Is your Vista slower than XP ?

I have 2 new Dell Laptops (about 6 months old) with 2GB of RAM. They both have Vista on them and it seems to me that my Windows XP computers have a faster response than the new ones. Whenever I click on anything to open it, it seems as if the cursor (the little round circle that replaces to standard hourglass) keeps turning and turning for much longer before a program opens up.

Is there anything I can do /tweak to speed this up?

Thanks,
David

 

I personally find Vista faster than XP, it took a while for me to get used to it but now i like it more than XP.

As for speeding it up there are numerous programs that claim to do just that but you have to decide for yourself.

Clean out old files and clean the registry with CCleaner usually helps,you can download it here.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4191.html

I have been known to tweak my system but would never tell others because if i make a mess of it i have only me to blame.

 

Thank you all for your responses. The only time I feel like it is much slower is when I click on a program to open it. Have not really added much to the computer since I got it. I do use CCleaner, spyware software and other things to clean it out.

Thanks again

 

Yep: I just wanted to cosign what the others had said: I was running XP, barebones, 2gigs ram, pentiumD, 32 bit board, and thought it was pretty speedy, and finally loaded Vista on same hard drive, and was amazed that it was faster than XP, so I'd just check everything out, see what running in background, what antivirus u use--i use Avira--and just what else is going on, startup, all that...

Seems like you might have done all that, but the tips above are all good, inclucing the black viper site, but I've gotten carried away w/the barebones stuff, so only thing I have to say about that is: set a restore point *before* you start taking stuff out of play...if yer like me, and get carried away w/this kind of thing, and then go "whoops" maybe I did need that file:cry

 

Well how much slower? What are some actual launch times? Do you have the same version of some programs installed on both systems? If not, then your comparison may be somewhat inaccurate.

Have you looked at the guide written by Forum Administrator 'adrynaline', the one mentioned by LauraR and MarkTrent? One of his points is to remove much of the unneeded software often installed on new systems by the manufacturer.

 

Oh, that is *so* true: I had a friend just recently who had all kinds of what I consider lack of ram *and* malware problems, just browser going to strange sites, getting bogged down, etc.--and turns out, when I went to "uninstall programs" turns out that Acer, or Best Buy, or *somebody* had loaded all kinds of useless crap on there...and my mom, just bought a Vista laptop and Circuit City, *same* thing: running *way* slower than my Vista did, and I'm trying to figure out what gives, since it had *4* gigs of ram, twice my amount, so finally go to programs, and *again* just all kinds of junk by HP and Circuit City...

See I had forgotten, since I build my own, that these guys can often *sell* the computers as cheap as they do, by putting as much "free" junk, w/adds, as they think they can get away with...gotta get rid of it, get lean and speedy

 

Thank you all so much for the suggestions. I will try them all this weekend. Thanks again.
David