Windows Vista Optimization Tips

Your computer is running much slower these days, and you’re running on Windows Vista. Optimization tips would be helpful right now, especially considering what’s about to happen. That is, you’ll soon be seeing error messages and your programs will stop working. This may even already be happening. Here’s what you need to know.

Optimizing Your PC--Your Computer is Having Registry Problems

In consideration of optimizing your PC, the main issue is registry problems. Your computer’s registry is the command center of your Windows Vista operating system. If it’s cluttered or if the information it has there is damaged, your PC will run more slowly. Here’s an illustration.

Imagine your desk. If all your bills, files and media are where they belong and your workspace is tidy, everything goes well, right? Now, if papers and CDs are scattered everywhere, and if they’re torn and coffee stained, it makes things harder to do, right? Your registry works the same way.

Registry Clutter and Damaged Files Are Slowing Production

The two main problems with your registry are that you have registry clutter and damaged files. Your registry gets cluttered when you uninstall a lot of programs and they leave behind their registry files. As you might guess from the allegory, this makes it harder for your computer to find the files it needs to use to run everything. In really bad cases, it’s not able to find the files at all, and it shows you an error message.

Damaged files happen due to normal wear and tear. Sometimes, when your computer pulls out a file to use it, it doesn’t put the whole file back. This makes the file unusable, and you’ll get slower performance as your computer tries to figure out what’s wrong. It may not even be able to fill in the blanks, as it were.

Fixing Your Registry and Optimizing Your PC

There are several things you can do along with fixing your registry to optimize your PC’s performance.

1. To fix your registry, all you need to do is get a good registry cleaning program and run it about once a month.

2. To an extent, running the Defragmenter regularly will speed things up.

3. You can increase the allocation of Virtual Memory up to four times your actual Memory.

• Go to the Control Panel, select “Performance and Maintenance,”

• Select “See basic information”

• Click “Advanced”

• Click “Settings” under “Performance”

• Click “Advanced”

• Click “Change” under “Virtual Memory”

• Click “Custom” under “Paging File Size for Selected Drive” and change it according to the maximum allowed.

• Restart your computer, and it’s done.

4. You can also change the memory allocation for appearance versus performance. This will make your programs run faster, but your computer’s appearance will be grainier. Basically, you would follow the directions to change the Virtual Memory up to and including “Performance.”
   

• Under “Processor scheduling” and “Memory usage,” select programs.

• In this, just like in changing your Virtual Memory, you will have to restart your computer for it to work.