Question:

Hi.. I’m just wondering if its possible to disable some services to make vista run like xp or make it like xp. Im having problems playing games. The game runs in slow motion. It runs way faster in XP.

Answer:

Yes, there are many services and features you can disable in Windows Vista that might improve performance. Unfortunately, it won’t help your game performance.

Background processes and services do a good job of getting out of the way when you’re running something like a game, and all the tweaking in the world might give you a performance benefit of 1-2%. Sounds like you’re seeing about a 50% performance drop in Vista, though. So, it’s something else.

Your problem is almost certainly driver-related. First, visit your computer manufacturer’s website and look for updated video and sound drivers (and anything else that might be available). Install them. Then, follow these instructions to see if your video adapter has new drivers available directly from the component manufacturer. Lastly, see if your game developer has any Vista-related updates available.

The fact is, it’s still pretty early for gaming on Vista. Vista actually has a lot of big improvements to make new games better, but the games will need to be written specifically for Windows Vista to take advantage of it. With that said, games written for Windows XP SHOULD run fine on Vista, but the new video driver model in Vista requires video driver developers to essentially start from scratch. Optimizing the Vista video drivers could take years. Check for updated drivers regularly, and you should see performance improvements with each update.