Friday 1 April 2011

Changing Visual Effects in Vista


Select the settings you want to use for the appearance and performance of Vista. You can choose which visual effects to turn off, one by one, or you can let Windows choose a bunch for you. There are 20 visual effects you can control, such as the transparent glass look, the way menus open or close, and whether shadows are displayed.

If Vista is running slowly, you can speed it up by disabling some of its visual effects. It comes down to appearance versus performance. Would you rather have Vista run faster or look prettier? If your PC is fast enough, you don’t have to make this trade off, but if your computer is just barely powerful enough for Windows Vista, it can be useful to scale back on the visual bells and whistles to gain some performance.

If you make any changes in the Ease of Access Centre in the Control Panel (Classic View), then the visual effects settings will automatically be reset to the default settings. You will then need to make any changes that you have made to the visual effects settings below again.

NOTE: If you dont Adjust for best performance, then you may have to turn ClearType font smoothing on again.

1. Open Control Panel. (Classic View)
2. Click on the System icon.
A) Go to step 5.
OR
3. Open the Start Menu.
4. Right click on Computer and click on Properties.
5. Click on the Advanced system settings link. (See screenshot below)
6. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.
7. Under Performance, click on the Settings button.
8. Under Visual Effects, dot Custom: and check the ones you want, and uncheck the ones you do not want. (See screenshots below)

If you want to help improve performance, then these are the most common ones to uncheck:
  • Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
  • Fade or slide menus into view
  • Fade or slide tool tips into view
  • Fade out menu items after clicking
  • Show shadows under menus
  • Slide open combo boxes
  • Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
9. Click on Apply and on OK to apply changes.
10. Click on OK to close window from below step 7.
11. Close window from below step 5.

Vista: Enable/Disable Thumbnail Preview Icons
1. Open Control Panel.           
2. Open Folder Options.           
3. Select View.
4. Uncheck the box for Always show icons, never thumbnails to enable thumbnail icons.  Check the box to disable thumbnail icons.

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