I have always thought of Windows Vista as a heavily encumbered operating system, in much the same way as I did about Windows XP when it first came out.  However in the same way I found XP a reliable, well built operating system I found myself with a new laptop and Windows Vista already installed.  Needless to say I was impressed with it’s functionality, reliability and easy of use.  It does come with some problems however, just to start with Windows Vista visual effects use up 15% of the CPU usage.

This reason alone was enough to start me looking in to ways of speeding up Windows Vista, and this is how I compiled 5 easy to implement ways to increase the speed of Windows Vista, and massively improve the performance of Windows Vista.

1) Increase the Speed of Vista by Altering the Visuals.

One of the greatest problems with Vista itself is the visuals.  As nice as the visuals on Vista are they do use up a huge amount of memory and CPU power.  Depending on how intensive your laptop or PC usage is this could give you a valuable boost in power.  This boost helps give you an awesome increase in power, especially for people who play the latest games or use their computer for graphic design or the like.

You can easily remove the graphics in Vista which slow it down so much by following these simple steps, remember that the more you disable the faster Vista will run, but the worse it will look.

Go to start, and in the run box type ‘’systempropertiesperformance’’

From here you can choose from several different options, if you click the ‘Best Performance’ option you will see a huge increase in power, however your windows will once again look like teh old windows 2000 in style.

If you do not want Vista to look quite this simple then you can customise just how much is disabled in the name of performance.  It may be for some that leaving the check box ‘Use Visual Styles on Windows and Buttons’  This leaves you with the Vista feel, but by leaving the other things unchecked you will find your computers speed greatly increased.

2) Disable Windows Defender to Speed Up Windows Vista

Windows Defender is a useful enough application, however its functions are not only duplicated but improved by nearly all Anti Virus utilities.  These will also slow down your computer, but it is pretty essential.  the best advice I can give is for you to get a decent Anti-Virus program and then disable Windows Defender as soon as you can.

3) Disable Windows Vista Sidebar to Speed Up Vista

Some may like the Windows Vista Sidebar, if however you are willing to remove the Vista theme to speed up your PC then removing Vista’s sidebar is a bit of a no-brainer.  It is resource intensive, especially wen compared to alternatives such as that provided by Google.   I would advise anyone who does not regularly use the Windows Vista Sidebar to disable it to do so, or use Google;s sidebar as a more suitable alternative.

4) Tweak the Resource Intensive Programs to Speed up Vista

Believe it or not but Microsoft’s latest attempt at Windows Vista is surprisingly effective at resource management.  What starts to reduce your computers performance is more than likely to do with third party applications, for the most part this will be virus scanners and so on, but you would be surprised how little programs, such as printer applications and music players can affect your computers performance.

Uninstalling resource intensive programs, or disabling their auto start (type in MSCONFIG in the run box in the start menu to disable these).  By disabling these you may find your computers speed increasing by huge amounts.

5) Customise Your Indexing to Speed up Vista

Vista has a fantastic inbuilt indexing system to speed up searching.  This can however be pretty resource intensive.  You can speed up Vista by altering what Windows Vista Indexes.

You can alter the indexing options of windows by going to teh start menu and typing in ‘indexing’ in teh run box.

From here you can go through the following options,

When you have gone past this you can choose whether windows indexes the file, the file and contents or ignores the file type completely!

by unchecking several file types you can greatly increase the speed in which vista operates, especially if you regularly transfer lots of files around your PC

So if you want to follow these simple steps to speed up windows vista you could see a huge vista performance increase to your computer.  All these changes can be made in a few minutes, or a few hours if you are reducing vista to the bare minimum, either way you will see a huge increase in the performance of Vista!