Best Vista "Lite" Solution?

So I've been searching and reading about utilities that configure Vista to not install all its useless bloatware/memory hogging stuff, like vLite for example. What is the best utility and generally best way to install vista for performance/low memory usage? Are there any risks/problems to doing something like this?

Reason I want to do this is to try Vista on another hard drive or partition and see how compatibility is with the software I use, and to see if it fixes some display driver problems I'm having. Nvidia drivers are extremely flaky on XP, different drivers are stable in different games (no driver is stable in all games), and many of them keep underclocking into 'power savings' mode while I'm playing a game. From reading about this on different forums it seems like many people fixed this by going to Vista, because Nvidia refuses to support WinXP anymore. Yes I have tried everything else, including RMA'ing my vid card (the first one was bad, second one I got is fine but drivers are crashing).

How much memory would Vista use when trimmed down? I am currently on 2GB and know that in general Vista needs 4GB, especially Vista64bit. But is it possible to lower the memory usage in Vista32 for 2GB? WinXP32 for me uses less than 300MB including my startup progs. How low can I get this on Vista? I'm able to order 4GB RAM but I hardly do any tasks which require it, and rather save the $ towards a new GPU in the future.

useless bloatware/memory

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it isnt useless and isnt memory hogging (i really wish this mentality would die), it is USING your memory to make Vista faster


you want lower memory, install vista and turn off SuperFecth and Readyboost - done.

lowest i have seen vista run is about 700MB after a fresh install.

put it this way, i am running Server 2008 x64, which is ideally vista sp1 (same kernal) with only firefox runnning right now and trillian i am at 868MB ram usage and superfetch is off.

Why was there all this talk about how vista has so many 'useless features' and takes up more RAM because of it, and that there's ways to remove/disable many of them, or install a lite version of it? I've read about superfetch and know what it does, that isn't what I'm refering to.

I'll look around some more; pretty sure there's ways to trim it down kind of like what vLite does, just need to do more research and see if there are better utilities or any risk to doing that.

most guides are just going to the Service's tab and turning things off, however most things that are on, aren't using CPU cycles and are using very little to no ram in the end.

for me, with 4G of ram it is pointless and offers 0 performance gains, since you hav 2G, turning some things off may free up 1-200MB if that.

Ok thanks, I've decided that if it comes down to having to install Vista, I'll just install the full OS and see how it works; after that going to turn off features and see how much that reduces RAM usage. Will also sell my old dual core so that I can buy a good 4GB 1066Mhz RAM kit and still have more left to save up for other stuff. I might have found my problem causing the freezes/artifacts though. RAM being overvolted.

Never had this problem before so I didn't expect it, but I spent much of today trying different bios settings as a last resort before installing Vista on another partition. Thought my RAM might have been undervolted so I upped the volts to 2.15, then the problem was worse (freeze within first few mins rather than within 1 hour). So I decreased the voltage to 2.0 and have played for 5 hours straight with no problems. Can't believe this was actually the problem... just about everyone I know runs this RAM (G.Skill 2GB[2x 1GB] PC8500 kit 1066Mhz, light blue heatsinks) at 2.1v, but for some reason my mobo might have been overvolting it so reducing the 'supposed normal' voltage seems to have fixed it. Another strange thing is that I've run memtest for ~9 hours with 0 errors at 2.1v, but then in games it loses stability after around 1 hour or less.

I've gone back to 177.79 Forceware because the newer 180.xx seemed to make the problem worse, but after this fix I haven't tested those new drivers yet... I'm not getting my hopes up though. But either way, at some point I'll still upgrade to 4GB and make a Vista partition for dual boot with XP, because I'm planning on maybe getting a 4850x2 within the next few months and some games that I really want like Diablo3 will support DirectX10.1, which I will need Vista for, if I do get an ATI card.

You can use vLite to remove some apps you don't use in Vista to decrease install time. I generally remove all languages, drivers, and a few apps, which makes installing vista much much faster (average 15 minutes from installing to loading vista) Be careful what you remove though, even though some people recommend removing certain services, OS stuff, network, etc...I wouldn't really recommend it. I did it twice (first time just to test it out, second time since I thought I really knew what I was removing) both times gave me problems in the long run.

Install Vista, Update, uninstall/disable whatever, optimize services, drivers - works well for me. Vista will always be bloated.

vista is not bloated! argh!

yes it uses more ram then XP, but XP used more then 2000 and 2000 used more then 98, welcome to progress. Amazing systems get faster but people want a small and smaller OS to do more and more.

turn off superfecth and there goes %60 of ram usage and take your system back to the stone age where people liked to wait for their apps to load from the harddrive instead of from rma

I've got a tweaked version of Vista Ultimate that when idling only uses 400MB of RAM. It was created using vLite.

Mr.Guvernment said:

vista is not bloated! argh!

yes it uses more ram then XP, but XP used more then 2000 and 2000 used more then 98, welcome to progress. Amazing systems get faster but people want a small and smaller OS to do more and more.

turn off superfecth and there goes %60 of ram usage and take your system back to the stone age where people liked to wait for their apps to load from the harddrive instead of from rma

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Meh, not bloated in a sense of RAM usage but it just looks...bloaty...lol. Disable Superfetch? That's the only thing keeping me on Vista to be quite honest. After letting it get going EVERYTHING...launches faster...I went back to XP cuz I thought I couldn't take Vista, but XP just felt sooooooooooooooooo slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....went back to Vista and I was back at my happy place.

Superfetch by all means is only really useful with 4gb of RAM and a fast CPU/HDD combo.