Are Vista tweaks really necessary?

Hi there!

Believe it or not but this is the first week I`ve ever been using Vista due to absence of drivers for XP of my new laptop
However, I`ve got that Vista performs quite differently in terms of performance (at least Microsoft claims so). XP`s performance can be improved by terminating unnecessary services, disabling sys restore etc. (just like described in XP guides found all over the place). Yet, that isn`t supposed to be the case with Vista, cause it should improve the performance gradually without disabling its features. So which approach is the right one - old-school cutoff or to let the system manage?

 

In Vista I don't really notice any difference by disabling any services or anything, since I don't install a lot of junk either.

 

ive tried some of the tweaks listed in the NBR Vista Tweaks n Tips thread and they have had an improvement over the general speed and responsivness but my hardware is slightly old tech now a modern laptop should be ok without tweaking......

 

It isn't "necessary" but I've performed many tweaks and my pc boots up a lot faster and is more responsive as opposed to before I tweaked it.

 

My only (consistent) tweaks are:
. cleaning up startup processes and services (3rd party mostly)
. disabling the hard disk indexing

cheers ...

 

Are you 100% sure it`s because of tweaking? Or it`s because Vista time by time has adjusted its performance to fit your everyday needs? I`m asking it because I do not understand yet the principles Vista is performing, but I doubt one of them is "the more you trim, the faster it will be" Maybe there are some services or other features that are not recommended to modify if you want your OS to run properly........

 

yep -

cheers ...

 

The only "Vista tweak" necessary is disabling indexing (Windows Search). You can go a step further and disable certain Windows services that you may rarely use (TMM, Media Center, Update, etc.), but the gains are minimal at best. You're better off leaving them on for system stability.

As qhn has already pointed out, it's the 3rd party services that generally require tweaking a.k.a. killing their installed background processes. Itunes and Nero for example, are notorious for installing 4-5 background processes, most of which are unnecessary for the main program to function.

Lastly is maintenance. Not a tweak, but properly cleaning, defragging, and generally maintaining your systems integrity using security software, scanners, and cleaners is a golden rule to follow.

 

I do not recommend disabling Windows Search Indexing. I do recommend scaling back what is indexed. There is no reason to index your entire HD.

The biggest bang for the buck is actually in cleaning up the STARTUP list.

A close second would be cleanup of the Task Scheduler.

Installed programs is third.

A distant fourth is Services.

 

+1.

and disabling the Windows Customer Experience metric -- you can opt out of it when you are setting up Vista, but this thing is still active under Task Scheduler.

other than that -- Vista is good and fast and stable as is. and whatever the prefetch dealio is going is working for me. programs load uber-fast.

 

I find myself keeping all of Vista's services running as-is. It's at a point (after SP1 that is) where it performs admirably. The one thing that is certain to cause a performance drop is the bloat-ware that often times comes with new machines. So I prefer to get rid of the unnecessary bloat-ware and after that all is well. Microsoft's default services and the system manufacturer's own stuff that are running are left intact.

 

My post was edited by Chaz. I've not seen any rule about linking to personal websites, certainly never enforced before. In any case, if you are so inclined, you can go, of your own free will and look at the Vista tweaks I have performed. If there is such a written rule, please do point me to it so that I might read it and not fall into bad graces again.

Oh, and I removed the links from my website that linked to notebookreview.com.

 

that seems a bit harsh :/
but anyway yeh i could not use vista without tweaking it (minimum disable indexing rubbish)... even on my powerful desktop, vista just lacks in performance even with sp1.... and i'm not a vista hater, i like it, i just dont like its lack luster performance.

 

looks like your powerful desktop isn't really powerful. it works great on both desktop and my lackluster notebook.

 

i have a minimal CPU and fairly low amount of RAM for Vista, so disabling some startup services, and setting alot of automatic services to manual helped bootup times and keeps programs out of the background. If you have a good amount of RAM, you shouldnt really need tweaks, but if you dont have alot of RAM to spare, tweaks can do WONDERS


ps, if you have Vista Basic, you'll find with some research that there are several "processes" that start automatically and run all the time in the background, that control services that Basic doesnt even have!