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Tips on finding and weeding out system performance hogs, optimizing memory,
and restraining Vista's features will make your system soar.
InformationWeek
January 7, 2008
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3 Get Rid Of Anything You Don't Need.
If there's nothing hogging a lot of CPU or I/O time but the system is still slow, the next thing to do is pare out everything you don't need. This rule is a must if you just took possession of a new, factory set-up PC.
Whenever I get a new machine, my first mission is to remove everything that does not absolutely have to be there -- all the trialware, all the little tray applications that have been shoveled into the computer at the factory, and so on. This is an endemic problem which has not improved much with time, although in the last year or so it's gotten incrementally easier to buy a Windows PC not pre-stuffed with junk.
- DO remove: Trialware, programs you're not likely to use anyway, or applications whose functionality can be replaced by other things that aren't as onerous. If a system ships with Roxio or some other similarly top-heavy CD burning app, I advise the owner to dump it and replace it with ImgBurn or CDBurnerXP, two programs I use myself to excellent effect. They can do the vast majority of what people need a program like Roxio for in the first place, and don't impose anywhere nearly as much of a system load.
- THINK ABOUT removing: Security applications that came pre-loaded with your PC. Some of them slow things down terribly and can be replaced with a free equivalent that is much more lightweight and that only gives you what you need, not what they think you need. Grisoft's free edition of AVG, for instance, is an excellent, lightweight antivirus solution, and it doesn't cost a dime.
- DON'T remove: Applications or drivers that enable hardware or functionality which have no native Vista equivalents. My notebook's touchpad software, for instance, has gestural controls which only work when you install the manufacturer's driver. I like having that feature, so I leave it in, and in this case there are no ill effects.
A key reason why some programs slow things down is not because they use up a lot of memory (although that can happen). It's because they hook into critical parts of the system and force the OS or the shell to wait on the application in question whenever something is invoked. The most prevalent example of this is a program which adds a right-click context menu in Explorer. It's one of the most common places in Windows for a program to add a hook. If the hooking application is badly written, though, the whole shell will seem to hang when you perform a right-click on a file or folder because the app is forcing the shell to wait while it populates that menu.
One way to find out about which programs are doing such things is to use another excellent Sysinternals utility, Autoruns. Run the program (as administrator) and click on the "Explorer" tab to see what shell extensions are installed and might be causing problems. The "Logon" tab is also especially useful, since you can see what might be loading against your wishes. And, like Process Explorer, you can see who manufactured which programs. There's also a menu option (Hide Signed Microsoft Entries under Options) to exclude any Microsoft programs from the list so you can narrow things down to third-party culprits. Any programs that look suspicious or problematic can be unchecked, and later added back in if needed. You can also right-click on any program and run a Web search against the name of the executable. (There's a known bug with the most recent version of Autoruns' Web search and Firefox 2.0, which is currently being examined.) Be sure to reboot after making any changes.
Another fine program you can use to root out badly written shell extensions is Nir Sofer's ShellExView. It's specifically for dealing with shell extensions, though, on the whole, Autoruns is more comprehensive. But it's still tremendously useful for seeing if a given shell extension is a stumbling block without being distracted by toying with other settings.
4 Tune The Vista Search Index
Vista's search system also gets singled out for being slow, or for slowing down the rest of the system, but you don't have to live with that. First of all, ask yourself if you really need it. If you don't use the search service a lot, then by all means turn it off. But if you do want to use the search service, start by checking that the directories being indexed for search (or "crawled") are the ones you actually want to index.
To change the scope of the index, type "Index" in the Start menu search bar and select Indexing Options. Take note of the list of folders in Included Locations; if there's anything being indexed there that you want to change, click Modify -- Show All Locations to bring up a selectable directory tree.
On my system, I have the following folders indexed: my Users directory, my Outlook folders, my music directory (mostly so I can search music metadata without having Windows Media Player running), and some folders on another drive that contains a large number of tagged photos and documents that are synced to my notebook. That covers everything of importance that I need to search, and so the amount of work on the machine's part to keep the index up to date is minimal.
Some general advice for how to set up indexing:
- Don't select an entire drive when you can simply select relevant folders. Unless you're devoting a whole drive to material which is specifically being crawled for indexing, index specific directories. This narrows the scope of the changes that can trigger a crawl.
- Do not index program directories. There generally isn't data in there worth indexing in the first place.
- Be mindful of third-party programs that might repeatedly write data into a crawled directory without you knowing about it, and in turn repeatedly trigger indexing crawls.
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