Sunday, September 6, 2009
Speed Up Vista Slow Network
Windows Vista has been known to cause slow network transfer speeds for some users, most noticeable when copying files across a network that take much longer than before.
Some suggestions that may help users experiencing slow network performance are as follows:
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Increase Menu Speed in Windows Vista
Windows Vista has a built in menu delay setting so that it waits a certain length of time when you hover over a menu item before expanding the further options. For most users this is fine, but power users may find the wait rather annoying and would rather have instant menu opening speeds on mouse over.
A simple registry tweak will allow you to speed up the menu. First load the registry editor by launching regedit from the Run menu (Press WINDOWS KEY + R to access the run menu):
Speed Up Internet Explorer In Windows Vista
It may be possible to speed up the browsing performance of Internet Explorer with some careful tweaking (assuming you already have a reasonably high speed connection, i.e over 512kbps).
Normally Internet Explorer makes use of a maximum of 2 connections to a server when downloading a webpage. For example, this page is made up of a single HTML file, several images and other scripts. All of them are needed to render the page, so Internet Explorer uses 2 connections to download them as quick as possible.
Two connections are used as this is a defined in the HTTP standards, however increasing this limit may speed up some pages made from many elements. This does involve modifying the registry, so should only be attempted if you are confident in doing so (and have appropriate backups).
To start, load the Registry Editor by starting "regedit" from the run box (press WINDOWS KEY + R to load this):
Then browse to the following folder:[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
In the right panel there are two entries called MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server that store the maximum connection values. Double clicking each of them and selecting a decimal value will create a new connection limit. 8 Connections is a sensible limit to see how the performance changes:
Once you have restarted your computer, the new connection limit will be in place. To revert the changes, simply change the connection limit back to 2.
Speed Up Windows Vista Shutdown Process
It is fairly common for Windows Vista to shutdown slowly sometimes, and this can be for a variety of reasons (such as installing updates, crashed applications or driver problems). If this happens more frequently, it indicates that this problem shouldn't be happening and is worth troubleshooting.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Compatibility Mode Make older programs run in Windows XP
If you're having trouble running older programs originally developed for previous versions of Windows, you're not out of luck. Luckily for consumers, Microsoft built Compatibility Mode into XP. Compatibility Mode allows you to run a program using the shell of the original program it was developed for.
Here's how to access a program's Compatibility Mode in XP:
Find the executable or program shortcut icon you'd like to run.
Right-click the icon and select Properties.
Click the Compatibility tab and place a checkmark next to the text labeled "Run this program in compatibility mode."
Select the operating system that the program was originally intended to run on.
You may need to fine-tune the three fields under "Display Settings" if an older program requires 640x480 resolution or 256 colors.
Click Apply.
Try starting the program after making these changes. If it still gives you trouble, try a different operating system. If the program was written for Win95 and worked fine in Win98, there's nothing that says it still won't work fine with Win98.
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