{"id":200,"date":"2009-06-24T18:05:29","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T22:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/?p=200"},"modified":"2009-06-24T18:05:29","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T22:05:29","slug":"how-to-make-windows-vista-faster-give-it-a-windows-98-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/2009\/06\/24\/how-to-make-windows-vista-faster-give-it-a-windows-98-look\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Windows Vista Faster: Give it a Windows 98 Look"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I make a living at the computer. I also enjoy doing lots of other things online. So I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. My mind also jumps around really fast and I&#8217;m often doing more than one thing at a time. If my computer can&#8217;t keep up with me, I get really frustrated. I waste a lot of time waiting for Windows to finish &#8220;thinking&#8221; or processing my requests.<\/p>\n<p>And Windows Vista is the worst. Since getting my new Vista machine about a year ago, it&#8217;s given me nothing but headaches &#8212; even after regularly fine-tuning it and scanning for registry and other issues with great apps like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iolo.com\/\">System Mechanic<\/a>. My 5-year-old XP machine typically runs faster, so I often switch to it while Vista is experiencing some performance problem.<\/p>\n<p>That all changed almost instantly today when I happened to discover the profound impact that Windows <strong>Visual Effects<\/strong> can have on the degradation of system performance.<\/p>\n<p>Although they&#8217;re nice to have, I really don&#8217;t care about all the silly Visual Effects like the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Animate controls and elements inside windows<\/li>\n<li>Fade or slide menus into view<\/li>\n<li>Show shadows under mouse pointer<\/li>\n<li>Show translucent selection triangle<\/li>\n<li>Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All these Visual Effects just add up to slowing the performance of your system.<\/p>\n<p>If you really <strong>want Windows Vista to fly and get incredibly fast performance<\/strong> &#8212; to have your computer really live up to the potential of its processor speed &#8212; then disable the Windows Visual Effects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here&#8217;s how to disable the Windows Visual Effects in Vista:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Click the <strong>Start <\/strong>menu.<\/li>\n<li>Type (or copy &amp; paste) <em>systempropertiesadvanced<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Hit <strong>Enter<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Advanced <\/strong>tab of <strong>System Properties <\/strong>displays.<\/li>\n<li>Under the <strong>Performance <\/strong>section, click <strong>Settings<\/strong>:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-214\" title=\"System Properties: Performance\" src=\"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2251.png\" alt=\"System Properties: Performance\" width=\"445\" height=\"496\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2251.png 445w, https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2251-269x300.png 269w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 445px) 100vw, 445px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>On the first tab, <strong>Visual Effects<\/strong>, select the radio button to <strong>Adjust for best performance<\/strong>:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-215\" title=\"Adjust for Best Performance\" src=\"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2252.png\" alt=\"Adjust for Best Performance\" width=\"419\" height=\"569\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2252.png 419w, https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2252-220x300.png 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 419px) 100vw, 419px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>Click <strong>Apply <\/strong>and wait a few minutes while your system adjusts the settings.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>It may look shocking at first &#8212; just like Windows 98, in fact &#8212; but you&#8217;ll notice an immediate boost in speed that, to me, is well worth the sacrifice in aesthetics.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, you can play with re-enabling the various Visual Effects settings, if there are some settings you can&#8217;t live without. For example, if you like seeing photo thumbnails in Windows Explorer, make sure you re-enable the option to <strong>Show thumbnails instead of icons<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>You do lose out on some cool Vista features I&#8217;ve gotten used to, like being able to <strong>Alt-Tab<\/strong> and click your desired application, but I&#8217;m willing to live without that.<\/p>\n<p>And you can still set your display to ClearType after you make this change, too:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Click <strong>Show desktop<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Right-click on your desktop and select <strong>Personalize<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Click <strong>Window Color and Appearance<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Click <strong>Effects <\/strong>and select the checkbox to <strong>Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts<\/strong> (notice my sweet new Windows 98-style window in below screenshot):<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-216\" title=\"ClearType\" src=\"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2250.png\" alt=\"ClearType\" width=\"411\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2250.png 411w, https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/snag-2250-300x122.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>Select <strong>ClearType<\/strong> from the drop-down menu and click <strong>OK<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Enjoy having an insanely fast Windows Vista experience!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note: <\/strong>One issue I noticed after disabling all Visual Effects is that Chrome kept crashing. But installing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/landing\/chrome\/beta\/\">Chrome Beta<\/a> fixed that problem (thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/articulatebrian\">@articulatebrian<\/a>, for that Chrome Beta tip).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I make a living at the computer. I also enjoy doing lots of other things online. So I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. My mind also jumps around really fast and I&#8217;m often doing more than one thing at a time. If my computer can&#8217;t keep up with me, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-os-tips","category-vista","category-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}