How To Tune Your Windows Vista Operating System For Performance
If you have switched over from XP to Vista you surly will have known by now that Vista is much slower. This lack of speed has to do with Vista dedicating a lot of its resources to trying to “look pretty”. Making the operating system look nice is great and all but when it comes time to actually get some work done it can be a huge problem. In this article I am going to show you two quick ways to make your Vista perform a it faster but you are going to have to be willing to sacrifice some of Vistas looks in order to get more function. Keep in mind that there really is no point in having your computer look really nice since you are the only person that is really going to be seeing it.
If you are using the Home Premium, Enterprise, Business or Ultimate more likely than not you have the Aero effect turned on. This effect is designed to make your computers windows have a glass like effect that looks cool. It also allows you to have Windows Flip 3D which is just a fancy version of the Alt + Tab combination which allows you to cycle through your currently opened programs. If your not sure what the Flip 3D is, just open a few programs, hold down the Windows Button and press the Tab key a few times – that’s Windows Flip 3D. Now hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key a few times – that’s the old way of cycling through your programs. Here’s how to get rid of the Aero effect:
What your going to want to do now is to click Start, click on the Control Panel and then on the left hand side make sure that the Control Panel Home is selected. Now click on Appearance and Personalize, click on the Personalize link, click on the Windows Color and Appearance and at the bottom of the window select “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”. A new window should appear and in this window where it has the Color Scheme drop down box just select Windows Vista Basic. Now click Apply and then OK and this should turn off the Aero effect.
One of the biggest features that Vista has that is pretty much useless is the sidebar. Unless you are actually using the Windows gadgets on the sidebar regularly then its probably best that you get rid of it. It literally serves no purpose to the average user except to make your computers desktop look nice. Here’s the process:Right click on the windows sidebar icon in the System Tray and select the properties option from the drop down menu ( if your not sure what the system tray is, its that little group of icons in the bottom right hand corner). Now, in the Windows Sidebar Properties dialog box uncheck the box that says “Start Sidebar when Windows Starts” and select Apply and then OK. Now just right click on the Windows Sidebar Icon in the system tray again and select Exit.
By doing both of these things you have now freed up your computer of some resources which will allow you to get more work done faster.
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Preventing Malware From Entering Your Computer
Malware is basically any piece of software that enters into your computer without you knowing with the intention of harming your computer. Spyware on the other hand is software that is used to collect personal information on you like your passwords, username and credit card numbers. This is why protecting yourself against both is a very important task that should not be overlooked, but for the purposes of this article were going to focus more on talking about how to protect yourself from malware.
A lot of computers actually have malware on them without the users even knowing about it, and to make matters worse, malware is one of the biggest reasons as to why your computer may be running slowly. If you are concerned about the speed of your computer, you are probably going to want to look into removing the malware from your computer. I personally use 2 different pieces of software to protect myself against malware. One is used to prevent malware from getting into the computer and the other is used to scan and remove malware from my hard drive.
The first main program that I use is called Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (if you are intrested in them, just do a Google search for them). This program is the one that I use to scan my whole computer to try and find any malware infections on the computer and it also removes them. Now, when you have downloaded the program, just perform a full scan so that it look through all of the files on your hard drive to see if they are malware or malware related. Once the scan is done and you want to do another scan in the future, a simple quick scan should work just fine.
The next program that I rely on is called Spyware Blaster (if you are interested just do a Google search for it). This is the program that is used to protect your computer by trying to stop programs from finding their way into your computer. Now, all you have to do is to just install the program on your computer and it will give you full protection. All you have to do once it is installed is to make sure to click on the “Protection Status” button and then select Enable All Protection. There is one big downside to using the free version of this software – you have to manually go in and update it. To update the software, just click on the “Updates” button and then select “Check for Updates”.
I once ran a scan on a users computer and found 270 infected objects. The user had no clue that there was malware running on his computer and was shocked that I was able to show him this report. This is why is it critical that you should run scans on your computer regularly.
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