Risk-free Vista Tweaks that can Increase Speed and Productivity

Vista tweaks can be performed on an operating system that had a very rough start when it was released to the public back in 2007. It was criticized for being much slower than its predecessor Windows XP and riddled with bugs and annoyances that are surprisingly advertised as features. Even a clean install doesn't do the trick and when hardware upgrading isn't an option, the only way out of the ditch is by reverting back to XP which is unfortunately another painstaking process. However, you can still keep your Windows Vista system and have it run faster too by applying some risk-free Windows Vista tweaks that do not involve complicated registry changing or even 3rd party software.

Reverting Back to Windows Classic and Disabling Effects

One of the biggest reasons why Windows Vista is such a memory hog is because of the beautiful visuals demonstrated by Windows Vista's Aero theme. Aero such a sight to see with transparent glass effects and nice transitions, but you'll need to let it go so to restore some of your performance. However, the style reverts back to the Windows Classic system that you know so well since the Windows 95 days and knowing how fast Windows 95 was on light systems, this tweak is one of the best Vista tweaks apply first for increasing speed and productivity.

You can go back to Windows Classic by right clicking your desktop and selecting "Personalization. Then select "Theme" and then "Windows Classic" from the drop down. You can also find some other performance increasing options in the "System" component of the classic Control Panel. Just go to "Advanced system settings" and then clicking on the "Advanced" tab. Then click on the "Settings" button under performance and then selecting the "Visual Effects" tab. By clicking on "Adjust for best performance", you deactivate all the transitions in favor of faster performance.

Disabling the Sidebar to Free RAM

Now that your Windows interface is back to the old school, you will still notice small applications running on the right side of your display. These small applications are known as Gadgets and they are situated at an area called the "Windows Sidebar". While these Gadgets are nice eye candy and can be useful for some instances, they eat up quite a bit of RAM.

You can reduce the RAM by simply right-clicking the sidebar and selecting "Properties". Uncheck the option labeled "Start Sidebar when Window starts" and restart your computer.

Turning off System Restore to Restore Disk Space

Now that your desktop environment is clean, your computer should be faster. But if you want to gain even more performance, you can start aiming at the internal background features like "System Restore" and "Indexing". You can turn off "System Restore" by going to the "Backup and Restore Center" found in the classic "Control Panel" and then creating a restore point just to get into the heart of the program. From there, select the "System Protection Tab" and then uncheck all of the hard drives to restore a lot of disk space and improve performance at the expense of recovery solutions.

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These Vista tweaks may be enough for you to embrace Windows Vista as your primary operating system. If that isn't enough, you can always take the easy route and upgrade your RAM instead.

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