Bought this laptop a few months ago, and haven't really installed anything on it. I even went into 'Personalization' and turned off all the visual effects that kill performance. With two processors and a gig of ram, why does vista run slower than any other OS I've had. This includes windows 95 on a crappy little P1 processor. Are there any services that can be turned off that suck up way too many resources?

1GB of RAM is not a lot of memory on a Vista machine. In fact, it is barely adequate to be honest with you.

It would be nice to also list the full specification of your Compaq notebook in the future. For all we know, the 1GB of memory could even be shared memory.

Since you have an OEM machine, don't forget there's all that crap software that typically come pre-installed. PC Decrapifier might help you in that regard.

I agree totally with Sabertooth, 1 gig of ram is not all that much for vista and having more info on the specs of the machine would help too. OEM machines like Compaq always have alot of pre-installed software that you probably won't use and is taking up resources.

1 GB of RAM is actually a lot of RAM for an average computer, like Windows 98 and XP, but Vista does not make it a lot because its a large operating system.

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First, I would ignore Post 3.

why does vista run slower

It will be slow until you apply all outstanding Windows Updates. I find myself using Vista machine more than XP. Vista find files faster than XP.

i_Xp/VistaUser

Also keep in mind that you prob have a bunch of startup programs running in the background that don't need to be starting autmaticly when windows starts. That kills your performance especially with 1gb of ram in Vista.

Go to start menu type msconfig, then go to the startup tab and go through whats in there and uncheck the programs that don't need to be running, but first uninstall all that trialware garbage. Programs that typically need to run automaticly are anti-viruses and firewalls, those are a must to run automaticly, most other stuff doesn't need to be turned on automaticly.

Vista is not SLOW, your Laptop is not man enough to handle VISTA !!

I have been running a Gateway Desktop with 3.2GHZ speed 1 Gig memory since June just fine.(No heavy Gaming or other visuals). When I turn off the visual effects I get a very slight increase in speed. Give us your other specs what anti-virus spam etc whats in your startup que, internet connection speed etc. Then a better judgment can be made about how "man" enough your machine is or what other problems there might be. Vista is a memory hog but more then not the problems lie somewhere else

I'm applying updates now to see if that helps.

My system specs are:
Model: Presario C700 Notebook PC
Processor: Intel P Dual CPU T2310 @ 1.46 Ghz
Memory: 1014MB

This was not a very expensive computer.. in fact, it was just about the least expensive laptop Best Buy had to offer. I used to build these things years back, and am now sort of out of the loop... but I still remember a little bit about these things.

Your processor isn't the fastest either.

It bugs me that computer vendors have the gaul to sell products that are inadequately equipped to handle the Vista OS.

I had a friend that requested XP instead of Vista because the machine he wanted wasn't the fastest. They basically refused to offer that machine (or any I would figure) with XP on it then also tried to push a security suite onto him also.

I reckon there should be a try before you buy clause included with the sale of new computers because they only seem to come with Vista pre-installed nowadays.

"Your processor isn't the fastest either."

The processor is not in the least a contributing factor to the resource issues in this case. It is not a secret that you don't need the fastest processor to run Vista: the recommended processing requirement for the OS is a 1GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) CPU. And at 1.46GHz, the OP's processor arguably exceeds that requirement.

Furthermore, the Pentium Dual Core T2310 is a 64-bit Core architecture CPU that's based on the Merom-2M core, don't let the Pentium reference fool you into associating the older NetBurst based Pentiums with this mobile puppy.

There is however no doubt that the notebook was designed with a short life expectancy in mind & priced to be disposable @ $300 (After all applicable rebates). According to Compaq's datasheet, the maximum memory supported is 1GB (2 x 512 MB) DDR2 -- A classic example of Caveat Emptor!

I applied all updates I could find, and so far, no real change.

I'm not going to put much more time into figuring this out. I bought this knowing it was just to get us by until I got through school. So I can live with the performance. Really, the only things I need it for are: Excel, Word, Internet browsing, MySQL, IIS, and that's pretty much it.

Sorry gpp,

I didn't by any means intend to mis-inform!

Thanks saber for clearing that up.

I do like the Vista OS and all the bells and whistles that come bundled with it.

Here are a couple of links I saved that were provided by other computing.net regulars for optimising Vista.

Hope you find them helpful.

http://www.speedyvista.com/services...

http://www.totalidea.com/content/tw...

XPuser has been introducing vLite recently :)

i have been modifying windows installation media since the good old days of windows 2000. so i couldn't resist ripping the living daylights out of Vista with some quite astonishing findings. Vista Ultimate is running reasonably well on a P3 700MHz w. 512 MB RAM. Aero desktop enabled with an old Fx5200 vid card. cold-booting actually faster than any other 'off the shelf' computer with Vista that i have seen. definetly a competitive performance to some cheap laptops with deadslow hard drives.

the same layout being used on a slightly younger P4 3.06 GHz HT w 2 GB ram, a Raptor SATA HDD and a GT 7900 makes Vista a really enjoyably experience.

so it's not really a matter of the OP's hardware which is good enough by all means to handle Vista. it's the bloat that is bogging the system down.

What bloat ..... scratches head???

Could you be more specific, because using minimalist installation for generalization does not address -- but sidesteps -- the issue.

If some schmuck decides to run XP on an 8MHz Pentium Overdrive with 20MB just because he has the time & inclination, doesn't that make XP massively bloated as well using your logic?

http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmin...

You can't compare a showroom PC to a productivity machine .... that's apples to oranges ;-)

if we agree on the fact that there is no 'one-fits-all' solution when customizing a windows installation then the same goes for a default factory installation. you get the whole lot whether you want it or not.

so, i will not go into details because what a performance-oriented user considers bloat may be a highly appreciated feature for the casual user.

with a little courage, if one does some reading and experimenting he/she will get a helluvalot more out of the computer. thanks to tools like vLite this is no longer some arcane science.

if you leave the machine as it is, you'll have to live with what microsoft and the manufacturer think is best for you.

and removing this or that and a bit of tweaking here or there on a default windows installation will never get you anywhere near the results of a tailor made installation.

"so, i will not go into details because what a performance-oriented user considers bloat may be a highly appreciated feature for the casual user."

For every performance PC/Windows user; there's 1000 casual users. That is why there's two or three machines in the average urban home today. Trust me, if M$ decides to go the other route & strip Windows down to the bone, the end result is going to be a Linux-like clone & clearly that isn't going to work or at best frustrating & very mainstream user unfriendly.

I have no objection to using nLite or vLite, but it is important to know that this method of transfering technology to the mainstream consumer has more problems than solution. With the default Windows format, we all know just how savvy the home user is by the type of issues we typically come across on this forum.

i absolutely agree. MS is not going to do that and they would be ill advised if they did.

but a default vista installation on a 'entry-level' computer can be very frustrating too.

I think what Oracle means by bloat is dreamscene, sidebar etc etc
norton and nero have gone the same way in order to supply customers with it all they have crammed to much in and it generally slows the system down a bit..
But of course what one sees as bloat the next will see as an added bonus..