Comments on: HOWTO: Speed up XP and Vista, reclaim disk space, tweak performance

By: Windows Vista Google Alerts for 25 April 2008 | WindowsObserver.com

Windows Vista Google Alerts for 25 April 2008 | WindowsObserver.com — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:23:02 +0000

[...] HOWTO: Speed up XP and Vista, reclaim disk space, tweak performanceBy Rahul On Windows XP, System Restore is located in Control Panel -> System -> System Restore. Select the “Turn off System Restore on all drives” option. On Windows Vista, navigate to Control Panel -> System. Click on “Advanced System Settings” …Rahul Gaitonde – http://www.rahulgaitonde.org [...]

By: Yekway

Yekway — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:35:24 +0000

Great tips and very useful for ppl like myself who need to have info like this….

Keep up the good work!

By: nk3371

nk3371 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:48:21 +0000

that CCleaner really awesome…
get a 1.4Gb back for my C drive…

By: Sushil

Sushil — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:04:40 +0000

Good guide, it covers almost everything that i do. Except for the WinDirStat utility. Since i check the decrease in disk space after installing any software, things like MSOcache are not an issue.

I would like to add a point. Like the username/local settings/temp in XP, which regularly accumulates junk…Vista too has a User Temp folder. Which is accessible by typing “%temp%” in RUN. CCleaner does the job and its really good (no doubt), but just incase someone avoids such cleaners…like me!

Also, since you have suggested to Turn Off system restore (i too have done that)….you should suggest another backup solution! Its way too risky otherwise!

The following are the options:

-Vista Ultimate’s Complete PC Backup
-Norton Ghost/ Acronis Tru Image (Paid)
-Opensource Disk Imaging Utilities

Sushil.

By: Rahul Gaitonde

Rahul Gaitonde — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:41:48 +0000

Doncerdo, glad you liked the guide.

1.) Re: defrag, I have experienced a perceptible difference while opening files and launching applications whenever I’ve run defrag. Perhaps this is because I have little free space on my C: drive.

2.) Re: Openoffice, it is definitely lighter than Office in terms of occupied disk space, and is speedier than Office 2007 on even slightly older PCs and notebooks. (I’m aware that older releases of OO.org crawled miserably).

3.) There is no bias towards/against any company on this blog.

By: doncerdo

doncerdo — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:44:48 +0000

Good guide, but for the longest time I have yet see a reason to defrag (amount of time it takes vs. the improvement as almost all the time its barely perceptible). My other critisism, since when is Open Office a lite application? Last time I checked it was slower than the historically slowest version of MS Office (2003 and 2007 are probably the fastest and most responsive of all time). Its cool to recommend solutions, but just because one doesn’t like program/company one has to recommend something thats worse.

Cheers

By: Rahul

Rahul — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:03:32 +0000

@Ayaz – will send an email to your Yahoo! account shortly.

By: Ayaz

Ayaz — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:55:13 +0000

Hey Rahul,
I was wondering if you could help me with my problem.
While partitioning my primary hard disk (C) on Windows Vista (Home Premium), I stopped it midway…! Now I have lost the 10GB space that I was trying to partition – It is neither in Drive C/D nor as “Unpartitioned Space”!

Any idea about this?

By: lopez

lopez — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:09:11 +0000

Hi Rahul, I tried demo versions of some of the popular defraggers in the market before settling for Diskeeper.

By: Rahul

Rahul — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:27:46 +0000

Lopez, what boot defragmenter do you use?

By: lopez

lopez — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:18:46 +0000

These are cool tips. Not tried Windirstat. I use CCleaner regularly to cleanout the crap. For defrag i prefer to set it automatically in the background. I also do a boot defrag with my third party defragmenter. it really helps increase the file access speed and smooth performance.