Sometimes dragging and dropping is just more fun. When you do this, usually the file usually gets copied or moved depending on the location of the file and its destination. What many don’t know is that you can toggle between copying and moving by pressing CTRL during the drag. Try it out!
There’s a multifold of ways to enhance the performance on a Windows Vista machine. Some expensive third party software promise more than they can make happen, so I wouldn’t bother too much about those. Many a time, Windows’ built-in toolkit can do the trick just fine. Throughout the posts that follow, I’ll discuss some easy, built-in methods to speed up Windows Vista.
(many of the procedures will require Administrator Privileges, a shield-icon will alert you of this)
Turn unnecessary Windows features off
Similar to Windows XP’s facility, Vista also has a ‘Add/Remove Windows Features’ dialog. Only now it’s accessible directly from the control panel. Note: This doesn’t actually remove the feature. It merely turns it off so it doesn’t sit in the background idling yet still consuming resources.
Things you might want to ditch:
Note: this dialog is a purged version of the Services-window, which I’ll discuss now. If you desire more control, skip this and read the next section.
Purge automatically starting services
Even though the number has gone down somewhat, there are still services starting up automatically in the background. The effect is a familiar one: long boot-up times. Fire up the Services-window by launching the Start-menu and typing ’services’ in the search-box.
The ‘Startup Type’-column defines how the service will act. There are 4 choices to make:
There’s an important distinction to make between Manual and Disabled. When you set a service to Manual, it will still be callable, though when you set it to Disabled it will unreachable by applications and will cause trouble. You should by no means disable one of the following services (for the obvious sake of dependency):
You can safely set the following services to Manual (or even Disabled):
You can safely go ahead and experiment and tailor the services dialog to your own preference and needs.
Clear out your try
Check your tray for crap. The more icons, the more crap. I beseech you, take a minute or five and liberate your PC from all this background-clutter. Also, when installing new software, make it a good habit of disabling tray icons. Windows Defender, which is included by default, handles this issue pretty well. It has a nice interface to manipulate which tray icons appear at boot-up. Flick through this list and eliminate all but the essentials.
Get to the Start-menu and type ‘defender’ to launch Windows Defender. Click the Tools-menu button and select the Software Explorer.
The pane on the far left side holds the startup-programs for the current user. Just select and tap the Disable button on the right to prevent it from initiating at boot-time. This will not remove the application. You needn’t be overly precarious when sifting through this list, though you may want to be cautious about disabling necessary apps (like device drivers or other system software). The right pane displays some interesting info which are worth looking at.
Blogged with Flock
As I was listening to Dvorak’s 5 minute rant this morning (Tech5 at PodShow) he mentioned this article. He stabbed the life out of it and he was right too. It’s an amusing read, certainly if you keep one word in the back of your mind: FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt — as quoted by Michael Horowitz); utter gibberish spread to lure people away from XP in order to sell more Vista copies. I’m not saying moving to Vista isn’t a good thing (I, for one haven’t seen too many bad things about it, not more than I’ve experienced with XP), but it’s obvious they’re pulling the whole thing out of context here, as an advertising stunt.
First of all, running an XP machine with SP1 deserves death penalty. Second: who the heck doesn’t run any form of security app on this kind of machine?! This is beyond me, really. Nonetheless, it’s worth a read, even if it’s just for the sake of a good laugh.
From ZDNET.com:
… Connected a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 to an unsecured wireless network. The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software …
“You can download attack tools from the Internet, and even script kiddies can use this one,” said Mick.
…
And blah blah blah. Funny. Ignorant.
From the Official Vista blog:
The non-security updates planned for release through Windows Update this week include:
- An update on system compatibility, reliability and stability: extends the battery life for mobile devices, improves stability of wireless network services, and shortens recovery time after Windows Vista experiences a period of inactivity, among other fixes.
- An update to USB core components: mainly affects systems returning from sleep or hibernation, fixing problems causing 1-2% of all crashes reported.
- An update to Windows Media Center: among other things, affects interaction issues occurring between Media Center PC and Microsoft Xbox 360 when Xbox 360 is used as a Media Center Extender.
The only (slightly) interesting one is the one that’ll improve reliability, especially on mobile devices. If only they come up with something that could kill start-up time a little. There’s nothing more enervating than taking seat in front of your PC and having to wait for a lifetime to get all services running. Many of us, of course, get up and prepare a cup of tea in the meantime, but nonetheless, this is one of the points that still improvement.