Best feature we used was the screensaver version, how often is your PC idle? well why not make use of that time with a defrag – we also notices huge performance benefits when playing games.

Press Start, right click on Computer, and select Properties, then In the left-hand pane, select Advanced System Settings. 

Click the Advanced tab and under Performance, select Settings. Uncheck ―Automatically Manage Paging File Size for All Drives. 

Select the different physical drive that you want your paging file to now be stored on (e.g. D) and select System managed size and press Set (make sure this is the first partition on the second drive). Select the drive that contains your paging file (usually C), select the Custom Size option, set the original and maximum size, and press Set, Your page file will now need to rebuild on the new drive – this may temporarily slow performance. Note: The reason for keeping around 1GB on the OS drive is because Windows Vista needs still some pagefile space there.

2. Rebuild the Page File

Windows Vista creates a pagefile, which essentially acts as RAM on your hard drive. This page file speeds up access to commonly used programs and becomes fragmented over time. Rebuilding the pagefile eliminates fragmentation; learn how to rebuild the pagefile in this guide.

Press Start, right click on Computer and select Properties. In the left-hand pane, select Advanced System Settings, then Click the Advanced tab and under Performance, select Settings.

Click the Advanced tab and under Virtual Memory, select Change. Uncheck Automatically Manage Paging File Size for All Drives Select the drive that contains your paging file(usually C) and select the Custom size option. Edit the minimum and maximum page file size to 0 and press set

Now restart your computer, once the computer has restarted follow the above steps again but this time set the page file to System managed size and press Set

Press OK to save and after a brief period of sluggishness, while the computer rebuilds the page file, you should notice improved speeds.

3. Move Search Index to a Different Physical Drive

If you have more than one physical drive in your computer, this guide is for you. The search index can take a considerable toll on your system drive; by moving the index to a separate drive, you can increase overall performance. To move your search index, do the following:

Press Start, type index in the search bar and press Enter. Press the Advanced button, Press Select new at the bottom and select a new location on a different physical hard drive

Press OK Your search index will now need to rebuild, which may temporarily slow performance.

4. Disable Superfetch to Save Memory

Windows Vista Superfetch learns your typical activities with files and application access. By learning, it predicts your computer use actions and puts your most commonly used applications in memory. This is great if you have a lot of RAM, but if you have less than 2GB, I suggest you disable this feature — saving you from sluggish computer use. 

Please Note: Even with less than 2GB of ram, you may find this doesn’t help. If you notice no difference after a day or two, then you can probably re-enable Superfetch.

To disable Superfetch, do the following:

1. Press Start, type services in the search bar and press Enter

2. Locate Superfetch in the list of services, right click it, and select properties

3. Change the Startup Type dropdown box to disabled and click the stop button

4. Now click OK Please remember, this will only help if you have less than 2GB of RAM.

5. Disable “Last Accessed” File Attribute

Every time you access a file on your computer, a Last Accessed file attribute is updated. You will likely not need this, so you can remove some overhead by following this guide.

1. Press Start, type regedit in the search bar and press Enter (or press Winkey+R)

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

3. Update the value of NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate to 1

4. To undo this change, simply change the value back to 0 

In order for this to take effect, you may need to restart your system.

6. Make Windows Shut Down Faster

Decrease the time it takes for Windows to shut down by doing the following:

1. Click the start button and type regedit in the search bar

2. Hit the enter key

3. You will see a screen like the one below. Find your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control in the left menu

4. In the right window you will see a key called WaitToKillServiceTimeout, with a default value of 20000 (20 seconds.)

5. Right click on the key and select Modify

6. Change the value from 20000 to 5000

This can potentially reduce your shut down time by 15 seconds.

Please note: Its not advised to set this value to less than five seconds.

Once you have chosen your start up items they become disabled, but sometimes these programs can be quite stubborn and re-enable them selves – especially Ad-Ware or Malware

This is where MSConfig Clean up helps it removes the items from msconfig so that they wont start again, it also gives you a bit more info about the start up program

MSConfig

MSConfig would be a perfect startup manager, if it allowed you not only to disable items, but to delete them forever. Unfortunately it does not do that. This is where MSConfig Cleanup comes in! It scans the startup configurations and allows you to remove any item that has been previously disabled via MSConfig.

This is another great application and can be downloaded here

CCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimisation, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run).

CCleaner main program

Download here