Making vista boot faster

Any drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware should be left alone as well. If there are any problems or error messages, make a note and go back into Msconfig and check the boxes of the problem programs. You can also stop some services running on startup. Again, no Microsoft services should be turned off. Once again, if there are any problems, open Msconfig again and restart the services.

We also found a couple of services that ran on startup that were used by old programs we had long ago uninstalled, so we safely stopped them. Dual operating systems — Shave seconds off dual-boot options. If you have more than one operating system installed on your PC — for example, you may have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta installed — your computer displays a menu asking you which operating system you want to load. You can cut the amount of time your computer waits for your input before loading Windows Vista by going back to Msconfig and selecting the Boot tab.

Where it says Timeout, change the number to a lower setting, but give yourself enough time to actually make your choice. Fix notifications. You can save a few seconds by making sure that you always read all the notifications and subsequently follow their recommendations to fix the problems.

Not only will this stop the notification from popping up on your screen again, but it will probably also help your computer in other ways. New startup — Despite the Vista boot slowdown, this feature guides you through the steps of getting it up-to-speed and shows you how to make Windows Vista boot up faster than XP.

However, with all the new features and attractive effects, the operating system has a higher system overhead, which means your hardware has to work even harder. If you are like me, and do not always have the fastest hardware, this feature will help you get the most out of your current hardware by reducing the heavy workload put on it during the boot process. This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Most of these icons are for programs that run in background, and with all of them starting up when you turn on your computer, it will definitely slow it down.

Many of these programs can be safely prevented from starting up automatically, so you only load them as and when you need to. Most of the time you can right-click the icon and either open the program or go straight to the program's options or preferences, and from there clear a box that says something like 'Run this program when Windows starts'. If there are any programs that you don't need any more at all, go ahead and uninstall them to get an extra speed boost.

Result: After deleting four shortcuts from the Startup folder and cutting down the Notification icons from a massive 19 down to seven, we saw a huge improvement in the computer's start-up speed. Not all programs give the option to prevent them from automatically starting up. To disable more stubborn programs, we went in to the powerful Msconfig utility.

Before using this you should create a Restore point so you can revert your PC back to its former settings should anything go wrong. Click Start and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and you'll see a list of programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program's path where it's kept on your hard drive. Using all this information you can tell whether these programs are essential to making your PC run properly. As a general rule, don't disable any programs from Microsoft because these are usually vital for Windows Vista.

Any drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware should be left alone as well. Once you've disabled the programs you want, exit Msconfig and restart your PC.

If there are any problems or error messages, make a note and go back into Msconfig and check the boxes of the problem programs. You can also stop some services running on startup. Only stop them if you're sure that you don't need them.

Again, no Microsoft services should be turned off.