Windows Vista got bad press due to its stability issues, but after Microsoft released a few services packs, the operating system became stable, trustworthy and not half bad. If you have a Windows Vista machine in the house and you want give it a performance boost, there are a number of simple ways to do so. Here are our tips to help speed up Vista. 1. Turn off automatic defrag Having a well defragmented disk improves performance, but background defragmenting can slow your machine down temporarily. Vista schedules disk defragmenting by default. However, you may need to use your PC while it's carrying out this task. You can do this, but there'll be a performance hit. If this is likely to be a problem, turn off scheduling by launching Disk Defragmenter, then clearing the box marked 'Run on a schedule (recommended)'
Read the rest here: