Why exactly is Vista so slow?

[PeaceByJesus]

I am a heavy PC user, and one that wants to do what i do quickly, and wonder why Vista can be so slow.

I dual boot with Vista home basic (no Aero) and XP on a Dell e520, 3.06ghz dual core CPU, Intel 2.5GB ram, 965g chipset, integrated vieo/audio, with latest drivers and updates (incldg. SP1), yet Vista is noticeable slower than XP in basic tasks, such as navigating, opening folders (it kind of seems to strain a bit to do so, and initially takes approx. 7 sec. to open up windows Explorer, even though cpu is under 10% or less usage), etc. It is even slower in that area than a my old W98se PC with a 650mhz cpu and 320 ram.

This Vista noticeable slowness is the case right after a clean install with about the same configuration and programs as XP, as well as after trying various tweaks and with unnecessary apps pared down from start up (incldg. without any anti virus, W. defender, and indexing running). Disabling Superfetch and Windows Update helped stop the heavy disk activity you sometimes would get for about 7 minutes upon resume from hibernation, but did not speed up things noticeably.

In the latter quest i also shut off windows Consolidator recently, which is part of the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program i must have agreed to be part of somehow. See good resource here on that)

I can see what is running, and have checked out things to make sure nothing "odd" is in there, and while speed is faster right after boot it still seems to strain just to open a folder, even though (again), CPU level is very low. When multitasking with a resource heavy program like Windows Movie maker running (not encoding) it becomes even more doggy: approx. 4 secs just to open a folder, and 2 secs to switch btwn open windows, even though it shows above 1gb of ram free and cpu usage is under 40%.

I am sure this is partly due to this PC, as a friend of mine has a $400.00 AMD X2 5000+ DUAL CORE - ASUS M2N-MX SE Motherboard - 2GB DDR-2 800MHz on which XP flies much faster than mine, even though he has it loaded with far more start up progs than this one. I am glad to have what i do, but wonder why Vista is so slow on this PC and so many other fairly high end and tweaked PC's

BTW, here is a good resource of How To Make Shortcuts to Control Panel Pages in Vista for tweakers like me: http://www.dailygeeks.com/howto/how-to-mak...pages-in-vista/

Edited October 29, 2008 by PeaceByJesus

[GrofLuigi]

Don't worry, I'm sure many people will be happy to explain that:

1. it isn't slow actually (you're imagining things)

or

2. it's your fault (you haven't installed it on today's equivalent of Cray with RAID array of 100 SSD drives in parallel - you're hanging on to yesterday's hardware - and I mean ACTUAL yesterday).

Just kidding of course.

GL

[spacesurfer]

I am running Vista 64-bit Ultimate on a PC with specs a little lower than yours and 2 GB ram and it's not slow at all. I did remove a lot of crap using vLite on the copy I installed but most of it was crap like languages and manual install files and shouldn't affect the install size.

Check your window experience performance score and see what component gives you the lowest score.

Based on info you have given so far, I can think of two things that might increase your performance: 1) Instead of using the integrated graphics (which is probably eating some of your physical memory), buy a separate graphics card that has at least 256 mb memory (512 mb better), and 2) May want to increase physical but this is a catch 22 because 32-bit OS limits memory to 4 gb (of which only 3 gb will be available for apps).

Okay, now if that doesn't increase performance, it could be that your HDD is failing or not giving you the performance you expect. Is is new? Old? Is is partitioned? If so, how much free space in the OS partition? Is it defragmented?

[PeaceByJesus]

I hear ya. Or maybe the battery is low on my Desktop

[PeaceByJesus]

Thanks for the advice. I realized by now that cpu speed and memory is not the only thing that determines speed. My main 7200rpm HD is onl 18 months old, and just running that one Vista lacks the speed one should expect. I largely suspect it is the integrated video, though many have such on other PC's that must run snappier than this. When you open a folder it does so kind of slowly, with the perimeter coming into view, then about a sec. later the interior comes into view (if also forgets the last widows size if it reduce it). Time to pray about another purchase perhaps.

My ram speed is two 1 gb ddr 667 and one 533 (which is the one that came with the PC ) and i am sure 800 would help somewhat.

Here is the rating for the WEI which is 3.4

Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.06GHz 4.3 3.4

Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 2.50 GB 4.6

Graphics Intel® G965 Express Chipset Family 3.4

Gaming graphics 358 MB Total available graphics memory 3.4

Primary hard disk 16GB Free (39GB Total) 5.7

I just turned off Windows Meeting Space, dfs replication service & remote differential compression (Run: OptionalFeatures.exe) if that would gain anything.

Edited October 22, 2008 by PeaceByJesus

[weEvil]

Yeah. Vista is slower. It shouldn't be a noticeable difference from XP Vanilla except for startup.

Checked the power settings? Vista can throttle down the CPU to reduce consumption.

Re-Enable Superfetch. Its a useful feature. It makes applications start faster, and reduces boot time.

Also, did you enable 2 CPUs boot in msconfig advanced settings?

Worst case scenario you can use Server 2008. Its a little speedier.

Edited October 22, 2008 by brucevangeorge

[Mieklol]

Do you remember the good old days of 2004-2005, and to a lesser extent, 2006? Way back when there were forums bursting of people dismissing XP completely and holding onto Windows 2000 Professional as if it was the elixir of life. It's exactly the same principle, and I mean exactly the same principle. People complained XP was bloated, sluggish, irrelevent, and now look at us, we love it! Can't get enough. Vista is a bit OTT, granted, but in a few years the situation will be the same. The only issue I have with Vista is the one you have brought up, its speed, but if you run it on adequate hardware and give it a couple of weeks tops for it to index stuff and settle down, it speeds up over time rather than slowing like XP does, making it the better operating system.

Anyway, to answer your question: services, DLL hell, UAC, DRM. My beloved S2k8 has all of these, but no DRM, which results in it being about as fast as XP. Vista is far better than XP though.

Of course it doesn't come close to Server 2k8 when configured as a Workstation. Try it.

[weEvil]

Do you remember the good old days of 2004-2005, and to a lesser extent, 2006? Way back when there were forums bursting of people dismissing XP completely and holding onto Windows 2000 Professional as if it was the elixir of life. It's exactly the same principle, and I mean exactly the same principle. People complained XP was bloated, sluggish, irrelevent, and now look at us, we love it! Can't get enough. Vista is a bit OTT, granted, but in a few years the situation will be the same. The only issue I have with Vista is the one you have brought up, its speed, but if you run it on adequate hardware and give it a couple of weeks tops for it to index stuff and settle down, it speeds up over time rather than slowing like XP does, making it the better operating system.

Anyway, to answer your question: services, DLL hell, UAC, DRM. My beloved S2k8 has all of these, but no DRM, which results in it being about as fast as XP. Vista is far better than XP though.

Of course it doesn't come close to Server 2k8 when configured as a Workstation. Try it.

This doesn't excuse anything.

DLL hell has been replaced with WinSXS. Same problem with a small difference.

[PeaceByJesus]

Thanks for the advice. I disabled Superfetch on advice to stop the occasional disk activity described, which many forums discuss (not as many as "why is Vista too slow"), and my problem was that of basic tasks, as in opening folders, navigating - not loading apps. In fact, i recently made a AutoHotKey script that launching 5 apps at once, and all load fine as before.

But i did look under boot and Advanced.. in msconfig, and nothing was checked next to processors, though 1 was greyed out beside number of processors. As this is dual core, and not exactly 2 cpu's, i left it alone. What you you think? And how would i take the governor of the cpu throttle? Thanks and may God bless.

[weEvil]

A dual core is 2 cpus. Its just a strange configuration.

Superfetch will improve app loading time at the cost of spare memory.

Did you enable the advanced settings in device manager for your hard disk?

Edited October 22, 2008 by brucevangeorge

[spacesurfer]

Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.06GHz 4.3 3.4

An Intel Pentium 4 is not exactly a dual core processor as we understand the new Core 2 Duo processor and the Quad processors.

The Pentiums are based on the older chips and run hotter than the more efficient Core 2 Duos. I have a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz process on my older desktop and it runs slower than my Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz because you can't compare CPU speed between the two (not exactly apples to apples).

Regardless, you probably may benefit from vLiting your Vista and get rid of the crap. I have Vista Ultimate on my Pentium Centrino laptop 1.7 GHz (IBM T42) with 768 MB DDR ram and it runs great!!! But it's been vLited to the essentials.

[MagicAndre1981]

Yeah. Vista is slower.

but only if you disable Superpetch

Thanks for the advice. I disabled Superfetch on advice to stop the occasional disk activity described, which many forums discuss (not as many as "why is Vista too slow"),

Re-Enable Superfetch. Its a useful feature. It makes applications start faster

yeah, this is a must have. You should always use superfetch and superfetch isn't the cause for your occasional disk activity

[Tripredacus]

Also, I wouldn't recommend using two different specs in your RAM. Either you are over-clocking one of them, or under-clocking two of them.

[PeaceByJesus]

Hi again.

A dual core is 2 cpus. Its just a strange configuration.

I see. I will try it and get back to you.

Superfetch will improve app loading time at the cost of spare memory.

I have not noticed any real decrease in load times (Vista loads apps ok) but if it save ram - which Vista still should have enough of - i think i can leave it off. I recently moved my page file to it's own partition on the C drive, which did help, and the size is set at 2500, though i know it can be more, but i rarely get below 500mb of ram.

Did you enable the advanced settings in device manager for your hard disk?

They are set at optimal settings in BIOS, and Optimize for Performance in DM, but not Enable write caching.. or Advanced performance. You think that will help much?

Thanks again.

[PeaceByJesus]

I understand what you are saying, and i like Vista for the overall stability, and better Disk and power Management, and have evidence that part or all of the sluggishness of Vista i due to my hardware, and so i appreciate your input.

Anyway, to answer your question: services, DLL hell, UAC, DRM. My beloved S2k8 has all of these, but no DRM, which results in it being about as fast as XP

.

UAC did not last long with me either. At least not in active mode. And as the only account i override it's permissions on files if necessary as well (Unlocker and or TakeOwn.zip). But explain about the effect of DRM upon speed. and an it legally be turned off?

Of course it doesn't come close to Server 2k8 when configured as a Workstation. Try it

Please explain. Thanks