42. Disable hibernate on desktops

If you've got a desktop that's on most of the time, doing large amounts of non-critical applications in the background (read downloading), you probably want to disable the hibernation and hybrid-sleep functions of Vista. Doing so will save you a chunk of disk space the size of your physical RAM.

To turn off hibernation in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start menu' and type 'cmd' in the search bar but do not press Enter. Right click on the 'cmd' shortcut where it appears in the search results and choose 'run as administrator'.

In the command prompt, type 'powercfg h off'.

43. Stop scheduled disk defragmentation

Microsoft has considerably simplified the disk defragmentation interface in Windows Vista, and made it an automatic process, figuring (probably accurately) that 99% of their user base does not know what disk defragmentation is and would not do it anyhow.

By default, Windows Vista will run a disk defragmentation process (essentially making sure that all the files on your drive occupy contiguous drive space and are not scattered all over the surface of the physical disk) every Wednesday morning at 1AM. If you happen to be up gaming at 1AM on Wednesday morning, this will play havoc with your frame rates. It's probably better to disable the automatic defragmentation process and do it manually once every 3-6 months.

To disable automatic disk defragmentation in Windows Vista:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'defrag' in the search bar. Hit 'Enter'.

Uncheck the 'run on a schedule' check box.

Click 'ok'.

44. Move the Vista paging file for better performance

The page file is an area of hard disk space reserved by Windows for use as additional memory. By default, Windows manages and resizes this file dynamically to suit its needs. Vista does a very good job of optimizing the page file on its own, but there is one tweak you may be able to make which will considerably increase its performance. If you have more than one physical hard disk drive installed in your computer, you can move the page file onto the physical drive that does NOT have Windows Vista installed on it. Since most page file hits are related to Windows system operations, this will considerably reduce disk access on your OS drive, speeding everything up.

To move the Windows Vista Page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.

Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'

Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'

Uncheck the 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' checkbox.

In the window that shows the list of partitions (C:, D:, etc.) choose a partition that resides on the physical hard drive that does not have Windows installed and highlight it. Select the 'system managed size' option then click the 'set' button. This will create a paging file on the hard disk in question.

You will notice that the 'paging file size' for the highlighted drive now reads 'system managed'

Now highlight your C: partition (assuming that this is where Windows Vista is installed). Select the 'no paging file' option and click 'set'.

Your paging file has now been offloaded.