Suggestion: I'm all for a friendly tweaking now and then but before I will do them I would like to know WHY. You should explain what these things do by default and what the result will be of performing the tweak.

Well said.

Giving descriptions of what one is doing before they do it, is most beneficial.

Thanks Phoon and HG_Eliminator, in the last line i have mentioned that you can turn them off if you don’t use them.

I've mentioned this in another thread, but it makes sense to have it here too:

Run services.msc then try to set all services that are marked as "automatic" to "automatic (delayed start)". Most will give you an error message, just cancel the window on those and move on to the next service. It'll speed up boot time, most notably if you have many third party services starting up at boot. Note that you *could* get issues with some programs if you try to launch them immediately after boot, because the service it needs may not be launched yet, personally I've never run into any kind of trouble doing this.

I've never seen this mentioned on any optimization page, it's just something I tried out that made my computer start up quicker.

While this is a very good Community Post, I wonder in "The Great Scheme Of Things" how this would change my experience? Honestly...I don't think it would for me...I'm not making that judgement for anyone else.

Why not use this, if the boot time is so critical: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/20072/?a=f 

So...you boot into "Splashtop" in seconds, while windows takes its time...if it's all that critical. Me? I just take that time to prepare other "stuff"...

Boot time is not critical.. But before I started tweaking, my system took 5 minutes to be in usable condition because of a load of crap wanted to start at once. My computer boots in about 1:30 now, which is perfectly fine by me.

I don't recommend things like messing about with registry, disabling services and such because microsoft didn't automatically enable those for no good reason (with the exception for error reporting, which should be disabled by default. No software that is non-local should run at all unless explicitly told to do so.)

well, if you are a novice dont mess with services, else printer service can be disabled if no printer is present, lot of network stuff can be disabled.

The auto tuning service should only be disabled when you have problems or you can try to disable it and see the results if better keep it off.. this is from pc to pc, its not a general imporvement for all.

And msconfig-->startup-->disable what you dont need at startup, much of it start when you open the app no need to have it in the background.

Remote Differential Compression (RDC) allows data to be synchronized with a remote source using compression techniques to minimize the amount of data sent across the network.

Many pre-Windows Vista computers and devices are not compatible with RDC which makes transferring files across a network slower for a Windows Visa computer because it’s trying to use RDC.

I get an error message "Not All Features Updated" when I try to turn off RDC. Any Ideas ?

Regardless of having a printer installed or not:

If you run Adobe Illustrator CS3 (it may apply to other versions too, I don't know), don't disable the print spooler service, it'll cause a crash when you try to save your work.

don't disable the print spooler service, it'll cause a crash when you try to save your work.

Any special reason for the crash?

I can 100% assure that disabling print spooler will not cause a crash if no printer is present.

I guess your 100% differs from mine. Run THIS google search and you'll see it's not an uncommon problem with illustrator cs3, and it happens on my computer every single time I disable the spooler so it's not just hearsay from my part.

sorry, din' read it carefully, you mean only if you run Adobe Illustrator CS3.

There is an easier way to tweak Windows Vista....  go back to Windows XP or install Windows 7. 

Useless comment. Too old to be remotely funny. I'll just bin it with all other stupid remarks. Don't be too bummed about it, it's in good company there, lots of other comments to keep it company. A fair amount of my own comments (like this one) is there too.