Every once in a while, we will post a quick tip on how to tweak Windows Vista. Whether you think it’s worth upgrading from XP at this point or not, chances are you will eventually do it (if you ever want to enjoy DX10 when the time comes, you won’t have a choice). So be sure to check out some of these tweaks!
Our first tweak involves the new Power Management section of the Control Panel. At first I thought it was just a way to control when to put the monitor in sleep mode, etc, so I just set it to “Maximum Performance”. However, I noticed that my CPU was always at 100% clock speed. I looked into it, and there are actually plenty of advanced settings to choose from in this cool new control panel. Whether your goal is the fastest PC possible, or the quietest PC possible, there are several options you should look at.
The most important of these has to be the option titled “Processor power management”. With this setting, you can choose the CPU’s minimum and maximum clock speed. So you can have it running at 100% clock speed all the time, or even underclock it, only allowing it to reach whatever clock speed you want. This is a great benefit to HTPC owners trying to tweak the last bit of silence possible. If you are finding that your CPU is reaching temperatures that are just a little too high under load, set the maximum rate to something a bit lower than 100%. Eventually, you may be able to get it to the point where the CPU fan seldom ramps up to the next speed. Nifty!
Another cool new option I came across in here is the Adaptive Display setting. Have you ever found that if you set your monitor to go to sleep mode at a certain time, it always seems to fall asleep at just the wrong time? With this setting enabled, Windows Vista will ‘learn’ when is the best time to put the monitor into sleep mode.
To get into Power Options… Hey, this is Vista! Just click “Start” (well, what used to be called Start) and type in “power” and it will show up. Otherwise, look for it in the Control Panel.
I’m sure we’ll find more and more new features in Vista that aren’t necessarily highly documented, but make it an overall better OS than XP.
OK, thank god I found this… my normally silent Dell 700m was buzzing away constantly and driving me nuts… The minimum processor state was set at 100%, I put it down to 50% and instantly, the fan shut up and the temperature on the keyboard dropped quickly afterwards. Many thanks
why when i put it in the sleep mode machine powers back up after say 5 minutes driving me nuts is it the wirelesss keyboard and mousesensitive to vibration desk is in basement on concrete floor i have even moved mouse way out of range so it couldnt read and it still powered up all nite also having problem with windows mail i forgot sign in and password for windows live or something happening ther would like to fix also came with nortons security 3 months free what a nitemare shows subscription expired 1 day after launch what kind of garbage is norton
you need to go into devce manager to change one of these is powering it back up i had same problem
“…what kind of garbage is norton”
It’s hideously huge bloatware that slows down your PC garbage. Chuck Norton (and Symantec) products out the window.
Get Spybot Search and Destroy for protection from malware and Grisoft AVG Free for protection from viruses. For added malware protection, use the free version of AdAware 2007.
Spybot is 100% free, including active, realtime protection. To get the realtime protection from AdAware, you gotta pay. I just use it to scan manually after doing a scan with Spybot. AdAware usually finds a few tracking cookies Spybot missed.
The best thing about Spybot and AVG is they don’t use the heaping gobs of RAM and drive space Norton and Symantec software does, nor are they CPU hogs. Nor do they force you to slowly click three times just to get a folder selected.
With AVG, just selecting an .exe file will quietly and SPEEDILY scan it for viruses. If you download a file with a virus, AVG will find it and offer to delete the file or move it to the vault.
For defragging, I like O&O Defrag. It’s not freeware but IMHO it’s far better than Diskkeeper or anything else available.
BIZZYBODY thats a great concoctoun you have there i actually wan’t ahead and bought avg….and i usto use
i usto use adware it’s awesome till i tryed something new and better a fiew months ago (like5) it’s called thretfire(free) it has better deffinitions and i never know it’s running till it actually catches something avd misses.
also …ABP! (free) is a must for me it has malware options that is always updated and also adding more than one subscriptions is a must for abp(requires FF or MAXTHON browserbtw maxthon is awesome too) free malware starts at the browser and if it never loads you never get it
another great tool for speeding up the computer is GLARRY UTILITYS (free) it has a suit of programs in a nice interface
for DEFRAG i stumbled across yet another free tool that should cost money called
DEFRAGGLER it has everything and more
norton i also agree that norton is crap..theoretically it should work great… but …it’s too mainstreem and everyone’s writing viruses for it