Wondering how to speed up Windows Vista? You can actually do yourselves a favor by doing some DIY system maintenance. Not to worry, the measures discussed here do not require you to be a geek. They are pretty straight forward. Many times, by applying just half of the measures you will see noticeable results. Let’s look at how to speed up Windows Vista.

- Clean up junks in your hard disk.

The first thing you can look at is the temporary files that have been created by browsers and software programs that were left untouched and unnoticed. However, to look for them one by one and clear them will be too much hassle. For this task, you can engage the help of a free tool known as CCleaner. Just do a search on Google and you can find it easily.

- Turn off Vista features that you do not need.

When Vista is loaded, the operating system comes with all kinds of features that is enabled based on the assumptions or marketing reasons. These inevitably load your system with unnecessary computing overheads. Go to control panel and click on “Uninstall/Change a Program”. On the task pane in the left, click on “Turn Windows features on or off”. Go through the list and uncheck any feature that you want to disable. Hover your mouse over the feature to find out what it actually does. Part of knowing how to speed up Windows Vista is to know what you need and what you don’t and that defers from user to user.

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The definition of an Operating System is “the software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs (Britannica, 2008)”. Each new computer brought home from the store already has an operating system installed and ready to use, but it wasn’t always this way.

When Personal Home Computers (PC’s) were first introduced in the early 1980’s, they didn’t have an operating system; most didn’t even have a hard drive! These early PC’s needed a floppy disk with stored drivers’ n order to get the operating system started. You then had to remove the operating system driver and insert a new floppy that contained the program you needed to work with. This second floppy would not only contain the individual program (word processor, spreadsheet, etc) but all the drivers needed to communicate with the PC as well. This time consuming and frustrating process of switching from floppy to floppy gave birth to the integrated operating system.

An operating system performs many functions; it keeps track of where things are stored on the hard drive, manages each components activity, and allows users to interact with the system by either typing commands on a keyboard or by using a Graphical User Interface (GUI, commonly pronounced gooey).
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Fixing Windows Vista errors is a little different than the older operating systems. You would think by now that Microsoft would have a completely stable operating system that would run error free, but not so. Any version of Windows can and will get errors from time to time.

If you are getting system crashes, blue screens,freezes, general error messages, slow applications or extremely slow boot times here are a few things you can try. If you trouble began after installing a program or new software. The first thing you can try is the go back and restore feature is built into your operating system.

To find that feature on your computer, start by going to your control panel, in the left menu make sure you are in control panel home, and click backup and restore. Click use system restore to undo changes and fix problems. Follow the prompts, and pick a restore point that was created before your problems began. In most cases this will restore your computer and eliminate your errors.
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