Speed Up Vista: Adjust Your Power Settings

Windows Vista's hibernation service typically runs in the background, and tends to use up quite a large amount of your system resources. It is automatically enabled on a laptop computer. If you do not use it on a regular basis, you can disable it to boost your Vista system's performance. Here's how to disable the Hibernate feature: :

1. Click on the Vista Orb to open the Start menu.
2. Open your Control Panel, and then Power Options.
3. Click on Change Plan Settings
4. Click Change Advanced Power Settings.
5. Now, expand the Sleep selection, and then expand Hibernate After.
6. Adjust the selector all the way down to zero.
7. Click Apply. And you are done!

Quick Note

Having hibernation enabled does in itself slow down system performance, but rather it takes up valuable disk space that could otherwise be used for other purposes.

Vista comes with a new power state called Sleep, which you can use to speed up your computer's transitions between On and Off states. Sleep combines the benefits of the Hibernate and Standby states. Using this feature, you can quickly and securely turn off Vista, yet ensure that it will restart in less than 3 seconds.

Vista is equipped with a new feature that enables you to choose the power level at which your system utilizes CPU processing power. You can choose between three pre-configured power settings: Balanced, Power Saver and High Performance modes. By default, Vista is installed in either the Balanced mode (on portable PCs) or Power Saver mode. You can improve performance and speed up your system by manually changing the power mode to High Performance either temporarily or permanently. This comes in handy to adjust battery usage for portable PCs. Here’s how:

Manually Adjust to the "High Performance" Power Plan

1. Click on the Vista Orb to open the Start menu.
2. Type Power Options into the Start Search text box.
3. Click on Power Options in the Programs list.
4. Provide a password or confirmation if prompted to.
5. Click on High performance.

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Available Power Options:

• Balanced
  • Places equal priority on both performance and energy savings
• Power Saver
  • Places priority on energy conservation, sacrificing performance
• High Performance
  • Places priority on optimal performance, sacrificing energy conservation

Quick Tip

You can also access the Power Options command by right-clicking on the battery icon in your system tray.