Here is some of the Optimizing Vista tips which i came across on Windows Operating System Hope it will help u all toooo..

Tweak Windows Vista’s Indexing Options

Windows Vista works in the background to automatically index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders and files setup for offline access by default. If you have many files in these locations and the files change often, the indexing service may slow down your system’s performance. Unlike Windows XP, Vista now allows you to easily tweak the indexing service following the steps below. It is recommended that you disable indexing for the other locations other than the Start Menu for maximum performance. Bear in mind that while this tweak speeds up your overall system performance, it will also slow you down when searching for files in those locations.
1. Click on the Start Button and enter Indexing Options. Hit Enter and the Indexing Options should load.
2. Click on the Modify button, followed by Show all locations.
3. Scroll through the tree-view and uncheck all options except the Start Menu. Hit OK.

Speed-Up Windows Vista’s Start Menu Search

When you perform a search using the search box in the start panel, Windows Vista automatically searches the file index as well. The file index can be quite large because it includes all the files on your hard drive. One way to speed-up searching in your Start Menu applications is to narrow the scope of the search so that it does not include files on the hard drive:

Method 1: Registry Hack

1. Open registry editor using regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer and select Advanced.
3. Find and right-click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify.
4. Set the Value to 0.
5. Restart the Explorer.exe process or reboot the computer.

Method 2: Start Button

1. Right-click on the Start Button and select Properties.
2. Click on the Customize button.
3. Uncheck Search Communications.
4. Set Search Files to Don’t Search for files.
5. Click OK.

Increase SATA Disk Drive Performance

You can squeeze a more performance out of your SATA hard disk drive by enabling write caching. The price though, is an increased risk for data loss/corruption should you experienced a power loss - this risk is less in a laptop because of its battery:
1. Click on the Start Button, enter Device Manager and hit Enter.
2. Expand Disk Drives.
3. Right-click on your hard disk drive and select Properties.
4. On the Policies tab, check Enable Advanced Performance.
5. Click OK and close Device Manager.

Speed-up Windows Vista’s Aero

Windows Vista is a step-up in terms of eye candy but it can slow your system down a bit. There are 2 things you can do to speed-up the Aero interface in Windows Vista:

Method 1: Disable Transparent Glass Effect

1. Click on the Desktop and select Personalize.
2. Select Windows Color And Appearance.
3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

Method 2: Disable Windows Minimize/Maximize Animation

1. Click on the Start Menu, enter SystemPropertiesPerformance and hit Enter.
2. On the Visual Effects tab, uncheck Animate Windows When Minimizing/Maximizing.
3. Click OK.

Speed-up Windows Vista’s Aero

Windows Vista is a step-up in terms of eye candy but it can slow your system down a bit. There are 2 things you can do to speed-up the Aero interface in Windows Vista:

Method 1: Disable Transparent Glass Effect

1. Click on the Desktop and select Personalize.
2. Select Windows Color And Appearance.
3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

Method 2: Disable Windows Minimize/Maximize Animation

1. Click on the Start Menu, enter SystemPropertiesPerformance and hit Enter.
2. On the Visual Effects tab, uncheck Animate Windows When Minimizing/Maximizing.
3. Click OK.

Stop Applications That Auto-start On Startup

There are 2 ways to stop applications that auto-start when you login to Windows Vista. You can either use the System Configuration Utility or the new Software Explorer in Windows Defender:

Method 1: System Configuration Utility

1. Click on the Start Button, enter msconfig and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Startup tab.
3. Uncheck items that you do want to auto-start and click OK.

Method 2: Windows Defender

1. Click on the Start Button, enter Windows Defender and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Tools from the top menu bar.
3. Click on Software Explorer and select Show for All Users.
4. Select an application to either Remove or Disable.

You may think that these commands are not usefull but mind it if you start doing some work through these commands you will love to do simple tasks with the commands only.

SHIFT - Shifts the position of replaceable parameters in batch files.
SHUTDOWN - Allows proper local or remote shutdown of machine.
SORT - Sorts input.
START - Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.
SUBST - Associates a path with a drive letter.
SYSTEMINFO - Displays machine specific properties and configuration.
TASKKILL - Kill or stop a running process or application.
TASKLIST - Displays all currently running tasks including services.
TIME - Displays or sets the system time.

If you want to know the complete functionality provided by these commands type these “command name ?” at the command prompt.

If you want to know some exclusive commands for vista leave a comment here.

I was setting a friends new toshiba laptop up as a Digital Audio Workstation, it's not supposed to get on the internet at all

http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php

I went past a lot of this, the way system restore was set up on a 250 gig hard drive was rediculous. 40 gigs of restore points was excessive to say the least.

There's talk of getting back to basics and workstation functionality with the next OS, I hope so, as optimizing Vista is way too time consuming.

DaChew....If you want to reduce system restore space in Vista, look here how (If you hadn't already found out)

Link

Regards Abydos

I tried that and it didn't work, I suspect some changes in vista have been made? Thru trial and error I killed 2 birds with one stone by turning off system restore then shrinking the system partition down to 35 gigs and freeing up 200+ gigs for a data partition.
System restore is now limited to 5 gigs

Never thought at that myself. I don't have Vista, and proably won't until its up and running seamless.

Is it 'cus Vista automatically sets aside a certain percentage of the partition space to system-restore??

Regards Abydos

Hi You are Right Aby..

Vista Itself occupies by default some of the space for backup jobs....

And thats why they provide some of the features such as Undoing or Recovering the files from last saver ... and many more such features...

The default seems to be 15% of the system partition, no matter how big it is? that's 150 gigs on a TB drive?
Gone is the slider from XP, not sure why tho? When I first tried to shrink the 200+ system partition it would only let me go down to 100 gigs with system restore turned on, I had already wiped out old restore points and made a new one. It's probably the worst bug I encountered.

15% !!? Wow, thats excessive......