More netbook optimization tips for Firefox

I’ve been using the suggestions in the following article on several XP machines and a Windows 7RC machine (my Beta Box) as well as my EeePC running XP Home with good results. It’s all Windows tuning. Some of the features that are turned off or disabled may be needed for specific business applications. Anything done can be undone (nothing is deleted) but save the article in case you can’t get back to this website. With the end of Vista, the article is getting hard to find, but the methods work on XP, Vista and Window7. The article was first found on an HP Mini-Note site.

Of course, running CCleaner and Defraggler regularly help too (Defragging isn’t recommended for Solid State Drives, but it works fine. Nothing lasts forever.)
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Mini-Note Vista Optimization Guide

If you decide to stick it out and run with Vista on your Mini-Note you might want to run this guide to get the most out of your HP 2133. First we’ll go over what you can do to decrease Vista’s boot time and then some general optimization tips.
Optimizing Vista’s Boot Time on the Mini-Note

Disable the High-res Vista Boot Screen

Shutting off Vista’s high-resolution boot screen can save some precious time and your laptop up and running a little quicker. To disable the boot screen:

* Click the Start button
* Type in “msconfig” in the search box and hit enter
* Select the Boot tab
* Then check the “No GUI Boot” check box

Decrease the Time Spent on the OS Options Screen

For some reason Vista spends 30 seconds displaying the various Vista configs before loading the operating system. Obviously decreasing this time will speed things up a lot

* Right click on the My Computer icon (should be on your Desktop or your Start menu)
* Go to Properties > Advanced System settings, and a new window will open
* Click on the Advanced Tab, and then under Start and Recovery click on Settings
* You can either uncheck the “Time to display list of operating systems” or you can set it’s time to something lower if you plan on multi-booting.

General Vista Optimization Tips

Turn off Vista Search Indexing Service

Unless you’re going to be searching through your files *a lot* this isn’t worth the performance hit on these little mini-notes. To disable the service:

* Click the Start button
* Type in “Services” in the search box, then hit enter
* In the Services window, find where is says “Windows Search” and double click it
* Set “Startup Type” to “Disabled”
* Click the “Stop” button and the OK once the service is stopped

Turn off Aero

If you’re running Aero, turning it off can save a lot cpu and memory.

* Click on Start and then Control Panel
* Click on Appearance and Personalization
* Under Personalization, click on “Change the color scheme”
* In the Color scheme select box, choose “Windows Vista Basic”. — You can also choose “Windows Standard” for a Win2k interface.
* Click OK and after some thinking, Vista will change it’s theme

Remove Extra Junk

Vista installs a lot stuff you just don’t need when it’s first setup. To turn some of it off:

* Click on Start and then Control Panel
* Click on Uninstall a Program, which will launch Vista’s Uninstall or Change program window.
* In the Task pane over on the left, click on Turn Windows Features on or Off
* A list of features will show up which you can go through and disable what you don’t need by unchecking the box next to it.
* Click OK when you’re done!

Also back in the Services menu we can disable a few things there:

* Click the Start button
* Type in “Services” in the search box, then hit enter
* Look through your list and disable the following by double clicking, changing Startup Type to Disabled and clicking the stop button:
o Computer Browser
o Distributed Link Tracking Client
o IKE and AuthIP IP Keying Modules
o Offline Files
o Remote Registry
o Tablet PC Input Service (unless you’re using a tablet PC)
o Windows Error Reporting

That’s just a few basic things… don’t go randomly disabling things in there as you can really mess your computer up and it will no longer boot!

Use ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost caches disks reads and can help improve performance. You can get a high performance SD card (10MB/s read 9MB/s write, or you can use a usb key) and just leave it in your onboard card reader for a boost!

* First get your SD card or USB key. It should preferably be the size of your RAM, but the max size it currently works with is 4GB
* Plug in your flash media, and Vista should ask you if you want to use it as a ReadyBoost drive.
* Set how much space you want Vista to use and click OK.