Comments on: Why is Vista Slow?

By: Ajinkya

Ajinkya — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:48:31 +0000

Thats why it was highly unsuccessfuly and i switched to windows 7 , and yes microsoft has definitely solved most-of the erratic corrections and better than vista though xp is the one to die for

By: Matt C.

Matt C. — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:55:38 +0000

Miles3298:
It does run decent NOW. But only after SP1 and SP2 are installed. Before this, it was everything the above post’s said it was! I remember hearing that one of the main reasons Vista is slow is the GDI interface wasn’t hardware accelerated properly, also the video/sound drivers were poorly written and un-optimized. I also think that some GUI features were left un-finished and un-polished. Windows 7 seems to fix many of these issue’s.

By: Miles3298

Miles3298 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:43:47 +0000

Am I the only man alive who has NEVER had ANY problems with Vista? Seriously. (being annoyed at having to set things to
un as admin or not being able to run incompatible games don’t count, lol)

The only time it ever ran slow for me was about 9 months into owning it when I accidentally dropped it on hard ground, which I believe may screwed up the hard drive (a bad hard drive on a Windows computer is bad news, you know =P). It was always slow after that… then the drive died when I hit the laptop for getting an I/O error on something uber important. But that’s not the point. >_>

Man… I loved that Vista computer. Yeah, it does have its problems… but I don’t see why you guys are bashing it. Don’t be hatin’ now.

Well, okay, what if Vista really is bad? Maybe I just had a just good enough computer to make the performance and slowness-inducing problems invisible? That might be a real possibility. I dunno.

By: Smartie77

Smartie77 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:56:54 +0000

lots of truth here and there in the comments, but here is the final nail to the coffin, why vista is so slow :

It’s registry is fully virtualized. Every piece of software tries to read/write your registry – in XP and prior this was instantly : the program read its values fromt he registry, “knows” what it must do, and does it instantly. Whenever you do a click on a button in your software, it changes a dword value in the registry tree..

Now in vista, the program read a faked registry, a faked value for security purposes. ( malware also depends on the registry of course ) – every read/write attemt is virtualized. Vista captures what your application is trying to do with that virtual systemtree, analyizes if those read/write attempts might harm the OS itself, and only if Vista gives it’s “Ok” to the desired changes, the application will be given access to the real registry.

So that is the reason why every piece of software takes ages, reads longer, writes longer, becomes unresponsive and eats more memory than the same app would do in xp/2000.

With Win7 nothing will change concerning this behaviour : Win7 is Vista reloaded, only a rebranded and tweaked Vista Number 2.

The part with DRM is also true. For example take WIndows Server 2008 – the Server conterpart of Vista, which is the client OS. Server08 has no DRM subsystem – it runs double fast as Vista, yes it outperforms it in every way, even with Aero and all the Vista goodies enabled .. Problem for people that want Server 08 as their Desktop OS : due to the lack of DRM, it wont play every video and stutters with mp3 playback. Mind you, a 3rd party player like vlc or winamp helps.

Another example are the “N” Editions of Vista. Those are sold here in germany as an option to customers. “N” means : no Mediaplayer and no Moviemaker – I tried Vista Business N and compared it to Vista Business “normal Edition”, both at SP2 patchlevel and the “N” is faster.

By: cisco asa

cisco asa — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:49:06 +0000

Well VISTA is compromising speed for security. They have put too much effort in building a “secure” OS but they forgot about performance and speed. Anyhow, the new Windows 7 is supposed to be much better, at least in terms of performance. We’ll see how it goes.

By: xteraco

xteraco — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:04:46 +0000

I used Vista for about 2 weeks. This was on a bran new laptop with dual cores and 2g ram. It was slow. I found the perfect solution though. I put Linux on it! Now with Gentoo, it takes less than a second to navigate to a directory or open up a menu! =D

Hell, Gentoo can do all these things fast on my old 166mhz machine.

By: Bonnie Snyder

Bonnie Snyder — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:23:13 +0000

Vista is the worst ever. Bring xp back. Please get rid of vista.

By: Looks Aren't Everything.

Looks Aren't Everything. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:32:00 +0000

you have to be kidding about the DRM compliance. That’s the reason? I’m in complete agreement with the comments on this page. Vista looks nice… nice enough for a Mac lover to be impressed. But its functionality sucks. Literally. I love my MacBook Pro, and it worked swimmingly with XP, but Vista truly sucks the life out of the computer. And I’m afraid to downgrade because I had problems upgrading. Argh.

By: esecallum

esecallum — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:26:37 +0000

the reason vista is slow is that it is checking every bit for DRM compliance.

In other words MS thinks you are a thief and Vista IS CHECKING for DRM compliance.

It is like a hidden virus scanner checking every byte and bit.

Vista has tilt bits which are on the edge and will reboot the pc or disable it if DRM media is detected without a licence…

just type tilt bits vista in google for more info.

MS were suckered by the MPAA and RIAA to building tilt bits int vista.Hence that is why it is so slow.It is checking if you are thieving copyrighted content with embedded DRM.

MS is estimate to have lost $28 billion in lost sales due to this DRM…

By: Mick West

Mick West — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:57:30 +0000

I think the real question is more: “why is Vista slower than XP?”. They spent a billion dollars on it, and it’s prettier, but slower.