Disable IPV6 in Windows Vista

Windows Vista is the first Microsoft operating system to feature IP Version 6 as a default networking protocol. This despite the fact that essentially nothing uses it. Since each of your network interfaces is running both IPV6 and standard TCP/IP by default, wouldn't it be a good idea to disable the unnecessary protocol? i think so.

To disable IPV6 in Windows Vista:

Start Regedit and navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip6\Parameters\
Right click on an empty area of the right-hand pane and choose 'new\DWORD value'.

Name the DWORD 'DisabledComponents' and give it the value '0xFF'

You will need to restart your system for this to take effect.

Update Vista's DirectX9 files for better game compatibility

One of the fixes for getting games to run in Vista that do not normally (such as FEAR and 3Dmark06 as two examples) is relatively simple. These games require the latest version of Directx 9. Vista does not actually contain a full installation of Directx 9, just some elements for compatibility purposes. So, install Directx 9.

To install Directx 9c on Windows Vista:

Unzip the file into a folder on your desktop or in your documents.

Run the DXSETUP file.

You can delete the folder after the install has finished.

Poor game performance? Try DirectX 9 mode

If you own some of the newer DirectX10-capable games like Bioshock or Crysis, but you are disappointed with the performance you are seeing when you run these games in their full DX10 glory, there's an option which you'll probably want to try. Navigate to the games folder ('start\games') and right click on the icon that starts your directX10 game. You should see a 'play DirectX 9' option. You may sacrifice a few of the visual bells and whistles, but your frame rates are almost guaranteed to be better.

Fix large file copying problems in Windows Vista

Out of the box Vista can have some issues with large file transfers over a network. This is because of a new Vista feature called 'receive window auto-tuning'. In a nutshell, this allows Vista to automatically scale the size of each packet of data it requests and receives over a network connection to suit the available bandwidth. This is a good thing. However, older networking hardware may have issues with this newfangled technique and refuse to co-operate, leading to dropped file transfers, slow performance and other weirdness.

If you are experiencing network issues with large file transfers and occasional connection problems with applications like Messenger, we recommend that you restrict or disable the receive window auto-tuning feature.

To do this, open a command prompt window with administrative privileges.

Type 'netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted' and press Enter.

If this fixes your issues, relax. If you continue to have networking problems, open another administrative prompt and type 'netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled'.

Enable more simultaneous Downloads in Firefox

If you prefer to use Firefox (which, like IE7 defaults to only two persistent connections to a given server), here's the Firefox-approved version of the above tip:

Open Firefox and type 'about:config' in the address bar.

Scroll down to the 'network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server' entry.

Double click the entry and change the value to anywhere from 4 to 10.

Restart Firefox.