1.Turn off visual effects If Windows is running slowly, you can speed it up by disabling some of its visual effects, such as sliding or fading menus, shadows for mouse pointer and menus, and animations when windows are maximized/minimized, by sacrificing the sake of mere prettiness increased productivity. It comes down to appearance versus performance. Would you rather have Windows run faster or look prettier? If your PC is fast enough, you don't have to make this tradeoff, but if your computer is just barely powerful enough for Windows Vista, it can be useful to scale back on the visual bells and whistles. You can choose which visual effects to turn off, one by one, or you can let Windows choose a bunch for you. There are 20 visual effects you can control, such as the transparent glass look, the way menus open or close, and whether shadows are displayed. *To adjust all visual effects for best performance: 1. Click Start, and then go to Control Panel. See System and Maintenance, select it. See Performance Information and Tools, click it. 2. Click Adjust visual effects. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. 3. Click the Visual Effects tab, click Adjust for best performance, and then click OK.
2.Adjust the Indexing Settings. The index in Windows is designed to keep the traces of the files on your computer in order to speed up the indexing speed. It serves as a location which is used to store information about files, including the file name, any files that you have set up to be available for offline access, user profile folders, date modified, and properties like author, tags, and rating and make searching for files with lightening fast speed instead of looking through your entire hard disk for a file name or file property which allows most results to appear in a small fraction of the time that a search without the index would take. It is not visible, but it is has been integrated by Windows by default to perform fast searches of the most common files on your hard disk. The index is used for making an efficient searching for files with a faster speed. Windows Vista works in the background to automatically index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders and files setup for offline access by default with a fast speed. If you have many files in these locations and the files change often, the indexing service may slow down your system's performance due to the fact that the heavy load of files on the indexing service. Unlike Windows XP, Vista now allows you to easily tweak the indexing service following the steps below. It is recommended that you disable indexing for the other locations other than the Start Menu in order to get maximum performance. Bear in mind that while this adjustment speeds up your will improve overall Windows performance and lessen the background work that your system has to do, it will also slow you down when searching for files in those locations.
If you want more information about how to speed up your PC, you could visit the website:
http://blog.quusoft.com/ways-to-improve-performance-of-windows-vista/