Disable security notifications

If you've made one or two of the changes in this article, like disabling UAC for example, and are getting fed up with the Windows security center notifications popping up in the taskbar and nagging you about what you've done, here's how to disable them.

To disable Windows Vista Security Center notification:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'service.msc' in the search bar. Do not press Enter.

Mouse up to the 'services.msc' search result, right-click it and choose 'run as administrator' (this is assuming you have not already disabled UAC, in which case the run-as is not necessary).

In the services window, scroll down to the 'Security Center' service, right click it and hit 'properties'.

In the 'startup type' dropdown box, change the value to 'disabled', then click the 'stop' button below to stop the service immediately. Hit 'ok.'

Using the new 'resource overview' monitor in Windows Vista

The Windows performance monitor has received a considerable facelift with the release of Vista, and now offers a whole host of monitoring information about your computer, once you've learned how to configure it for easy use. The most obvious and useful new feature is the resource overview window. This screen handily centralizes your CPU, memory, network and hard disk % at use information and allows you to track which files and processes are using your system resources in real-time. Let's take a look at how to use it.

To open the resource overview screen:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'monitor' in the search box and hit Enter.

Welcome to the new and improved resource overview screen. As you can see, the four windows correspond to the four major hardware areas of your system, and show you essentially how hard they are working over the last 60 seconds of time. Now, let's dig a little deeper.

If you double click on any of the four displays, you'll notice that the corresponding heading on the lower part of the screen will expand, offering you more information. For the CPU, we can see exactly which processes have been taking up CPU time over the last minute, and what percentage. For the hard drive, the files that have been read from and written to and how much. For the network which processes are accessing network connections and how much data are they transferring (very useful for identifying possible spyware/trojan virus problems), and for the memory you can see how much memory each running process is consuming and what percentage of that can be shared with other applications or is fully reserved. All-in-all a very useful overview of the activities of your entire computer system right at your fingertips.

Return the Run command to the start menu

If you find you really can't live without the Windows XP style 'run' command on the start menu, it's easy enough to restore.

To make the 'run' command appear on the start menu:

Right click the 'start' menu and choose 'properties.' Choose the 'start menu' tab.

Click the 'customize' button.

Scroll down until you find the option titled 'run command' and check it. Hit 'ok'.

Backup your entire computer with Vista Backup and restore (Vista Business and Ultimate only)

If you have a removable USB or eSATA hard drive enclosure, consider this tip once you have your Vista install set up just the way you like it. Vista Business and Ultimate editions allow you to create a backup image of your entire computer, data, applications and all. It does take up a lot of space as you might imagine, so you will pretty much need to dedicate an entire hard drive to it, but it's worth it for the peace of mind it offers.

recommend separating your data and system partitions, making an image of your system partitions and then regularly backing up your data partitions to a source that is not inside your computer.

To make a backup image of your entire system:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'backup' in the search bar. Hit Enter.

Click 'backup computer'.

You can backup either to a separate hard disk partition or to DVD media. You'll end up using at least 5-10 DVDs for a standard Vista install, so that's not really an option.

Once you've indicated which partition you would like to backup to

Run sidebar gadgets without the sidebar

This tip falls under the category of "why did I not notice this before?". You do not need the physical space of the sidebar to run Microsoft sidebar gadgets. Click your favourite gadget and drag it out of the sidebar onto the desktop and voila! Now you can close the bar, reserve your real-estate and still keep the use of your favourite gadget(s).

It's important to note that when you carry out this tip and close the sidebar, it remains resident in memory and is required to keep the gadget running. Unfortunately this means you can't disable the sidebar completely and still keep your fave gadget on the desktop.

Disable transient multi-monitor manager to speed up boot times

Microsoft included the TMM program to make it easier for mobile users to connect and disconnect their laptops frequently from one or more separate monitors. Its main function is to detect when a new monitor has been plugged in and pop up a dialog allowing the user to easily configure said device. It also can add some unnecessary overhead, both at startup and by occasionally polling for the presence of D-SUB connected monitors.

To disable TMM:

Open the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer.' Choose 'manage.'

In the computer management window, navigate to 'task scheduler\Task scheduler library\Microsoft\Windows\MobilePC'


To disable the TMM function, right-click on it and choose 'disable.'

Reduce start menu opening delay

If the Vista interface seems sluggish to you, this tip may help things feel a little more frisky by boosting the speed of the start menu.

To reduce start menu opening time:

Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.

Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop'

Double click on the 'MenuShowDelay' value and change its value to 150.

Disable mandatory thumbnail previews

By default, Windows Vista renders nearly every directory in thumbnails, which can be a good thing, but can also be a pain if you've got a lot of files and little memory. If you'd like to go back to the XP-centric explorer where thumbs where an option not a mandate, it's easy enough to do, fortunately.

To disable automatic thumbnail previews:

Go to 'start/computer.'

open the 'organize' menu and choose 'folder and search options.'

Choose the view tab and place a check next to the 'always show icons, never thumbnails' option at the top. Hit 'ok.'

Remove unnecessary Windows Vista features

Like most Microsoft operating systems, Vista uses the 'kitchen sink' approach, bundling more software and applications than you are ever likely to use. Let's look at streamlining your Vista PC a bit and saving some drive space by removing some of these unnecessary applications.

To remove unwanted Vista components:

Go to 'start/control panel/programs/uninstall a program'.

In the sidebar, click 'turn windows features on and off'.

The checkboxes list optional features that can be added or disabled. Good options for removal include games, DFS file replication service, windows meeting space and tablet tools.

Enable Windows classic desktop

If you just can't get used to the look of the Vista interface, or you are running under 1GB of memory and you need to speed up the desktop, try enabling the Windows Classic interface. This is a two step process involving changing both the desktop settings and the Start menu. Note that while in XP the 'classic interface' was that of Windows 2000, in Windows Vista it is the XP interface that is brought up when you make this change.

To revert to the Windows classic interface:

Right click on the 'start' menu and click 'properties'.

Select the 'classic start menu' option and click 'ok'.

Right click on an empty area of the desktop and choose 'personalize.'

Select the 'theme' option.

In the 'theme' dropdown box, choose 'Windows Classic.'

Click 'ok'.

All the bells and whistles are now gone completely.

Disable last access file update

By default, any Windows installation that is using the NTFS file system (that is, almost any installation of Windows 2000 or later) updates each file with a date stamp every time it is accessed. If you don't think this feature is useful, save yourself some unnecessary disk access by disabling it. Note that this is not the same feature as the 'file last modified on:' information that appears when you bring up the properties of a file in Explorer, so disabling last access update will not disable that information.

To disable last access file updating:

Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.

Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem'

Change the value of the 'NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate' DWORD to '1'.

Use checkboxes for multiple file selection

This tip is a perfect example of why people should not give up on Windows Vista. Lurking within the standard Vista explorer interface is a really, really convenient way to highlight multiple files without using shift or CTRL. Welcome to the era of the checkbox. Once you have enabled this feature, you will see a little checkbox at the upper left corner of each icon in the explorer window. Checking this box will highlight the file in question. Genius.

To enable checkbox file selection in Windows Vista:
Go to 'start/computer'.

Click the 'organize' menu and choose 'folder and search options'.

Select the 'view' tab.

Scroll down and check the 'use check boxes to select items' option.

Disable 8.3 name creation for files

The 8.3 namespace is a method of naming files used in DOS and Windows 3.1 (for example myfile83.exe). This naming standard has not been necessary since Windows 95 hit stores some 12 years ago. To maintain some illusion of backward compatibility the feature has been kept, and if you do happen to use a DOS-based 16-bit application that can only recognize 8.3 character file names, you will need it. Otherwise, as Microsoft itself says:

"The creation of 8.3 filenames and directories for all long filenames and directories on NTFS partitions may decrease directory enumeration performance."

...In other words, it's slowing you down.

To disable 8.3 name creation in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.

Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem'

Change the value of the 'NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation' DWORD to '1'.

Disable unneeded hardware

Do you use firewire? How about your wired Ethernet connection? If the answer to these questions is no, you might want to consider disabling the unnecessary hardware to free up system resources. This is a simple process and can be reversed with a few clicks of the mouse, so you don't need to worry about the consequences later on.

To disable unnecessary hardware in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start' menu and right-click on 'computer'. Select 'properties'.

Click 'device manager' in the left-hand pane.

When device manager opens, mouse down to the hardware you want to disable. Firewire would be under 'ieee1394', while all network connection hardware is stored in the 'network adapters' section.

To disable a device, right click on it and choose 'disable'. If you think you've made a mistake, return to device manager, right click on the device and choose 'enable' to return it to its previous state.

Check your computer system's health in 60 seconds or less

Another feature Microsoft added to Vista as part of the performance and reliability monitor upgrade is the system health report generator. This will analyze your system using the various hardware and software monitoring tools available to the OS and give you a one page breakdown of your systems current health, with links to more additional information than you could ever want. The system health report will give you a quick idea on what, if anything is causing problems with your system's performance.

To run the System Health Report Generator:

On the 'start' menu and type 'perform info' in the search bar and hit Enter.

Now click 'advanced tools' in the left-hand pane.

At the bottom of this window, click 'generate a system health report' to run the report generator.

You now have a snapshot of what Vista thinks of your computer and its own configuration.
Read and enjoy!

Rebuild the paging file to optimize performance

If you have noticed that game performance has diminished or that applications are loading slower than they once did on your Vista system, you may want to give this tip a try. By default, Vista does not clear the contents of the paging file (the area of the hard disk Vista reserves to act as extra RAM memory). Over time it can become fragmented and less efficient. One solution is to reset this file every so often, ensuring a fresh start for your applications and games.

To reset the Windows Vista page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.

Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'

Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'

Uncheck 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' at the top.

Highlight the drive that contains your paging file. Select the 'custom' size option below.

Change the minimum and maximum page file size to '0' and click set.

Restart the computer.

Reopen the paging file properties window and highlight the drive that contained your page file. Choose the 'system managed size' option and click 'set'. Confirm the overwrite and click 'ok'.

Disable the low disk space check

If you've got a second hard drive that is filling up, or a partition that's getting near its space limit, Vista will warn you... And warn you... And warn you, with little pop-up notifications appearing in the taskbar every little while. This can get annoying fast, especially when you see that the system is polling the disks every few minutes to bring you this important warning. It's quite easy to disable though, with a quick registry hack doing the job.

One caveat: Having a decent amount of free disk space IS important if the partition in question is your C: drive where Windows resides. If you want to disable this warning, pay occasional attention to the state of your file space please.

To disable the low disk space check/notification:

Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.

Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies'

If you have a registry key named 'Explorer' at this location, click on it to open it. If not, create one by right clicking on the right hand pane and selecting 'new/key.' Call the new key 'Explorer.'

Navigate to Explorer and create a new DWORD value named 'NoLowDiskSpaceChecks' and give it a value of '1'.

Disk checks will now be disabled.

Set a fixed paging file size

If you want to optimize your Vista system's use of its page file as much as possible, consider setting up a static paging file. Normally, the operating system dynamically resizes the page file as it sees fit, but this resizing operation imposes an overhead on page file operations as well as being unpredictable in terms of the size it takes up on the disk. By setting a static file size, Vista is relieved of the need to manage the paging file which leads to more efficient operation.

To set a fixed paging file size:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.

Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'

Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'

Uncheck 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' at the top.

Highlight the drive that contains your paging file. Select the 'custom' size option below.

Now enter in an appropriate amount of space in the minimum and maximum boxes. A good guideline would be 1.5 x the amount of physical memory in your system, so set a 3GB page file for a system with 2GB of system memory.

Click 'set' and 'ok'.

Stop scheduled disk defragmentation

Microsoft has considerably simplified the disk defragmentation interface in Windows Vista, and made it an automatic process, figuring (probably accurately) that 99% of their user base does not know what disk defragmentation is and would not do it anyhow.

By default, Windows Vista will run a disk defragmentation process (essentially making sure that all the files on your drive occupy contiguous drive space and are not scattered all over the surface of the physical disk) every Wednesday morning at 1AM. If you happen to be up gaming at 1AM on Wednesday morning, this will play havoc with your frame rates. It's probably better to disable the automatic defragmentation process and do it manually once every 3-6 months.

To disable automatic disk defragmentation in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'defrag' in the search bar. Hit 'Enter'.

Uncheck the 'run on a schedule' check box.

Click 'ok'.

Disable hibernate on desktops

If you've got a desktop that's on most of the time, doing large amounts of non-critical applications in the background (read downloading), you probably want to disable the hibernation and hybrid-sleep functions of Vista. Doing so will save you a chunk of disk space the size of your physical RAM.

To turn off hibernation in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start menu' and type 'cmd' in the search bar but do not press Enter. Right click on the 'cmd' shortcut where it appears in the search results and choose 'run as administrator'.

In the command prompt, type 'powercfg h off'.

Move the Vista paging file for better performance

The page file is an area of hard disk space reserved by Windows for use as additional memory. By default, Windows manages and resizes this file dynamically to suit its needs. Vista does a very good job of optimizing the page file on its own, but there is one tweak you may be able to make which will considerably increase its performance. If you have more than one physical hard disk drive installed in your computer, you can move the page file onto the physical drive that does NOT have Windows Vista installed on it. Since most page file hits are related to Windows system operations, this will considerably reduce disk access on your OS drive, speeding everything up.

To move the Windows Vista Page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.

Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'

Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'

Uncheck the 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' checkbox.

In the window that shows the list of partitions (C:, D:, etc.) choose a partition that resides on the physical hard drive that does not have Windows installed and highlight it. Select the 'system managed size' option then click the 'set' button. This will create a paging file on the hard disk in question.

You will notice that the 'paging file size' for the highlighted drive now reads 'system managed'

Now highlight your C: partition (assuming that this is where Windows Vista is installed). Select the 'no paging file' option and click 'set'.

Your paging file has now been offloaded.

Sidebar to low priority

So you like the Vista sidebar (and why not?) but you are worried about it consuming unnecessary resources while you are doing things with your computer that do not involve it? We have a solution for you.

What we are going to do is show you how to permanently set the sidebar to be a 'low priority' application for Vista, meaning that the operating system will not devote resources to sidebar apps when other full screen applications are demanding them.

To set the Windows Vista sidebar to low priority permanently:

First follow the steps in Tip #38 above to prevent the sidebar from starting when Vista starts.

Go to 'start/computer' and press 'ALT' to bring up the file menu taskbar.

Go to 'tools\folder options' and select the 'view' tab.

Under the 'hidden files and folders' section, select the 'show hidden files and folders' option. Click 'ok'.

Navigate to 'start\computer\c:\users\(your username)\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\startup\'

Right click on the empty directory and choose 'new\shortcut.'

When the shortcut wizard appears, copy and paste the following:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start "sidebar.exe" /LOW "C:\Program Files\windows sidebar\sidebar.exe"

And click 'ok' to save the shortcut. Now every time you start Windows Vista, the sidebar will be started also, but at low priority only.

Disable the Vista sidebar

The Vista sidebar is one of the new features of the OS that has attracted wrath and praise in equal amounts. Whether or not you appreciate it's style, ease of use and array of handy gadgets, or hate it's space hogging, system clogging ways, it's impossible to deny that it eats up system resources, even when you are doing other things and not looking at it.

Disabling the Vista gadget sidebar will increase the performance and reduce the load time of your computer system slightly (which is, after all, the point of this PCSTATS Guide). If you do not want to take the drastic step of disabling the sidebar completely, some tips follow which will show you how to make more efficient use of the bar and its gadgets.

To disable the Windows sidebar:

Right click on a blank area of the sidebar and choose 'properties.'

Uncheck the 'Start sidebar when windows starts' option. Hit OK.

Right click on a blank area of the taskbar and choose 'close sidebar.'