Now, all new PCs come with Windows Vista. They no longer come with XP. As many people know, Vista is a RAM hog, especially Vista Ultimate. All that means is just that it is really, really slow. Most computer people will tell you that in order to enjoy the speed of Vista, you need 2-3Gb of RAM. My XP computer was very fast with just 512Mb of RAM. This instructable is going to talk about how to "tweak" Vista to make it faster. Everything in this instructable is risk free so you dont have to worry about getting the BSOD

Step 1: Disable Transparency

Right click your desktop
Select Personalize
Choose Windows Color And Appearance
Uncheck Enable Transparency
Click OK

Step 2: Disable the Animation for Minimizing and Maximizing Windows

Go to Control Panel
Click System and Maintenance
Select Performance Information and Tools
Click Advanced Tools
Click Adjust The Appearance and Performance of Windows
Uncheck all of them except for Use Visual Styles on Windows and Buttons

Step 3: Power Options

Go back to System and Maintenance
Select Power Options
Select High Performance

Step 4: A Few Tips

CCleaner is very good program for keeping your computer running fast. It fixes registry and cleans unwanted files. It can be obtained herehere.
Registry Cleaner also works well for this.

Another thing is viruses. Vista is very secure but you always need to be conscience of what your downloading. Websites that have Keygens, Cracks, or Serials are usually dangerous. I recommend AVG because it is the best. It finds all the kinds of Viruses. Most hackers are trying to break in through Norton because many people have it. It also comes on most computers. I reccomend buying AVG because the freeware version finds things but is not always able to clean them. Also, even though AVG gets spyware, I like Spyware Doctor or Spysweeper just in case. The freeware version of spyware doctor is herehere.

Defragmenting every now and then isn't a bad idea. Also, disk clean up helps. These can help you if you have limited disk space as CCleaner does.

Last but not least, always update your computer. This will patch problems and improve your security.

Step 5: Smaller Versions of Vista

Vista the OS is very big. The most helpful thing that sped up my Vista was a program called Vlite. This is a very simple and helpful program to cut out unwanted components in Vista. For example, the special computer accommodations for blind people. Not many people need these. All you need to do is extract a copy of any version of Vista to a folder. In Vlite select that folder and it will give you options. You can preintegrate hotfixes, drivers or files so you already have them after installing Vista. You can set setting so you don't have to after installation. Once your done, it will make that folder into an .iso for you, so you can burn it and boot from the disk. Or mount it with PowerISO. I will probably post more detailed instructions later but that is another instructable. Here is the freeware: http://www.vlite.net/index.html http://www.vlite.net/index.html

Important: You will need to obtain an authentic/genuine version of vista to do this. AKA a Clean version. Those dumb recovery discs that they gave you won't work. Microsoft has encrypted them.

Always remember to test your new Vista as a virtual machine just to check that you didn't screw anything up.