In our last article, we looked at some of the points on both sides of the debate regarding whether or not to upgrade to Vista. Today, we’re going to work with the idea that you’ve already adopted Vista for one reason or another, and you want to make the best out of the situation you’re in. What do you do? How can you make Vista more stable?

Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?

(NOTE: Attempt the following items at your own risk. If you’re less than perfectly confidant of what you’re doing, get your tech support people to do this for you.)

The first thing we need to do is to get rid of all the pretty bells and whistles. Want to know a secret? I’ve been running Vista on my office PC for months now, and I don’t have problems. Do you know why? Because I stripped out all the fancy graphics and pretties that give Vista the “Wow ” factor that it’s authors are trying to achieve.

Go to the control panel, and double click on the System icon, then click ‘Advanced System Settings’. In the ‘Performance’ section, click the Settings  button. On the ensuing window there should be three radio buttons near the top – select the one that says ‘Adjust for best performance’ and then click ‘OK’ twice.

The next step is to remove any unneeded applications. If you bought your computer from a major manufacturer, they likely included different programs that they feel will “enhance your computing experience”. Translated, this means that some company likely gave them a dumptruck full of money to include their software on your desktop. But if you didn’t ask for it, why keep it? Often these programs run in the background, using resources that your operating system would rather use. So scroll through your programs list, and if you see something that you can identify, but know you don’t use, then remove it. Please note that if you’re not sure what a given item is, it’s probably best to leave it to be on the safe side, and ask your tech support people about it later. Otherwise, go back to the Control Panel, and double click the ‘Programs and Features’ item. Right click the item to be removed, and then click ‘uninstall’ and follow the prompts.

And finally… reboot. Regularly. Simply go Start -> Shutdown -> Restart The Computer. Do this regularly. If you leave your computer on for days at a time without rebooting it, then the computer can become unstable. A good idea is to do this first thing in the morning, or the last thing before you go home. I’ll typically do it in the morning… start the reboot cycle, go grab my coffee, and by the time I get back the computer is waiting for me to log in.

Of course, as always you should check with your tech support provider before trying any of these items. And then you can spend your day being productive, instead of waiting for your operating system to catch up to you.