? the registry becomes fragmented? WTF?

I really hope that Windows 7 goes to config files and self contained apps, this registry crap is so out dated.
 
g25racer said:
It just dumps old registry files that are not needed anymore b/c the software was un-installed
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Ridiculous that their coding is so sloppy it leaves traces of itself even if after uninstalled.

You want my advice, use Vista for gaming for everything else use a Mac or Linux, and don't worry about that kind of stuff.
 
g25racer said:
^^^ I think we all already know your opinion
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I think you are using the wrong terminology. Defragging the registry would imply that it is fragmented, which means that the files are all over the hard disk in different areas.

I think you are talking about a registry cleaner that finds files that aren't linked to anything and gets rid of them.

I would hope the registry never got big enough to cause disk fragmentation.
 
tlarkin said:
Vista is a roller coaster for me. Sometimes it goes super fast and sometimes it runs like ass. It boots fine, and runs at times very fast. While others it runs like it will always come in last. My games have crashed, my processes have stopped running, but don't worry because Microsoft is collecting the error codes they hash. To the hive, the log goes, where it stops or if it does any good, no one knows. Memory leak oh my! I quit my programs but my memory usage is still sky high! Must reboot now to get it back, whomever thinks this is stable must be smoking crack. Ah, rebooted what glory, my memory is back and my programs can now run, end of story? Wait, what is this? A hour later and to much amiss, my memory leak is back! Oh god, maybe I should start smoking that crack. Then perhaps I would not care, nor would I perceive, that my computer is running up to it's steez. With a quad core and 4 gigs of RAM, why is my computer running like it did with Windows XP Sam? Sam replied, that is because son, it is not a performance upgrade - it is just simply another way to get Microsoft Paid.



/semi inspired by Dr Seus
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Ehh, I guess YMMV
 
Overall performance is not greater in Vista though. The upgrades are for better technology (feasibly) and not performance. I want to like Vista, I really do, but it reminds me so much of WindowsME.

I actually liked WindowsME for the first two weeks I was running it.
 
I'm curious as to what you mean by overall performance. I'm assuming, startup, and generally browsing in windows. I certainly find no lack of performance in this regard...I'm always puzzled when people bring this one up.

I've liked Vista for 2 years...I think if it pissed me off as much as ME did I would have noticed by now.
 
speedyink said:
I'm curious as to what you mean by overall performance. I'm assuming, startup, and generally browsing in windows. I certainly find no lack of performance in this regard...I'm always puzzled when people bring this one up.

I've liked Vista for 2 years...I think if it pissed me off as much as ME did I would have noticed by now.
Click to expand...

Well, for example last night I had some friends over. We wanted to pull up a video on youtube, so I launch firefox. Which takes a few seconds to launch, and then a few more. Not noticably faster than XP at all. Then when loading other web pages it loads super slow. I have 4 gigs of RAM and a 20mbit internet connection and can download torrents at over 1MB/s (that is mega bytes). So I know its not my network.

My G5, my Macbook Pro, and my 4 year old PC running XP runs just as fast if not faster.

I was playing the Left 4 Dead demo the other night and it crashed, and I noticed steam was taking up 3gigs of Memory. I had to reboot to clear it.

My machine idles at 1gig of RAM in use, which is fine if Vista actually took advantage of memory caching, but it doesn't; or if at least it does it doesn't do it very well. Programs like firefox should have needed library files preloaded in memory if I use it a lot, and I do, and I assuming that Vista does since it uses about 25% of my RAM when idle. The whole concept of the RAM caching is that RAM is very fast and readily accessed over virtual memory (hard drive) and unused RAM is a waste of RAM. Linux, Unix, and OS X all do this too. They will cache out things to unused RAM when you aren't using RAM to boost over all performance. Yet my 4 year old PC, running vista, heck I'll just list the specs

AMD 3400+
Asus A8se Mobo (I think thats the model)
2 Gi DDR 400 RAM
Ati 9800 Pro 256MB

That machine running XP surfs the web at the same or greater speed than my Vista box which has the following specs

Intel Q9550
Asus P5N
4Gi DDR 1033 Corsair RAM
Nvidia GTX 260
SATA 2 - 32MB Cache Samsung HDs

Now, if Vista was really taking advantage of the 64 bit memory addressing, the memory caching, and preloading needed instruction sets and library files that I needed to surf the web, it should run a whole lot faster.

It doesn't. It offers no overall performance increase period. What it does offer though is better gaming performance but only because I have lots better hardware. I think that if I loaded XP Pro SP3 on my new rig I am sure games would run the same on my system.

So what am I paying for when I upgrade to Vista? A new pretty interface? yes, that is a great feature and I like some of the interface changes in Vista. I think that intuitiveness of the interface is a great factor in an OS. Vista trumps XP on that for sure.

What I don't like about Vista is that it supports newer and greater technology but there is not performance increase to be had, and it requires a lot more hardware to run in the first place.

Major Linux distros get major overhauls every 6 months, so you won't see a huge performance increase from version to version because they are updated so frequently. Jump a whole series of versions and there is a noticeable difference. OS X, gets a major OS update around every 18 months or so. OS X 10.0 came out in likw 2000 to 2001ish and now in 2008 we are at 10.5.5. You still see performance increases, and my old Macs run Leopard pretty darn fast.

Now, with Windows it takes them years and years to release new versions. XP over 2000 was indeed a noticeable performance increase. The hardware requirements were a marginal increase compared from XP to Vista.

Overall, I feel that Vista has the potential to be faster than XP, but doesn't take advantage of its new technologies to make it worth the upgrade as of yet. Which means there is very little point into having it, unless you want DX10, which is what I wanted so I loaded Vista. I can't say now that it is worth it just for DX 10, because I don't feel that it is really that much greater.
 
Again, I guess YMMV. My laptop boots and performs faster than an XP machine with a Pentium D @ 2.8 and 3GB of ram. The XP machine is for torrents (legal in case anyone wants to get on my ass), but it gets cleaned almost bi-weekly. Torrents go the same speed (Upwards of 2.8MB/s on both machines). Internet browsing is about identical on both machines. Windows 7 however, is a god damn internet wizard. I'm blown away by internet performance on it.
 
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