You Don’t Have to Hate Vista
Speeding Up Windows
Vista and Internet Explorer 7
by Mike Semel
Vice President, Connecting Point of Las Vegas
 Why
is my computer so slow?
Why is my hard drive always running when I'm not doing
anything?
Why does it take so long to start up and shut down?
Why does it take so long to open and scroll through web
pages?
Vista
No matter that running Windows XP is like wearing an old,
comfortable shoe, Windows Vista is the reality for most of
us purchasing a new PC. It has gotten past many of its
initial growing pains and now most software programs have
been updated to run with it.
Many users have
called to ask about tweaking Vista for improved speed, or
even going back to XP. Here are some things I learned with
my Vista laptop. I'll also let you know how to get the most
speed out of Internet Explorer 7.
Warning:
Some of the recommendations require adjustments to your
computer that you may not be comfortable doing yourself, or
may be prohibited or locked out by your company’s IT
department. Consult a certified IT professional if you
aren't completely confident in your abilities, or if you
don't have Administrator rights to your computer. Also, it's
a good idea to create a Restore Point just before making
changes, so you can go back to a known-good configuration if
necessary.
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1. Hardware matters. Even though
Microsoft advertises that Vista Business
requires a 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM, in
their new Vista Performance Handbook Microsoft
says to get best results you need at least a 2
GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM. You also need a
graphics adapter with enough memory to get the
most from Vista, and new Vista software drivers
if you upgraded an older system. So, none of the
rest really matters unless you have a strong
hardware foundation to work with.
2. Many things load and run that you may not
use, and can eat up resources and cause
slowdowns.
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| a.
Indexing is the main reason you see your
hard drive running even when you aren't doing
anything. Indexing speeds up Vista’s enhanced
searching capabilities (good) but causes hard
drives to run, and eats up processor
performance, when you are trying to get
something done (bad.) Go to Start/Control
Panel/Indexing Options and turn off unwanted
areas to improve performance. I am just indexing
e-mail and documents, which is all I expect to
search for. This greatly improved the
performance of my laptop.
b.
Visual effects make Vista look cool, but
can eat up resources you might rather use to get
more speed. On your computer's desktop,
right-click your mouse and select Personalize.
Select Windows Color and Appearance, and change
it to Windows Vista Basic.
c.
Turn off things you don't use so they don't
start up automatically and eat up resources.
If you are sure of what a startup program does,
and that you will never want to use it, you can
remove it completely using the Programs &
Features control panel. Or, you can enable and
disable startup features by going to
Start/Run and typing msconfig. Click on the
Startup tab and deselect items you are sure you
don't need. For example, I disabled the
gadgets on my desktop because the same
information can be easily seen at the bottom of
my screen.
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3. 3rd party programs might be causing Vista
to run slow. Anti-virus and anti-spyware
programs may be set to scan automatically at
startup, or may run if your computer was turned
off during an after-hours scanning period. One
Tuesday morning I turned my laptop on after
leaving it in its case the night before, and my
hard drive ran and the system was slow for over
2 hours. When I looked at the virus scan log, it
showed that it had just completed the scan
scheduled for the previous night as soon as I
turned on the system Tuesday morning. Now I make
sure to have the system on Monday nights.
4. Use Sleep mode rather than Shutting Down.
Microsoft says that 'Sleep should be considered
the new default "Off" state.' Sleep keeps your
current session in memory and restores it
quickly when you start back up. Your computer
may already be set up to enter Sleep when you
press the power button. Or, you can select Sleep
from the Shut Down menu. If you have a laptop
you can just close the screen.
5. Keep your system updated. Vista,
Microsoft Office, and other application programs
are updated frequently to address performance
and security issues. Go to Start/All
Programs/ Microsoft Update to check for
updates and to turn on automatic updating. For
3rd party programs you can usually check for
updates through the program's Help menu. |
Internet
Explorer 7
My experience with poor performance wasn't limited to Vista.
Whenever I started Internet Explorer 7, I thought my life
was running in slow motion. It seemed to take forever to
open web pages. When a page finally did open, it took
forever before I could scroll through the page or enter
information. I had set up multiple websites to automatically
open in separate tabs when I started IE7, and it would take
several minutes before I could do anything on the web. Argh!
I mentioned
this to one of my colleagues who said I should try running
Internet Explorer without add-ins (go to Start/All
Programs/Accessories/System Tools.) The difference was
amazing. Internet Explorer ran at the speed I was hoping
for, but, as I started to visit different pages, I ran into
problems with graphic images not loading, links not
responding, and more. I knew that the add-ons were the
problem, so I needed to know how I could get IE7 to give me
the functionality I needed at the speed I wanted.
The following
tweaks will improve Internet Explorer 7 performance. If you
share your computer, you must login to each user ID and
perform the tweaks for each ID.
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1. Turn off Phishing Filter. This feature
supposedly helps to prevent you from being
tricked into accessing a rogue web site that is
masquerading as a bona fide web site. I've found
this feature to really slow down web access.
Go to Tools->Phishing Filter, click on Turn Off
Automatic Web Site Checking, then click OK.
2. Automatically checking for RSS feeds is
reported to slow IE7 performance. Most
people don't use this feature (if you don't know
what it is, you aren't using it), and you can
turn this off by going to Tools->Internet
Options->Content->Feeds->Settings -- uncheck all
boxes shown:
3. Disabling ClearType can improve IE7
performance. Go to Tools->Internet
Options->Advanced then move the slider on
the right until you see Always use ClearType for
HTML, and uncheck it.
4. The SSVHelper Class really caused IE7 to run
slowly on my laptop. You can disable the
SSVHelper plugin by going to Tools->Manage
Add-ons->Enable or Disable Add-ons. Select
SSVHelper Class, click the Disable button, and
then click OK:
5. Finally, you can use this IE7 max connections
tool to increase the number of connection IE7
will open simultaneously to the same web site.
The default is two simultaneous connections, and
by increasing this to the maximum number of
sixteen, IE7 performance is greatly improved on
web sites that load a large number of files per
web page. An example of a page with a large
number of files are an ebay page showing the
results of searches. Click
here to install the tool. |
Conclusion
It took awhile, but Vista is now working at the speed I
expected when I got my new laptop. I still run into some
unexpected problems with programs hanging for a minute or so
with a (Not Responding) comment at the top of the screen.
Once I figure out how to solve that I’ll let you know. |
