vista tips and hacks

8/14/2019 Vista Tips and Hacks

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Don't tell me how to run my network!Once again, Microsoft thinks it can solve all of your problems by being smarter than you are.Unfortunately, some of the "automatic tuning" features of Vista can yield in lower performance(read our article on how SuperFetch may actually decrease performance ).

One of Vista's features tries to change the network's receive window on-the-fly to adapt tochanging network conditions. If you've been experiencing lower network throughput whentransferring large files or experience weird network disconnects, then you can try disablingVista's auto-tuning network feature.

Open a Command Prompt in Administrative Mode. You can do this by typing "cmd" in the StartMenu and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter to execute. You can also do this by right-clicking theCommand Prompt shortcut and selecting "Run as Administrator". You can also read our article on always enabling Administrator mode.

Type " netsh " and press Enter. You are now in the netsh command mode.

Type " int tcp " and press Enter.

Type " set global autotuninglevel=disabled " and press Enter. The command prompt should return "OK".

Type " exit " to return to the normal command prompt.

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After changing this setting you will have to reboot to see if your network troubles are over. You

can always turn this setting back on by repeating these steps but typing " set globalautotuninglevel=normal ".

Change the amount of space usedby System RestoreMon, 03/12/2007 - 15:19 — Ciprian

System Restore is a very useful feature of Windows Vista but it has one maindrawback. After running for a few weeks, it can use a lot of your hard disk space. With thedefault settings turned on, System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk.For example, if you have a 250GB hard disk drive, System Restore might end up using 37,5GBof it. That is a lot of space.

What can we do to limit the amount of space used by System Restore? In Windows XP makingthis kind of configuration was pretty easy. You had a slider in the System Properties window thatyou could move left or right to the desired percentage. Unfortunately this slider was removedfrom Windows Vista.

In order to configure the amount of space used by System Restore, you need to use a tool calledVolume Shadow Copy Administrative Command-Line Tool (or vssadmin.exe).

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To access vssadmin.exe we will have to open the command prompt with administrative rights. Inorder to do that, type "cmd" or "command" in the Start Menu search field. The first result should

be cmd.exe or the Command Prompt . If you have UAC turned on, right click on it and select Runas administrator .

The Command Prompt will open. The Volume Shadow Copy Service offers severalconfiguration option. Type vssadmin /? and press Enter to see the list of available options.

If you want to know how much space has been allocated and the maximum amount of space thatcan be used by System Restore, type vssadmin list shadowstorage and then hit the Enter key.

If you want to change the amount of space used by System Restore, you should use the followingcommand:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive letter]: /For=[drive letter]: /Maxsize=[maximum size]

MaxSizeSpec must be 300MB or greater and accepts the following suffixes: KB (for kilobytes),MB (for megabytes), GB (for gigabytes), TB (for terabytes), PB (for petabytes) and EB (for exabytes). If a suffix is not supplied, MaxSizeSpec is in bytes. If MaxSizeSpec is not specified,then there will be no limit to the amount of space it may use.

For example, if you want System Restore to use a maximum of 1GB of space for the restore points on drive "C:", you should type the following:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1GB



The maximum space used by System Restore has now been resized.

Enable Advanced CachingWe showed you in a previous tip how to increase performance with USB drives in Vista byenabling write caching. By default this option isn't turned on because of the "removable" natureof these devices, so you could lose data if you pull out too quickly (the drive that is... ).

Internal SATA hard drives are alot more "permanent" than USB drives, but Windows Vista doesnot enable advanced write caching by default. You can increase performance of your hard drives

by implementing a little-known feature. You could potentially lose data in a power outage, soeither use a UPS or enable advanced write caching at your own risk.

Regardless of the minor risk involved, you can enjoy better hard drive performance from

Windows Vista by enabling Advanced Write Caching on your SATA devices



This procedure is actually very simple. Open up Device Manager: there are several ways to dothis...

• Right-click on Computer and selecting Manage . Device Manager will be in theComputer Management list on the left

• type " device " in the search dialog of the Start Menu• type " devmgmt.msc " in a Run dialog (Win + R)

Once in Device Manager, open up the Disk drives branch . You will see all of the hard drivescurrently connected to your PC.

Right-click on the hard drive you want to modify, and select Properties .

System Restore is your friendIt sometimes happens that you install some new hardware or program which then wreaks havocon your computer. You may experience unusual program crashes or error messages, and theycan sometimes be difficult to diagnose.

Usually the easiest option is to run System Restore and return your computer to a state prior to

the offending outsider. Sometimes your PC is so messed up that you cannot even get to theSystem Restore program, even in Safe Mode. Now what do you do?



Now you're presented with the familiar System Restore wizard, and can get your PC back to theway it was before everything went to hell.

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Click the Policies tab, and you should see two options: Enable write caching on the disk, andEnable advanced performance (which is probably unchecked). Click the box next to " Enableadvanced performance ", and click OK .

You should repeat the procedure for any other drives you have attached to your system. Again,note that there is some risk involved of data loss, but in reality this isn't a big deal: if the power goes out, then you would have lost that Word document no matter what your drive cache setting.The most likely candidate for unwritten data at any given time is probably virtual memory or other OS-specific information. If you're really concerned about data loss, then you're probablyusing a UPS anyway.

Create a New Partition in Windows VistaWindows Vista makes it very simple to create a second partition on your

hard drive with easy to use and free built in tools.

First you will need to free up some space in the hard drive that you wouldlike the partition to be on. If you feel unsure about how to do this, pleaserefer to my earlier post that covers how to free up space on a hard drivewithout data loss in Windows Vista.

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Lets create a partition with Windows Vista. Right click on the MyComputer icon and select Manage than Disk Management.

Find the drive that you have freed up some space on and right click on thefree space and select New Simple Volume .

In the next wizard box choose the size of the partition. Set it to match theamount of space that you have free or less and than click next.

Now select the Drive Letter that you would like the new partition to becalled and than next.



Format your partition as an NTFS file system and select quick format. Hereyou can also give it it a unique Volume Label if you want than select next.

The partition is formatted and all that left to do is to click finish.

You now have a newly created NTFS Logical partition ready for use. Great Job!



Using a partition for your swap file

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Creating a separate partition for the swap file and modifying the settingfor virtual memory will increase your overall computer performance.

What is virtual memory?

To make things simple, virtual memory is a "necessary evil" present inMicrosoft's Windows since Windows 3.0, back in 1990, and all that youneed to know without getting a headache is that a file on your hard driveis used to store data. This file is called a "swap file" or a "page file".

The swap file is a temporary file created by your operating system to keepdata for later use, and in some situations a well configured virtual memorycan increase your computer performance

Do I really need to change virtual memory settings?

Nobody says that you have to do this, but you'll surely notice theperformance improvement after you do it! Just one more thing - be surethat you don't disable the virtual memory on all your partitions, no matterhow much memory your computer has, because this may lead to someproblems that you don't want to have.

Create a partition for your swap file

First, create a partition . The recommended size for the new partition is 2.5times your RAM size plus 500 Mb(eg: if you have 1GB of RAM the partitionshould have 3 GB)

When slicing your hard drive to create the swap partition, be sure to placeit as close to the first one as possible, because transfer speeds are loweras you go towards the last sectors of the drive.

Modify virtual memory settings

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