What to disable/enable in Vista Ultimate 64 bit?

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IsaacMM

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So i just installed Vista Ultimate 64bit for the first time, i know that it comes with a lot of services like protection here and there, firewall,etc.

What should i disable/enable to make it perform better?
 
I personally disable UAC, but most say to either leave it on, or reenable it once your done setting up your programs. Other than that, leave everything as is and just let vista figure out how to optimize itself (which comes from you just using it). Don't worry about idle ram usage or other things from the XP era, just enjoy!
 
The only thing I disable is UAC just because some programs don't run right with it on, even if you have them set as 'run as admin' and say OK when it wants to run. Besides that, I left it alone. ...well actually, I did adjust the size that system restore uses. It was using like 85GB which is just stupid. I reduced it to 20GB which gives me about 5 or 6 restore points to fall back on.
 
I only really go out of my way to disable three things:

1) UAC
2) Hard Drive Indexing ("Windows Search" in services)
3) System Restore (If I really bork my box, I'll just do a format)
 
I disable the auto-defragment in the scheduler because I'm usually playing games at night and power down when I'm done. I defrag with Defraggler every 1-2 months anyway. And my searches have never been slow considering how rare it is that I need to use search, so I disabled indexing. Then I disable all of the notifications in the Security Center, run services.msc as administrator, stop the security center service and set it to manual startup. Edit: I disable the security center because I hate the icon and it's only good for a false sense of security.

And if you don't want to disable System Restore completely, you can adjust the space reserved for system restore by running the command prompt as administrator and entering:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=2GB (where C is your vista drive letter and 2GB is whatever you want).



After that I customize the Windows Explorer view (alt will bring up that hidden file menu btw) to detailed view, uncheck hide known file extensions, show hidden files, and apply to all folders. Then drag the folder view (left pane) all the way to the top so that I can only see that classic tree view.

Adjust the start menu options how ever you want. And to declutter the start menu programs, C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, I tossed every lose shortcut into a new folder and labeled it Microsoft and moved some of the tools to the Accessories folder.
 
Disable uac and windows firewall and that stuff
68d30a9594728bc39aa24be94b319d21.gif
 
disable uac and firewall? unbelievable. Do you leave your door unlocked because getting the key out and unlocking it is a "pita" too? Really, if you can't click "yes" or "no" once or twice a day, or a few times when messing in control panel, you should probably be in a hospital, because you're dying or something.
 
IsaacMM said:
So i just installed Vista Ultimate 64bit for the first time, i know that it comes with a lot of services like protection here and there, firewall,etc.

What should i disable/enable to make it perform better?
Click to expand...


basically learn to use the OS instead of disabling stuff.

eg..

instead of disabling UAC, create a directory in

/Users/[USERID]/Games/

now install all your old games there and don't worry abou the Run as Admin.. and you still get the benefit of UAC..

Also in Explorer you can drag this folder to be with your Favorites so your Games/ folder is right next tO Document/Pictures/etc..


Dont' turn off services as you won't gain anything..

disable firewall if you don't use it, i personally have it off..

not a whole lot else you have to do except download and install any updates that you need.



also if you haven't yet get into Vista media center and get that setup with your music / dvds / etc.. :)
 
I would not install games on C because the size of a modern game is more than the entire operating system. It makes it a pain to do OS backups and virus/malware scans, where as the games can be reinstalled very easily. My Vista partition is 25GB and I have 150Gb partition for games. If I keep games installed on a seperate partition, most of them wont need to be reinstalled after a reformat/restore or in a dual boot situation. I have left UAC on because it doesn't bother me, but I'd mutch rather turn it off instead of filling a large OS partition.
 
I turn off UAC, system restore, and the firewall (as I am behind a hardware firewall anyway, and hardware > software.)

I tend to disable Security Center, also.
 
All I turned off was UAC, everything I left running and haven't noticed a thing with what is running, I added nod32 anti-virus for the safety of catching a virus. Really if it is a place I am unsure of or a program I download and run, I run everything in VM first and make sure it's clean before it touches my rig.
 
Leave it alone.

Disabling and "tweaking" shit will in the long run make shit worse. . .
 
d3c1us said:
Leave it alone.

Disabling and "tweaking" shit will in the long run make shit worse. . .
Click to expand...

Disabling UAC, System Restore, the Security Center, and the Firewall isnt going to make anything worse. If you are a member of this forum, you shouldn't need any of those on anyway. They are just annoyances. Of course I would NEVER suggest any of that to a casual computer user. In fact, I make sure all of that is on on my parents/siblings computers at all times.
 
-PK- said:
I would not install games on C because the size of a modern game is more than the entire operating system. It makes it a pain to do OS backups and virus/malware scans, where as the games can be reinstalled very easily. My Vista partition is 25GB and I have 150Gb partition for games. If I keep games installed on a seperate partition, most of them wont need to be reinstalled after a reformat/restore or in a dual boot situation. I have left UAC on because it doesn't bother me, but I'd mutch rather turn it off instead of filling a large OS partition.
Click to expand...


one thing i like about Vista (and maybe XP had it too , but i never used it).. is you could for example have 2 hard drivers..

hard drive 1 as your OS mounted as C:

your 2nd card drive can then be mounted as a directory (like linux/unix) and can be mounted as c:/Users/[USERID]/Games

so to the everything else it is transparent, but that Games/ Direcotry is actually on another hard drive..




to do this

make an empty directory (c:/users/[userid]/games)

go into your AdminTools.. Comp Management... Disk Management..

right click on the 2nd hard drive and do Change drive letters and Paths..

Choose Add and Choose Mount in the following empty NTFS folder..

then remove the e: or d: mounting..

the drive is now mounted and transparent to c:/users/[userid]/games




Also to the OP i forgot to mention.. Learn to use the start menu search function, bar none best feature in vista next to its security updates (Yes i love UAC)
 
NTFS has always had the option to mount drives as folders to keep the directory structure simplified, all the way back to NT 3.51. It's a "feature," of course. ;) Not something that a lot of people are aware of, but a handy tip nonetheless if put into action.

Cat:

There's a reason that TGTC guide is as detailed and thorough as it is... <hint, hint> ;)
 
I turn off UAC, System Restore and windows firewall. The three of them are all mediocre (your account is a "limited admin" so if anything that is really determined to install itself on vista every wanted to (read: virus) UAC is NOT going to stop it.. worst it can do is say: oh shit we've got a problem..

Windows firewall doesn't block jack shit for incoming problems. Install Comodo Firewall Pro and be done with both firewall and antivirus problems.
System restore.. If you're not backing your shit up.. Chances are system restore aint gonna help you.
 
UAC can stop a virus from making system wide changes, so if you decline a uac prompt, the virus can mess up your personal files, but save you from reinstalling the OS or messing up other user files. It also puts IE in protected mode, so if there is a 0 day IE exploit and you go to a page that has malware that exploits it, the malware can't touch system files or user files, only temp. internet files, and it can't autorun when windows starts, etc. And please tell me exactly what 'incoming problems' the windows firewall doesn't stop? If you want to go pay for things you get for free, that's your business, but don't spread bs.
 
Drakan290 said:
I turn off UAC, System Restore and windows firewall. The three of them are all mediocre (your account is a "limited admin" so if anything that is really determined to install itself on vista every wanted to (read: virus) UAC is NOT going to stop it.. worst it can do is say: oh shit we've got a problem..

Windows firewall doesn't block jack shit for incoming problems. Install Comodo Firewall Pro and be done with both firewall and antivirus problems.
System restore.. If you're not backing your shit up.. Chances are system restore aint gonna help you.
Click to expand...

You might want to do more research into UAC as what you said (and I bolded) is wholly inaccurate. Testing has proven UAC to actually be so good at what it does that rootkits - notorious little fuckers that they are - can't get installed on Vista so... the people doing the testing could only force a rootkit to install on Vista once they disabled UAC and not in any instance beforehand, so there goes your opinion that it won't stop such things from happening.

The Windows Firewall doesn't need to "block" anything coming in, it simply doesn't allow contact as it is - you're "stealthed" as the term is used and the ports are simply not going to respond to outside contact or attempted entry unless you've altered the firewall configuration to allow for such attempts.

Some folks really need to do more research and learn more about Vista and what it truly does and is quite capable of doing before running off and spouting things that are better left unsaid.
 
criccio said:
Disabling UAC, System Restore, the Security Center, and the Firewall isnt going to make anything worse. If you are a member of this forum, you shouldn't need any of those on anyway. They are just annoyances. Of course I would NEVER suggest any of that to a casual computer user. In fact, I make sure all of that is on on my parents/siblings computers at all times.
Click to expand...

ROFLMAO. You are being sarcastic, right?
 
Joe Average said:
Cat:

There's a reason that TGTC guide is as detailed and thorough as it is... <hint, hint> ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah! Because it's a well-written and VERY responsible document. It does contain many (now rather well-known) 'tweaks, for the benefits of those who visit Koroush Ghazi's site simply for the tweaks rather than for the commoin snese, and are all "Rah, rah, rah, enough with the bullshit. Just give me the fucking instructions!" But you get that. Some people simply refuse to acknowledge that they don't, actually, know better than everyone else or that every bit of waffle they've ever read on an internet forum isn't actually true. And it's an advertisement funded site and service, pretty much, so he's gotta please the "Rah, rah" crowd as much as he has to please everyone else.

But THIS is also essential reading, in addition to the Vista Tweaking Guide:

http://www.tweakguides.com/VA_1.html



Anyways, a clean, fresh Vista install is NOT the most efficient Vista install, nor is a 'tweaked' Vista install. The 'best' and most efficient Vista install is one which has been in place and in use for a while, with the necessary software library installed, configured and operating smoothly, with the system's hardware troubleshot and the best performing device drivers for it already in place, with 'User modifiable' system settings configured in ordfer that the machine 'works' the way the end-user needs it to for his or her computer habits and activities, and with time enough already passed for optimisation, indexing and whatnot else to have taken effect to best advantage. Vista most definitely 'gets better' with use.

UAC prompts are only genuinely a 'pain during the initial wave of software installation and system configuration, and the best way to deal with that is NOT to disable UAC. Disabling it and then re-enabling it after software is installed does not see all software properly installed and configured to work correctly with UAC. Better to leave it on and simply put up with those extra permissions prompts during the setup phase. Fair dinkum, some people would whinge about ice-cream!


And the people complaining that all the Vista stuff slows down their rigs? In truth, it's got me beat for sure. I'm not running 'cutting edge'; hardware by any means, have Vista on some rigs and XP on others still, have run batteries of tests and benchies over the things, have used both OS versions regularly, tweaked and not tweaked, and can't really detect any discernable benefit from the doing of the tweakings. For run-of-the-mill everyday general operations at least, I think the only 'benefit' to be gained is the psychological boost which comes from seeing a benchmark with a 'lower number', even though that lower number is effectively just an 'on-paper' difference rather than a practically beneficial one.

Sometimes I have to wonder if those people claiming to really get 'benefit' are running old Pentium3 rigs with 256Mb RAM in them or somesuch :confused:
 
One thing I change on my system, is I enable DEP for all processes, instead of just Windows programs. It's a little free extra security, you just have to add DEP exceptions for programs that crash because of DEP, I only had 2, a video editor called Video Redo and HL1.exe. And I also enable DEP (aka memory protection) in IE, not sure if it's needed if you do the former, but doesn't hurt. DEP settings can be changed by going to Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings>Settings>Data Execution Prevention, and IE memory protection is in Internet Options>Advanced (I think you have to run IE as admin to access this setting.)
 
criccio said:
Disabling UAC, System Restore, the Security Center, and the Firewall isnt going to make anything worse. If you are a member of this forum, you shouldn't need any of those on anyway. They are just annoyances. Of course I would NEVER suggest any of that to a casual computer user. In fact, I make sure all of that is on on my parents/siblings computers at all times.
Click to expand...

rofl therein lies the irony.

If you were a member of this forum you would NOT disable anything. Since you're a member of this forum I'll let you figure out why.
 
Rock&Roll said:
I only really go out of my way to disable three things:

1) UAC
2) Hard Drive Indexing ("Windows Search" in services)
3) System Restore (If I really bork my box, I'll just do a format)
Click to expand...

I personally think that disabling UAC is not the best choice. But I can see why people would do it. Indexing is another thing that I wouldn't turn off since I would think most people like being able easily search documents, mail and files. Remember, it's not just searching file names but content. That is very helpful.

But, since the OP is talking Vista Ultimate disabling System Restore is one of the dumbest things to do since it would also disable one of Vista best features. Previous Versions.
 
1. Leave UAC on, as annoying as it is its an important feature to bring windows security more competitive to linux
2. System Restore is a personal preference thing, I've actually ran into times where I've seriously screwed up my pc and used system restore to fix it.
3. Harddrive indexing is personal preference. Depends how much you search. Never gets in my way so I leave it on.
 
-PK- said:
I would not install games on C because the size of a modern game is more than the entire operating system. It makes it a pain to do OS backups and virus/malware scans, where as the games can be reinstalled very easily. My Vista partition is 25GB and I have 150Gb partition for games.
Click to expand...
Why would you want to confine your Vista install to a small partition? There's nothing wrong with keeping games on the C partition. Backing up to a server/external drive is still as easy, and with the cost of hard drives these days, no one is using tiny drives anymore. There's also very very little reason to dual boot anymore, so that "advantage" goes out the window as well. If a game is too old to run in Vista, it can easily be run on an XP VM. StarCraft works great like this, for example.
 
DeaconFrost said:
, and with the cost of hard drives these days, no one is using tiny drives anymore.
Click to expand...

There are some valid reasons.

WD Raptors! 'Nuff said.

Raptors are generally considered "small/tiny"..compared to other much larger drives. Yet I still use Raptors on a couple of my systems, as the "C" drive, simply because of the 10,000rpm goodness and huge performance advantage it has over any other drives unless you bring SCSI/SAS into the picture.
 
The only thing I've disabled was Readyboost. Given the amount of RAM I have, there was no reason for it scan and test each flash drive I inserted when I wouldn't use them for Readyboost anyway.
 
Don't disable anything.

The people who reccomend turning off UAC are being retarded. If its really bothering you, turn it off while you install everything and then turn it back on. UAC is a huge security feature and the only line of defense against zero-day exploits.

I do agree with giving Vista its own drive or partition and installing apps elsewhere, Vista doesn't like it when you mess with the C drive.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Why would you want to confine your Vista install to a small partition? There's nothing wrong with keeping games on the C partition. Backing up to a server/external drive is still as easy, and with the cost of hard drives these days, no one is using tiny drives anymore. There's also very very little reason to dual boot anymore, so that "advantage" goes out the window as well. If a game is too old to run in Vista, it can easily be run on an XP VM. StarCraft works great like this, for example.
Click to expand...

My main reason for separating games from the OS is that most games will run without actually being installed. So, in the event of a OS format and restore, I don't have to go and reinstall all my games, hunt down patches and install them, download mods and maps, set up the configs, etc.

There are exceptions to this, the BF games need to be installed to run.
 
rflcptr said:
The only thing I've disabled was Readyboost. Given the amount of RAM I have, there was no reason for it scan and test each flash drive I inserted when I wouldn't use them for Readyboost anyway.
Click to expand...
I believe, in turn, you've also disabled ReadyBoot, which speeds up the boot process. If this is the case, I'd re-enable the ReadyBoost service. If you aren't using a ReadyBoost configured flash drive, formatted to be used for ReadyBoost, the service isn't really in use.
 
I think ReadyBoot is seperate from ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost is a service and ReadyBoot is part of the Vista kernal.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162480.aspx




To disable ReadyBoot:

Launch the "Reliability and Performance Monitor" program (via Vista's Administrative Tools or via any of the other routes to launch this program). Then on the lefthand side of your screen click "Data Collector Sets", and underneath that heading click "Startup Event Trace Sessions". Now on your righthand side you'll see a list that includes ReadyBoot, and you'll see the word 'enabled' beside the word 'Readyboot'. Double clicking the list item brings up the ReadyBoot Properties dialog. This dialog has a number of tabs. Pick the "Trace Session" tab. Finally, uncheck the "Enabled" checkbox on that tab.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
The people who reccomend turning off UAC are being retarded. If its really bothering you, turn it off while you install everything and then turn it back on. UAC is a huge security feature and the only line of defense against zero-day exploits.
Click to expand...

It's not always "retarded".

There are other reasons that I find it annoying and inconvenient. As I travel to clients networks, and need to do work on programming switches or routers....I very frequently have to go in and modify my network properties, often just assigning static IP addresses. This on a laptop that I don't do much but network chores and remote desktop on. No gaming, not much surfing.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
It's not always "retarded".

There are other reasons that I find it annoying and inconvenient. As I travel to clients networks, and need to do work on programming switches or routers....I very frequently have to go in and modify my network properties, often just assigning static IP addresses. This on a laptop that I don't do much but network chores and remote desktop on. No gaming, not much surfing.
Click to expand...

I can understand in a special case like that, although I don't find clicking the continue button to be that annoying, especially when I'm connecting my laptop to other people's networks and God knows what might be floating around on them.
 
To the people who leave UAC on, how do you not pull out your hair?? Its my computer, of course i want to click on what I clicked on, I dont need to tell it that i did...

Since Vista Beta I have turned UAC off and NEVER had any security issues, yet using a friends computer for more then a minute I want to shoot it!
 
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