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How To Speed Up A Slow Vista Laptop



Using a speedy, clean laptop is infinitely more satisfying than using a cluttered, grimy one, just like coming home to a clean and tidy house feels better than coming back to a messy and dirty space.

Compared to Windows XP, Vista is a much heavier and resource-hungry operating system. It has lots of great features, like Aero, but they can slow down your computer, especially if it doesn't have enough RAM or has a weak CPU. Luckily, it's possible to speed up computer running Windows Vista by customizing its settings. So before you spend a lot of money on new hardware, follow these simple steps to improve Vista performance.

  • Before you start you need to make sure your USB memory card is up to the job. You'll need a minimum of 256MB storage and a maximum of 4GB, and it needs to be capable of specific speeds: 2.5MB per.
  • A little time, a screwdriver and a few settings changes can have your laptop running like its new. Here are 13 ways to speed up your system.
  • Problems with vista running slow.have a laptop and just general use its so slow compared to when i had xp pro on it, hey spangled. If you only have a small amount of ram 1gb or so you could try this tutorial about readyboost to speed it up.
  • Speed up slow computer with CleanMyPC If you want to fix a slow computer, CleanMyPC is a lightweight app that downloads and installs quickly. The beauty of the app is that it is a hub for many different system cleaning tools. In fact a lot of what we talked about, CleanMyPC can do, and it does a better job.

Use ReadyBoost to improve Vista performance

The good thing about Windows Vista is that it has several performance-improving. ReadyBoost is one of them. Basically, it lets you use a USB flash drive as secondary memory cache, which helps your computer to run faster. Keep in mind that it's no substitute for RAM, though.

How to speed up a slow vista laptop windows

Also not all USB devices are ReadyBoost-compatible. Here are the drive requirements:

  • It has to be USB 2.0
  • It must be at least 256MB (though it's pointless to use a device smaller than 1GB)
  • Minimum read speed has to be 3.5 MB/s
  • Minimum write speed has to be 2.5 MB/s

If you don't know whether your flash drive is ReadyBoost compatible or not, give it a try anyway. If it is, the AutoPlay box will give you an option to use ReadyBoost:

If AutoPlay is disabled, do the following:

  • Go to Computer, right-click on the removable storage device and select Properties.
  • If the drive is compatible, you will see ReadyBoost there. Click on it.
  • Select Use this device and set the amount of space to be used for ReadyBoost system file.
  • Click OK.

How To Speed Up A Slow Vista Laptop Windows 10

Disable Vista Aero Glass

Windows Vista Aero Glass looks really cool, but everything has its downsides. In case of Aero it's heavy RAM, CPU, and graphics card usage. Just to give you an example - Aero can consume as much as 15% of CPU. Also it's no good for laptops, because it greatly reduces battery life. When the Aero theme is turned off, battery life is equal or better than on XP computers.

Disabling the Aero theme is easy:

  • Right-click somewhere on your desktop free space and click Personalize.
  • Click on Window Color and Appearance.
  • Click Open classic appearance properties for more colour options.
  • Select any theme you like. The Windows Classic theme is best for performance.

Speed up external hard drives

Windows Vista operates internal and external hard drives in a different way. By default write caching is disabled for all USB drives. This means that you can remove them whenever you want without any risk of data loss. However, if you have a large external hard drive always connected to your computer, disabled write caching is not really necessary. Besides, re-enabling write caching will improve Vista performance.

To re-enable write caching:

  • Click on Start, then right-click on Computer and select Manage
  • Go to Device Manager
  • Expand Disk drives and find your external hard drive
  • Right-click on it and click on Properties
  • Open the Policies tab and click on Optimize for performance
  • Check Enable write caching on the disk and Enable advanced performance
  • Press OK and reboot your PC

How To Speed Up A Slow Vista Laptop Screen

Improve SATA disks performance

You can also speed up Vista SATA disk drives by enhancing write caching. Here's how:

How To Speed Up A Slow Vista Laptop Keyboard

How to speed up a slow vista laptop screen
  • Click on Start, then right-click on Computer and select Manage
  • Go to the Device Manager
  • Expand Disk Drives
  • Right-click on your hard drive and go to Properties
  • On the Policies tab check Enable advanced performance
  • Press OK and close the Device Manager

How To Speed Up A Slow Vista Laptop Windows

The only downside of enhancing write caching is potential risk of data loss in case of power cuts. So, unless you are a laptop user and your battery is there to save you, be careful and backup everything. Now you know how to speed up your computer running Vista operating system.

For more performance tweaks try out a comprehensive system utility - Auslogics BoostSpeed. With this program you will be able to tune over 280 hidden system settings to speed up your Vista's performance.