Speed up your computer by optimizing your computer’s appearance in Windows Vista

For the many out there that are running Windows Vista with 512MB RAM and are left helpless without video card driver support, optimizing your computer’s appearance can mean the difference between a slow and a fast computer. I have just recently switched to Windows Classic and it cut down loading certain windows from 3-8 seconds to 1-3 (Yes my PC is really slow.)

Windows Classic has always been a popular theme for gamers because it gives a great performance boost to your computer. Your computer doesn’t have to spend it’s resources on those fancy taskbars and animations, and can focus on giving you power. But not everyone likes the lifeless Windows Classic theme. So in this guide, we’ll go through how to switch to Windows Classic AND how to optimize your computer so it can speed up while maintaining the whole Windows Aero feeling.

Switching to the Windows Classic theme:

Switching from Windows Aero to Windows Classic is really easy. Just right click on an area of empty space on your desktop, and choose properties. Then click on theme.
Once you’re at the theme properties window, open the drop-down menu and select Windows Classic to get your new theme.

Optimizing the Windows theme without losing the Aero skin:

First, we need to navigate to your computer’s performance options:

Start > Right click on Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings

Once you’re at the System Properties window, click on Settings under Performance.
Here, you’ll be able to customize your computer’s appearance element by element.

I do not recommend using the “Adjust for best performance / appearance” buttons there since they either select or deselect all the options. Disabling some of these may become an inconvenience to you later on. For the most part, the settings you use depend on your preferences. But I’ll try my best to give a guideline.

Before you read on, here’s a list of what you might not want to touch:

- Show thumbnails instead of icons:
(If you have a lot of images, you already know why)

- Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop:
(If you disable this, you won’t be able to see the names of your desktop icons, unless you have a really dark or black wallpaper.)

- Smooth edges of screen fonts:
(Personally, this really makes computing easy for the eyes. If it doesn’t matter to you, you can disable it)

Appearance Freak:
For the ones who really care about how their computers look, disable:
- Show translucent selection rectangle (this made no difference on my PC)
- Fade or slide menus into view
- Fade out menu items after clicking
- Slide taskbar buttons
- Use a background image for each folder type

I want to maintain Aero’s visual appearance, but don’t care about the rest, disable:
- Animate controls and elements inside Windows
- Animate windows when minimizing or maximizing
- Anything that has to do with fading or sliding
- Show translucent selection rectangle (this made no difference on my PC)
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Slide open combo boxes
- Slide taskbar buttons
- Fade or slide menus into view
- Fade out menu items after clicking
- Slide taskbar buttons
- Use a background image for each folder type

Miscellaneous:
- Show preview and filters in a folder:
(I’ve noticed that if you leave this on, the process of the program required to run this particular file will be ran in order to preview this file. Leaving this on will be a strain on performance, but could be less inconvenient)

If you’re curious as to how I have my computer set up, this is what I have enabled:

- Show preview and filters in folder
- Show thumbnails instead of icons
- Smooth edges of screen fonts
- Smooth-scroll list boxes
- Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

And these are my specs:
CPU: P4 3.2 GhZ w/ 2MB L2 cache
Motherboard: Asus P5P800
RAM: 512MB DDR
Video Card: Unsupported in Vista (ATI Radeon 9200 SE)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Desktop Customization, Tips and Tweaks, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.