Posted by John W. Wall on October 22, 2008 at 6:19 PM
This might be common knowledge, but a search didn't turn up any references to it, so I thought I'd mention it as an easy way to speed up system performance in Vista. I have a dual-core system with 4GB RAM already, but this little trick very noticeably sped things up. CS2 opens faster, operations run faster, etc. The trick is simply plugging a USB flash drive into your computer so the computer can use some of its memory. I got such a big boost with my 1GB flash drive that I just bought a 4GB drive today (on Amazon for under $20 including shipping) to kick it up another notch. The simple explanation of how to do it is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/readyboost.aspx
Posted by John Mumaw on October 22, 2008 at 7:10 PM
I've read that using ReadyBoost on a machine with only 1GB of RAM that is being used heavily will provide a noticeable performance increase, but on a system with 4GB of RAM that is not really being stressed by application usage, the benefits of ReadyBoost will not be readily apparent. I'm glad it's working for you, and I may just give it a shot. Thanks for the writeup.
I really noticed a performance increase in Vista using some of these tweaks and Service Configuration changes ("tweaked" version) to lose services that I never use and that just hog resources.
Be careful when stopping or disabling services in Vista or XP. Some services have dependencies upon others, and vice versa. If you do tweak any of the services, keep track of what you are doing so that you can go back if something doesn't work as expected.
Other ways to boost performance:
Defragment your hard drive(s) on a regular basis.
Disable the startup of programs you don't need to have running all the time. Programs that load at startup can be found in two places; Start>Programs>Start Up, and in MS Config.
To start MS Config: Start>Run. Type "msconfig" (without the quotes). Click 'OK'. In the MS Configuration dialog box, click the Start Up tab. There you will find a list of programs that run at Start Up. Disable any you do not need one at a time. You'll need to reboot after each change. Be careful here, too: Some programs that load at start up are required by Windows. If you don't know what a particular program does, do not prevent it from loading at boot time.
I've noticed increase in performance by doing these things.
John & Y'all - Holy smokes, and I had this feature all the time :-) I just stuck a 1GB CF in my card reader, configured it to ReadyBoost as a test. Even with 8GB of memory, LR2 and CS4 are now loading almost instantly. Thank's a bunch for the tip - Bob
I'm surprised those of you with more powerful systems found that much of a gain having just an extra 1gb flash memory plugged in. I would certainly think 8gigs of physical RAM would be more than enough to run pretty much anything on a desktop machine...
Try autoruns.exe for finding startup items, just search for it on the web. Better interface for disabling things than msconfig. Also, if you have programs you truly don't need better off uninstalling than just turning them off at startup.
Memory defrags are also helpful on NT based systems, your pagefile can get fragmented just like your hard disc. Adjusting the pagefile size will help with this after clearing it. Those with lots of system RAM probably won't be using much of the pagefile though anyway, at least that is the point of lots of physical RAM...
I wish I could get by the 4gig size limit of XP Pro 32bit, actually its 3gig since my hardware devices eat up lots of memory addresses. Might just try Server 2008 since I'm not a fan of Vista and I got a copy of server 2008 for free..
Discussion
4 repliesI really noticed a performance increase in Vista using some of these tweaks and Service Configuration changes ("tweaked" version) to lose services that I never use and that just hog resources.
Other ways to boost performance:
Defragment your hard drive(s) on a regular basis.
Disable the startup of programs you don't need to have running all the time. Programs that load at startup can be found in two places; Start>Programs>Start Up, and in MS Config.
To start MS Config: Start>Run. Type "msconfig" (without the quotes). Click 'OK'. In the MS Configuration dialog box, click the Start Up tab. There you will find a list of programs that run at Start Up. Disable any you do not need one at a time. You'll need to reboot after each change. Be careful here, too: Some programs that load at start up are required by Windows. If you don't know what a particular program does, do not prevent it from loading at boot time.
I've noticed increase in performance by doing these things.
-P
John & Y'all - Holy smokes, and I had this feature all the time :-) I just stuck a 1GB CF in my card reader, configured it to ReadyBoost as a test. Even with 8GB of memory, LR2 and CS4 are now loading almost instantly. Thank's a bunch for the tip - Bob
Try autoruns.exe for finding startup items, just search for it on the web. Better interface for disabling things than msconfig. Also, if you have programs you truly don't need better off uninstalling than just turning them off at startup.
Memory defrags are also helpful on NT based systems, your pagefile can get fragmented just like your hard disc. Adjusting the pagefile size will help with this after clearing it. Those with lots of system RAM probably won't be using much of the pagefile though anyway, at least that is the point of lots of physical RAM...
I wish I could get by the 4gig size limit of XP Pro 32bit, actually its 3gig since my hardware devices eat up lots of memory addresses. Might just try Server 2008 since I'm not a fan of Vista and I got a copy of server 2008 for free..