Vista Tweaking and stuff Thread

[t0rek]

Well I made this thread, in order to discuss any possible tweaks and options, that works for improving Windows Vista performance. Please provide any resources and links (not illegal stuff of course), in order to provide that, and your experience so far, glitches, curious things and stuff. For example here's a little contribution:

- Disable Hibernation: a lot of you guys, including me, don't like the hibernation option or don't even use it at all. Well you can disable and save free some space in your HDD (the amount of RAM you have, 1,5 gb free for me). But unlike XP, hibernation is enabled by default, and the enable / unable option is not where it was before. Remember the crappy Disk Cleanup tool XP had? Well is back in XP, but now it has the option to delete the hibernation file, and that will disable hibernation. Useful

And here's a request:


Q: Are there Control Panel features that were available under Windows XP that are no longer available on Windows Vista?
A: There are some Windows XP features that will no longer be available on Windows Vista due to changes in the core operating system. These features are:

* Horizontal and Vertical desktop span multi-monitor modes (note: Dual View and Clone mode display options are still available)
* NVKeystone display correction
* Full screen video mirror
* Video zoom


http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_faq.html

I really need the fullscreen video mirror stuff. Any way to do it with Vista?

That's all for now, please contribute to this thread to make it bigger and useful for ET. Please don't flame if you don't like Vista, and mods please use watch for it.

That's all for now :)

[t0rek]

MORE STUFF

- Do you have an Windows.old folder that you can't delete normally weven with administrator rights? The Disk Cleanup utility has an option for deleting it safely.

---------------------------------
Program compatibilities:

7-Zip 4.42 = Works fine without troubles.

uTorrent 1.6.1 = Works fine without any troubles.

Alcohol 1.96.4719 = Works fine, needs administrator rights.

AVG Free 7.5.441 = Works fine without troubles.

Crap Cleaner 1.37.456 = Works VERY slowly, the regstry analysis is freezing, needs administrator rights.

Daemon Tools 4.08HE = Works fine without troubles

DFX 8 for Winamp = Works fine without troubles

ffdshow video decoder 09-30-06 = It works, however Aero is disabled when playing Matroska files (tried with a new beta version with the same results)

Firefox 2.0.0.1. = Works fine (you guys should know it already)

Free Download Manager 2.1 = Works fine, has monitoring problems with IE7, but works fine with Firefox.

Haali Media Splitter 1.6.338.23 = Works fine without troubles

Nero 7.7.5.1 = Works fine without any troubles.

Perfect Disk 8.0.50 = Works fine (don't use any version earlier than this ones, because it's supossed to cause some problems).

Quicktime Alternative 1.77= Works fine without troubles

Real Alternative 1.51 = Works, but disables Aero

Spybot S&D = Works fine without troubles, needs administration rights.

VSfilter 2.37 = Works fine without troubles

Winamp 5.32 = Works fine witohit troubles

Winrar 3.70 BETA3 = Works fine withou troubles


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Is it just me or Java is not working on Vista?

[Doomulation]

Hibernation is very useful for fast startup of the operating system. Plus anything you had open remains, so I find it very useful. Both in Vista & XP.

[t0rek]

Well, you like hibernation, so you don't need the trick described above. So, do you have other tweaks to share here?

[Doomulation]

Still stuck on XP and there's not much I want to change with Vista right now. I do tend to disable the warning messages it spouts when I don't have automatic updates enabled, though, if you're interested.

[t0rek]

Yeah, I know how to do it in XP and Vista :P

[yegosimo]

Yeah, I know how to do it in XP and Vista :P

I guess that someone in this forums told you how to do it....

Anyone got a Windows 95 Theme for Vista? :P

[t0rek]

I guess that someone in this forums told you how to do it....

Anyone got a Windows 95 Theme for Vista? :P

Wrong, I figured it out for myself. In case you are insane just select the Windows Classic theme, it will be the most closer thing to Win95. BTW nice to see you again around here...

[Miretank]

This little program was designed on first instance to fix Longhorn's Explorer Leak, but since no one uses LH like before and this program is Windows XP and Windows Vista compatible, I thought of sharing out with you guys.

BOFH Leak Fix flushes out Explorer's memory. If you use Vista you may have noticed that Explorer goes to 40mb sometimes and definately that's not good. With this fix, your explorer won't go over 10mb, mine keeps on 4Mb of consumption. ^_^ You really should try it out. Worths it.

The program itself is self explanatory, just extract it some folder and run it. Select the Explorer leak and the svchost.exe fix and basically you're done. Hit "Apply Changes" and "Fix Selected Now" and press Close. You're done. Open your Task Manager to have an orgasm. ;)

[yegosimo]

I already said that I know that my mobo is not USB2.0 capable, so no BIOS or dirver will do a miracle. The Yegosimo's answer was the solution, but I'm enabling tooltipos again because that disable a los of tootips I need. there on the taskbar...

Actually someone here told you something about it.
Anyway, I'll stop playing :P

I will try to get my Vista installed then I'll post something here.

[t0rek]

That kind of pop-up messages was other thing (sorry but I didn't like your solution, it disabled all pop-ups). I'm talking about the ones that pop-up when the Antivirus, Firewall, Windows Defender and Automatic Updates are disabled. These ones can be disabled esaily in the Security Center in the Control Panel without any registry tweaks

[TerraPhantm]

Does anybody know how to get WMP to play DVDs in versions that are not Home Premium or Ultimate? I'm currently running Vista Enterprise (completely legal, I didn't pirate this) but I can't get wmp to play a DVD even with a decoder installed.

[t0rek]

Dunno, that's weird... why don't your try something like PowerDVD ?

[TerraPhantm]

Well, programs like that run for me, but I always liked playing DVDs in WMP, and even though it's not really a big deal, this will annoy me quite a bit lol.

[Doomulation]

...(completely legal, I didn't pirate this)...

Like we care ;)

[smcd]

In XP don't you need a DVD player program as well? If that's the case, I am unsure why WMP 11 plays DVDs for me considering I do not have any decoder installed... there are free programs to play DVDs maybe VLC and/or mplayer? Maybe installing VLC made WMP 11 able to play DVDs as well? (speculation here) Anyhow, not sure if it'd work under Vista anyhow but worth a try perhaps. Another possibility is the K-lite codec pack.

[Doomulation]

Avoid K-Lite and codec packs in general. This has been stated several times and by good reason as well.
You do need an external DirectShow DVD filter to play dvds in wmplayer. Most times, these are bundled with 3rd party software, eg PowerDVD.
The same goes for Vista, I believe... but I haven't tested it since I use Zoom Player. It's superior in all regards.

VLC uses internal codecs to play, so I doubt installing it would help DVD. I think the same goes for mplayer, but I am unsure.

[mudlord]

Hey guys and girls.

I dunno if this fits into the grand scheme on things here, but I was wondering about DirectX and OGL performance under Vista. I havent had a chance to acquire Vista yet for my purposes, and I was wondering basically how's Vista with DX and OGL, speed and compatibility wise?

Does OGL under Vista currently run OK? Or is there issues? Is it crippled? Whats the speed like? etc....

[t0rek]

ffdshow worked for me for DVD decoding, runs fine with WMP.

As for DirectX and OpenGl, they run currently with very bad performance when compared to XP. But that's due to very bad drivers coming from nVidia and ATI. Everybody is hoping to see a performance increase in future drivers.

[KingVendrSnatch]

Avoid K-Lite and codec packs in general. This has been stated several times and by good reason as well.
You do need an external DirectShow DVD filter to play dvds in wmplayer. Most times, these are bundled with 3rd party software, eg PowerDVD.
The same goes for Vista, I believe... but I haven't tested it since I use Zoom Player. It's superior in all regards.

VLC uses internal codecs to play, so I doubt installing it would help DVD. I think the same goes for mplayer, but I am unsure.

Zoom player still requires a DVD filters though. Its still my favourite player. I like The KMPlayer as well plus its free with all the bells and whistles.

[Doomulation]

Zoom player still requires a DVD filters though. Its still my favourite player. I like The KMPlayer as well plus its free with all the bells and whistles.

The newest Zoom Player has the Install Center that can install all needed filters and codecs for you. It won't screw up your system and it'll play almost anything (including DVD).

[t0rek]

BTW Zoomplayer uses ffdshow :P

[TerraPhantm]

I have ffdshow, I'm still not able to play DVDs in WMP.

Does anyone else have this issue? (It should only apply to those with Vista Home Basic, Buisness, and Enterprise)

[Doomulation]

Here's a Vista Tweaking Guide to check out:
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

[t0rek]

Very good addition Doom. BTW, does anyone here knows find out how to do Video mirror with Vista?