Sometimes you notice your hard drive doing some intense work for apparently no reason. This makes your computer respond and perform slowly. Isn't that annoying?! This is how you can find out exactly what process keeps the hard drive busy so you can shut it down or whatever!

Tutorial tags: process, drive, performance

This is a way to add some performance to you hard drive. Although it's a bit dangerous because you can lose data if a power loss occurs, this tweak will improve the speed of your hard drive by enhancing the write caching.

Tutorial tags: performance, disk

We will use a feature of Windows Vista called "Performance Information and Tools" to find what slows down your computer.

Tutorial tags: troubleshoot, performance

How many times you've watched the "Logging off", then the "Windows is shutting down" texts left frozen on your screen? Ever wondered why Windows takes all that time to simply shut down your computer?

Well, there are a variety of reasons, but one of most importance is that Windows takes a lot of time to stop the running Windows services.
This is how you tell Windows "JUST STOP THE DAMN SERVICES FASTER AND SHUT DOWN!" :)

The registry locations are:
1. "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel\Desktop", with the key named "WaitToKillAppTimeout".
2. "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control" with the keys named "WaitToKillAppTimeout" and "WaitToKillServiceTimeout".

The value of these three key must be set to "5000", then restart. NOW THAT'S A SHUTDOWN! FOUR TIMES FASTER!

Tutorial tags: shutdown, speed

Many are the time when add-ons (in Firefox) or plugins (in Internet Explorer) really slows your internet browsing speed. This is how you can improve that speed and see which addon slows you down.

Please keep in mind the first part of the tutorial: CLEAN YOUR COMPUTER WITH SOME ANTI-VIRUS OR ANTI-SPYWARE SOFTWARE!

Tutorial tags: troubleshoot, internet explorer, speed, browse

Some Windows Vista features require a running service, some do not. But all require hard drive space. Here's how you can turn some off, so you can enjoy your drive space and resources.

On the other hard if you see a feature there that you might think you need, this tutorial will help you to turn it on.

Tutorial tags: performance, features

This is a way to reduce the wait time before the computer shuts down. Althou' it's quite simple, it's also very effective!

In the new shortcut address you type "shutdown -s -f -t 00".

Explanation: Windows Vista uses the same executable to shut down your computer, but we're going to create a shortcut to the same executable with additional parameters.
Because "shutdown.exe" is located in C:\Windows\System32 we don't need to add the full path (any program located in C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32 doesn't need the full path to it).

The parameters:
-s = shutdown
-f = forced (for speed)
-t 00 = time (in seconds, to wait until shutdown)

You can customize this shortcut to shutdown you computer in 3 hr if you like. Just remember the time is in secconds.

For more info about this command you can open a Command Prompt and type in "shutdown /?". You'll get a full set of instructions and additional informations.

Tutorial tags: fast, shutdown, vista

We think a clean computer is a performant computer, so this is a tutorial on how to clean your computer and keep it smooth running. We're going to use a freeware software called "CCleaner", a way better alternative to the Windows Disk Cleanup.

If it's not clear from the video (doooh!) you can download CCleaner from HERE.

Tutorial tags: clean, computer, xp, vista

Nice video from BetaFlux about Internet Explorer and its settings. Also contains some useful settings you can make to improve browsing speed.

Tutorial tags: internet explorer, internet settings

Windows Vista comes with a feature called "indexing service" which improves desktop search. It searches your computer a lot faster, but there's a down side. A good searching software indexes files or emails only when your computer is idle, but not this one.

So if you use an alternative software like "Google Desktop Search" or if you don't use it often, we recommend that you disable it for good to improve perfomance. This is how you do it.

Tutorial tags: disable, indexing, performance