Vista, the most debated and argued operating system of Microsoft till date. It is loaded with multiple features to attract consumers in this competitive era, but has invited many controversies.
No doubt its market share has started increasing, but many say at the cost of XP. Leaving these petty issues aside, the article will discuss the features that you can disable on your Vista safely to make your computer faster.
Caution: If you are about to disable the unwanted feature right after reading the article, it is advised: Just to be on the safe side, make sure to create a restore point. By creating restore point, you can quickly return your machine to its present state if you don’t like the changes? To make a restore point, click Start -> Run -> type sysdm.cpl and press Enter. Choose System Protection, Create restore point and now you are on the safer side to follow the tips:
1. Sidebar: Keeping features like analog clock, thumbnail slide-show viewer and RSS news feed that dock in the Windows Sidebar add looks to desktop but they are overheads on performance. If you really are not hooked to these features by any means, you can turn the whole thing off. It will surely give a boost to your speed, especially at boot time.
To remove the Sidebar, right-click Sidebar -> Close Sidebar. Uncheck “Start Sidebar when Windows starts” and then click OK.
2. Aero: Aero interface, one of the major USPs under which Microsoft marketed its Vista and put a lot of visual enhancements for this GUI. Aero sports features like the thumbnails of opened windows while user hover the mouse pointer over the taskbar, as well as the Flip 3-D view by pressing Windows-Tab. Users really like this feature and compares it with Macs GUI.
But, if you really use your PC as performing machine, Aero can be troublesome. To turn it off, right-click the Windows desktop -> Personalize -> Window Color and Appearance. From Window Color and Appearance dialog box, click “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” -> Windows Vista Basic and click OK.
3. Remote Assistance: If you are running Vista Home (Basic or Premium), remote Assistance feature is no use to you. You can easily turn it off and will save certain cycles.
To close this feature, click Start, right-click Computer and select Properties. Click Remote Settings and uncheck “Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer.”
4. Internet Printing Client: Vista’s Internet Printing Client is just a performance overhead as almost all of us do not print documents straight from Internet. So disabling it will not hamper your work.
To disable this feature, Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features and click “Turn Windows features on or off” link on the left. Windows Features dialog box will get displayed. Expand the Print Services section and uncheck Internet Printing Client.
Click OK and let system to reboot.
5. Windows Meeting Space: Windows Meeting Space feature lets you share files across a network while editing them with a remote colleague. But as per my consensus, most of us do not make use of this feature. If not, we can simply disable this feature also.
To disable this, Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features and click “Turn Windows features on or off” link on the left. Windows Features dialog box will get displayed. On this dialogue box, uncheck Windows Meeting Space.
6. Lay off Extras: Vista Ultimate Edition homes numerous features that are pointless and are found exclusively in Vista Ultimate Edition. To close these features, click Start -> All Programs -> Windows Update -> click View available updates and check out all the useless features that are packed in the operating system and you have paid for it.
Apart from these features like User Access Control, Ready Boost, Search Indexing, Offline Files, and Windows Error Reporting Service are also turn off factors; but choices vary from person to person.
