Help me love Vista until I go to 7

March 6, 2009 2:34 PM

Struggling with slow Windows notebook running Vista. (Downgrading to XP is not an option unless free). Please tell me if my strategy to keep Vista fast will work:

1. Partition disk into 3 or more partitions (X, Y and Z)

2. Install Vista and whatever other basic software I need in partition X, all data files (doc, xls, pdfs etc) on Y and the image of this fresh install on Z (and save a backup).

3. When it gets slow, reboot from Z, use data from Y and copy the image from backup to formatted X......then do the reverse when this set up slows down. This way I have a stand alone computer with all I need ever!

Did I go wrong somewhere? If so any ideas that work?

Any other tips of making and keeping vista fast will also be appreciated.

Thanks

PS: Not a question for debate on how good Apple is.

posted by london302 to computers & internet (19 comments total)

In some cases you do in fact have the right to downgrade to XP with the same Vista license. You actually have to find your own XP installation CD, though, but you could use someone else's.
posted by odinsdream at 2:45 PM on March 6

When I was hating Vista on my laptop, I switched to Ubuntu and never looked back.

It was easier than I expected. And it's shocking how streamlined and no-nonsense the OS is. If you are not using any Windows-specific applications, it's something you may want to consider (and it's free!)
posted by gnutron at 2:48 PM on March 6

From Microsoft: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning
posted by shinybeast at 2:52 PM on March 6 [2 favorites has favorites]

Popular Mechanics has a nice little article about speeding up your PC.

What are the specs of your notebook? I haven't done support in a long time but it seems like you're going through a lot of aggravation what with all the partitioning and I don't think you'll see much of an increase in speed for it. Especially since your notebook slows down over time, which to me indicates a resource leak somewhere rather than a disk access issue.
posted by txvtchick at 2:55 PM on March 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yes, cleaning up cruft will make it faster. NO, not much faster (and you'll inconveniently lose many settings).

You need to figure out where your bottlenecks are, and address those. Turn off Vista graphic effects, buy more memory, run Firefox 3 on a ram disk, turn off disk indexing and thumbnails.

Or, really, just install Ubuntu. Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) with KDE 3.5 is pretty XP-ish. Unless you're into Windows gaming, you'll find you have everything you need.
posted by orthogonality at 3:03 PM on March 6

Third vote for Ubuntu. It's easy, fast and good and I say that as no tecchie who has no particular views on MS. Does pretty much everything windows does for free. And the fact that you don't need anti-virus makes it even faster.

Everyone I work for uses windows and using Ubuntu has never presented any problems.
posted by rhymer at 3:13 PM on March 6

Thanks all for useful suggestions:

1. Ubuntu is not an option at this stage.

2. Computer is top end Toshiba (protege R500)with ~2ghz core 2 duo and 2GB ram so pushing hardware further may not work.

3. Use Firefox exclusively, did turn some services off and made a huge difference, this time i want to do it properly.
posted by london302 at 3:15 PM on March 6

Your approach is okay, and your system's specs indicate that Vista should run decently. But Vista thrives on a lot of RAM; upgrading your RAM to 3 or 4GB (or more) would really, really pay off. Note that going beyond 4 GB is useless on 32-bit Vista.

Everyone says they hate Vista because it's slow. I've got 8GB of RAM (I built my own desktop, and the cost of adding an extra 4GB was pretty low) and Vista runs beautifully. Personally, I'm very happy with it.
posted by Simon Barclay at 3:19 PM on March 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh, and you might want to turn off the Superfetch service.
posted by Simon Barclay at 3:21 PM on March 6

I googled my model with Ubuntu and this comes up and scares me as I am not very computer savvy....hence Ubuntu is not an options.


"....have tried many distros before finding the one that most satisfies my needs. I have tried Kubuntu Gutsy beta, Open SuSe 10.3 Beta, Fedora 7, Linux Mint 3.0 (I used this one on my U1F, but strangely, the installer crashed every time I tried to install Linux Mint on the R500...), Sabayon Linux 3.4e, PCLinuxOS2007...Each of these distros had something that I disliked, or didn't worked the way I wanted it to work. Sabayon was quite good, but it is Gentoo-based, and compiling from source is just tooooooooooo slow for my liking: I erased Sabayon when the install of Thunderbird took more than 30 minutes. Finally, I settled on Kubuntu Feisty 7.04 which does a good job at recognizing the hardware: the only things that do not work from scratch are the fingerprint reader, the outdoor button, and the SD card reader. I also have some issues with the brightness buttons that do work, but behave strangely"


PS: This guy finally cracked it it seems but I will need more time than I currently have
posted by london302 at 3:22 PM on March 6

I have a T61, which has similar specs, and Vista is snappy. Can you describe what you are seeing that's slow? Is it opening applications, opening files, UI stuff, skipping music files, or something else?
posted by ellF at 4:17 PM on March 6

This is overkill. Ive had windows installations run for 7+ years with heavy use. They dont just "get slow" and need a reinstall. Software doesnt age, hardware does. If anything, typical users just keep install cruft and garbage apps and are shocked that a machine with 30 items in the startup and 2 malware scanners might be getting a little pokey in old age.

This is how you keep an windows install running forever:

1. Do not run as administrator. Run as user. This will save you from pretty much any malware.

2. Do updates.

3. Clean out temp files periodically and do a defrag. Use the built in defragger or something nice like Diskeeper if you wish.

4. Periodically monitor your drive for errors. You can use the built in chkdsk or something free like HDTune. HDTune will also report SMART errors.

5. Once you have your computer set up as you like then run msconfig and disable any startup programs or services you dont need. Uninstall anything you arent actively using. You should try to keep the software installed on there as lean as possible.

6. Always have 1gig of ram more than your typical usage.

7. Let the system manage the swap file. The engineers who developed it are smarter than you or any "windows experts" out there.

8. Investigate slow periods. Run task manager and see if any processes are taking 100% of the CPU.

9. Install the latest drivers from Toshiba.

Computer is top end Toshiba (protege R500)with ~2ghz core 2 duo and 2GB ram so pushing hardware further may not work.

Im running vista on a 4+ year old Dell laptop. Its not a speed demon but its 100% usable with no random slowdowns. Your machine is a monster compared to my vista machine. If its slow then you have some issue thats not typical of vista.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:17 PM on March 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

london302, there are ways to "downgrade" to XP for free, but even beyond the possible stocial stigma, there can be complications. For starters, you will probably have to change your BIOS to use NTFS instead of SATA.

Therefore, if you go this route, please consider installing XP on a second partition first, before overwriting the original Vista partition. Note that, while the BIOS is switched to NTFS, the Vista won't boot (and the XP won't boot on SATA); but the BIOS can be switched back & forth harmlessly.

After you're sure the XP partition is viable, you can remove the Vista partition, and get back to working with your computer, instead of on it.

EIP, if you want more support for the process.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:35 PM on March 6

london302: Computer is top end Toshiba (protege R500)with ~2ghz core 2 duo and 2GB ram...

That's not a slow old laptop; that's a perfectly fast laptop. I'm running just about the same specs on my HP, and Vista is quite snappy.

damn dirty ape's suggestions are quite good. Personally, when I'm trying to speed things up on somebody's computer, this is my process:

-Uninstall everything that can be installed later or isn't needed. This means a good twenty minutes sometimes in the Add/Remove Software bin on the Control Panel, but it's the most important part. damn dirty ape's right - it's almost certainly a ridiculous amount of useless stuff running in the background. Things like iTunes, for example, run all the time trying desperately to update themselves. Argh! Uninstall it all, and disable any remaining auto-updating things that you can.

-Download the awesome Process Explorer and use it to see just what the hell is using up all of your RAM. It's quite awesome - it can also help identify malicious SVC files, which I find awesome. At the very least, you'll be able to say to yourself, "hey, how come smellmyarmpits.exe is using 1.5G of active memory? What the hell?" - and you'll be able to find and delete the offenders.

-Download and use SpyBot S&D - my favorite of the malware killers out there, although there are obviously others.

-Reinstall necessary programs and restart to see if malicious or useless programs running in the background just come right back and need to be hacked harder.

-Edit Registry, tweak Services, and whatever else, but the above is really the important bit.

That's just me, though - others may go different routes.
posted by koeselitz at 10:20 PM on March 6

Which antivirus app are you using?

I haven't used Norton 2009, but apparently it's been overhauled to increase performance. Previous versions of Norton / SAV had such drastic effects on performance that it seemed the cure was almost worse than the disease. AVG annoys me performance-wise, too. McAfee; fugettabout it. NOD32, now you're talkin'...

I currently use Sophos AV courtesy of my workplace license agreement, which seems pretty decent; my laptop shipped with a Microsoft OneCare trial which seemed to slow things down significantly. I went out of my way to disable the crappy "Windows Defender" anti-spyware app that Microsoft insists on shoving down your throat.

nthing more RAM. Also, I like the idea of installing a fast (class 6?) SD card and trying out the "ReadyBoost" feature, though my system seems to cruise along fine with 4GB of RAM, once I've gotten past the initial hurdle of booting. With my new laptop (and first foray into Vista) I'm still in the habit of shutting down or using hibernate instead of the quicker-to-resume "Sleep" feature (a more reliable [ideally] version of "Standby"). I've just started breaking this habit as of today and I'm feeling better.

Also, I reverted to the "Windows Standard Theme" and noticed a massive increase in performance. My new, supposedly rather "loaded" laptop struggled with Counterstrike Source at 1024x768 until I did this.
posted by aydeejones at 10:29 PM on March 6

Oh, and you might want to turn off the Superfetch service.

No, you absolutely do not. In fact, following this suggestion will make things worse.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:08 PM on March 8

Provided you have ample RAM (which means 2 Gb or more).

Also (sorry), performance increases from Readyboost are really only noticeable when you are on the very low end of the useable total RAM range.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:12 PM on March 8

london302, there are ways to "downgrade" to XP for free, but even beyond the possible stocial stigma, there can be complications. For starters, you will probably have to change your BIOS to use NTFS instead of SATA.

This makes no sense. Do you mean ATA instead of AHCI? NTFS is a file system, which the BIOS is not involved with.
posted by odinsdream at 10:44 AM on March 9

Sounds like thats what he meant. Even then if the XP disc is SP2 then it probably has the SATA drivers you need. Ive used the stock XPSP2 disc on several different models of computers and havent had any problem with SATA yet.

Its SP1 and pre SP1 that dont.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:48 AM on March 9