If you want your computer to start up fast without killing your ram, you can just edit a few startup programs.
To do this, we first go to our start menu. There should be something called "control panel", click on it, and then navigate to Programs, once you are on that window, you go to turn windows features on or off. Take off some things that you will never ever use, such as: Windows fax and scan, or windows meeting space, just browse things that you won't need in vista. After that, just hit ok, and give it 10-30 minutes to update. My laptopgoes from the welcome screen at start up to my desktop, in under 10 seconds.
If you want your computer to shutdown fast, go to your start menu-all programs-accessories-run. Once run pops up, type in regedit (stands for registry edit) then once your there, only do what i say unless you want to risk serious side affects.
Go to- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then select SYSTEM after that, double click CurrentControlSet, then finally single click "Control" To the side of that look to the bottom of the part that says Name and you want to find "waitToKillServiceTimeOut" The data should be at 20,000, then set it to 5000 by hitting modify and typing it in. Anything below 5000 WILL RISK DATA LOSS, OR CORRUPTION.
Now to generally speed up performance, every once a week, use disk cleanup (
start/all programs/acessories/system tools/Disk cleanup, and also you can use disk defragmenter after that by going to start/all programs/acessories/system tools/DiskDefragmentor.
By doing all of this, you will have a healthy, fast, reliable system.
