Tweaking Windows Vista

Having happily (performance/usability wise) used XP SP2 for many years. I was looking forward to installing vista home premium and making use of the new security features, performance enhancements and windows media center functionality.

I quickly discovered after upgrading that vista is not the most efficient OS ever created. Having spent my money I was determined to get the performance to the same level if not better than XP SP2

The following is a list of tweaks that I did to make vista operate at the same level as XP SP2 did (in no particular order)

1. Apparently there is a bug in the feature 'Remote Differential Compression' and this should be turned off via Control Panel / Programs and Features / Turn Windows features on and off. From here un-tick 'Remote Differential Compression'. Also un-tick any other windows features that you will not use
2. Turn off automatically running windows defender
3. Turn off automatically running defrag
4. Turn off windows search of you entire PC from Control Panel / Taskbar and Start Menu / Start menu / Customize / Search files and select Don't search for files
5. Ensure you have at least 1.5gig of RAM
6. Grab yourself a ReadyBoost USB drive (at least 2gig)
7. Turn off hibernate (unless you use the sleep function of windows)
8. Turn off system restore (warning! unless your are confident at fixing your PC when windows goes wobbly leave this one on)