Windows Vista Tips and Tricks

Post by **GORDON** » Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:42 pm

On a desktop PC I went into Vista's power settings to change the power-down time for the monitor. I noticed that, like with a laptop, there were settings for "high performance, balanced, and power saver" power modes. It was defaulted to balanced.

I wonder how much CPU percentage I got back by turning it up to high performance.

Post by **TheCatt** » Sat Jan 16, 2010 8:35 pm

Not much, that mostly affects how quickly things power down, not what happens when under use.

Post by **GORDON** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:14 pm

Had an interesting issue with Vista only detecting one of my CPU cores in my quad core CPU... here's how I fixed it:

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-i....on.html

In case that page disappears:

1 CPU detected in dual core system. -Solution

Background:
After reinstall of VISTA Ultimate the experience index has dropped from 5.3
to 4.4 with the CPU giving a lower score than previously. The task manager
only shows one pane for CPU performance in place of the 2 shown previously.
The processor is reported correctly as Intel core 2 CPU 6600 at 2.40 GHz in
Control Panel\System and Maintenance\System. The mother board is a Asus P5K.

Solution in this case:

There seems to be a number of causes that prevent VISTA seeing both cores. I
don't understand the reason that the following works so an explanation from
someone would be helpfull.

Start>Start Search>msconfig
Boot Tab
Advanced Button
The startup number of processors was set to 1 and could not be changed
Unchecked the number of processors checkbox
Check Detect HAL box
Click Apply and Reboot
After reboot the number of detected cores were 2

(Checked with Intel Utility that it detected 2 also task manager now showed
2 and windows experiance index increased from 4.4 to 5.3)

Unchecked detect HAL and selected 2 as number of processors.

Checked make all boot settings permanent under Boot tab.

Reboot

Now BIOS also reports 2 cores instead of previous 1.

Quick, easy, and worked.

The issue appeared when I had some strange bug a few weeks ago and couldn't boot, and all I could do was "Repair this Windows Install" (I didn't have a recent backup of data so didn't want to do a complete wipe and install). Windows reinstalled, saved my old windows file, but the machine didn't seen to be running right. My CPU performance rating even dropped from 5.9 to 4.4. I was thinking I had a mobo glitch or something. Then today, after a few weeks, I had a hunch and looked at my ctl-alt-delete/performance settings... only saw one CPU core in there. Did a little googling tonight, and found the fix.

Edited By GORDON on 1295324330

Post by **GORDON** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:39 pm

And ha, I must say I am very pleased with how much snappier the system is. Or, seems to be after 3 weeks chugging on a single core, anyway.

Hell, this is the issue that got me to messing with ReadyBoost.

Post by **GORDON** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 2:49 pm

I just turned my former Vista "Production" machine into my new file server, and didn't bother reloading it because that is a pain to load all the drivers for the 3 year old hardware and really the Vista load was working just fine. I just uninstalled all the games and extraneous hardware, and it is working great.

Anyway, I installed the server SATA drive with all my files on it, which used to be on an XP machine, on which it was easy to map a drive. Not so, with Vista.

But here is how I did it:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch....n_vista

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum....ta.html

I ended up using bits and pieces from both of those tutorials to make it work. I am making a note of them here in case I ever need to do it again.

Post by **GORDON** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 4:11 pm

I think I am going to unpin this topic. I managed to get rid of the last computer infected with Vista in my house, and I hope I never have to think about it again.

Objections?

Post by **Leisher** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 4:24 pm

No. This next year we'll probably be starting a Windows 10 version.