Before playing around with your Windows OS make sure you have a backup of the Windows Vista registry. If you cause some damage to the values of the registry you can restore it to its original values. Make sure you have the backup on another location from that of the Windows drive. The backup can be on the same hard disk or on external device like a flash drive or a DVD/CD.

Steps to take a backup of the Vista registry:
1. Open the ’start’ menu and type ‘regedit’ in the search box. Press Enter.
2. Highlight computer in the left-hand pane
3. Go to ‘file\export’
4. Select the location where you are going to take a backup of the file

Steps to take a restore of the Vista registry:
1. Open the ’start’ menu and type ‘regedit’ in the search box. Press Enter.
2. Highlight computer in the left-hand pane
3. Go to ‘file\import’
4. Select the location of the file where you have taken the backup of the file and restore the file.

1. Over clock the processor and memory
Over clocking means to increase the speed of the processor or memory from the speed what has been mentioned by the company. For e.g. If the speed of the processor is 2.4GHz, you can increase it to 2.5 or 2.6 GHz. (The process of Overclocking cannot be covered in this article as it is a long topic.)

2. Power Options to high performance
The power settings in Vista can help save you power in the Laptop or desktop PCs, but if you want your systems to be running at its full performance at all times you need to put the power options to high performance plan.

To select the power options plan
a. Go to Start - > Control Panel
b. Click on Classic View on Left hand pane
c. Open power options
d. Select the high performance option

3. Assign priorities to applications
Like the previous versions, the Vista also can give priority to the applications that should be processed. You can set the application priority from “Low” to “Real Time”. Any full screen applications, including games are given high priority by default in Vista. Low applications are given lower priority and the real time one is given higher priority, thus increasing the performance of the application.
Note: If you select the priority level to real time for one application, the performance of other applications may become slow.

To assign custom priorities
a. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, choose the task manager option
b. In the applications tab, select the desired program and right click on it. Choose ‘go to process’.
c. This will bring you to the processes tab. Select the desired application, right click and set the priority.
Note: All settings will be reset on restarting the computer.

4. Disable unnecessary services
There are services which run by default in Vista. Some of them would not be required for a home user. You can disable them and increase the performance of the system.
Note: Do not disable any services if you are working in a Business Environment.

To disable unnecessary services
a. Click on start and type services in the searchbar and press Enter.
b. Scroll to the service to want to disable
c. Right click and select properties
d. In the startup type option select disabled from the drop down box
e. Select the Stop button
f. Click OK

Some services that are safe to disable for home users are:
a. Application experience
b. Application management
c. Distributed link tracking client
d. Offline files
e. Webclient
f. Tablet PC input service
g. TCP/IP NETBIOS helper

5. Disable the Superfetch feature

The Superfetch feature helps Vista to analyze the applications and files that you use often and loads them into the memory while booting the system. This is useful because the files load a lot faster while trying to access tham. The glitch is that it will work fine if you have 2GB or more of RAM, those with lower than that will find it very slow. So disable the feature for those home users who have less than 2GB of RAM.

To stop and disable Superfetch
a. Go to the Start menu and type services in the search bar and press Enter.
b. Go the Superfetch service
c. Right click and go to the properties
d. Change the startup type to ‘Disabled’
e. Press OK

6. Move the Vista Paging file for better Performance
If you are having two hard drives in your computer, then shift the paging file to the hard drive from the hard disk which has Vista installed. Since, most page file hits are related to windows system operations this will reduce the disk access on your OS drive.

To move the Windows Vista Page file
a. Click on the start menu right click on my computer and choose properties
b. In the left-hand pane, choose ‘advanced system settings’
c. Click the ‘advanced’ tab
d. Under performance tab choose settings
e. Choose the advanced tab again, then under the ‘virtual memory’ heading click ‘change’
f. Uncheck the automatically manage paging file size for all drives checkbox
g. In the window that shows the list of partitions choose the physical drive that does not have the windows installed in it
h. Select the ‘system managed size’ option then click on the set button
i. Now select the drive where Windows Vista is installed and select the no paging file option and click on the set button
j. Your paging file has been removed from the drive where windows is installed.

7. Disable ‘GUI boot’
Have you noticed the graphical bar that shows that the OS is booting. If you disable that you can save some time in the booting process.

To disable the GUI boot
a. open the start menu and type msconfig
b. when the msconfig window pops up, go to boot options tab
c. Select the No GUI boot checkbox
d. Click OK

8. Disable Aeroglass(All versions except Vista Basic)
Sometime the Aeroglass feature does not give any performance to the video card or it may take unnecessary memory space you can disable the Aeroglass feature.

To disable the Aeroglass interface
a. On the desktop right click and choose personalize
b. Select the window colour and appearance option
c. Then open classic appearance properties for more options
d. In the drop down box choose Windows Vista Basic and click on OK

9. Problems occurring while copying large files in a network
Windows Vista comes with a new feature called the receive window auto tuning. This feature enables Vista to check the bandwidth of the network and accordingly scale the size of the packet. The problem is that the older systems when combined with Vista’s new feature would cause issues while copying large files, occasional connection problems with applications like messenger. It is recommended that you either restrict this feature or disable it.

To disable receive window auto tuning feature
a. Open command prompt window with admin rights
b. Type the command ‘netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted and press Enter
If the restricted level does not solve your problem disable the feature by running the command:
‘netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled and press Enter

10. Background features to be disabled while playing games
Disabling the background features gives a better performance to the game.

To disable the background features
a. locate the application .exe file
b. Right click on the file
c. Choose properties
d. Click on the compatibility tab
e. In the settings tab click on the check box disable visual themes
f. Click OK

A better performing PC is always a better tool to use. So try out these tips and give us your feedback and suggestions.