New to Vista and Performance issues

Hi guys,

My name is John. I just built my second computer a week ago and decided to go with Vista Ultimate x64 for my OS.

I admit, I was always saying "hell no" at the thought of Vista and for awhile was too chicken, but finally decided to bite the bullet and go for it. It has its moments, sure...but I must also be fair and say it isn't that extremely horrible as I heard. Like with many things, just takes time to learn and get a hang of (at least for an idiot like me).

Anyways, I guess before I get to the problem at hand I will tell you all about what I have in this computer as I'm sure it'll help you to help me:

• 1x WD Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500 GB SATA HDD
• 1x WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1 TB SATA HDD
• 1x Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7240S DVDRW SATA 5.25"
• 1x WD Elements 400GB WDE1U4000N External USB HDD
• Intel Core i7 920 (stock, not OC'ed)
• 6 GB OCZ Technology DDR3 (6 x 1GB) - 1333MHz DDR3-1333/PC3-10600
• Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon 4870 X2 (2GB) (stock, not OC'ed)
• Vista Ultimate (x64)

Ok, so my idea was to have the 500GB HDD for just the OS related stuff and then the 1TB for everything else--music, movies, games, programs, pictures, etc. Now please know I'm a computer noob () so just bear with me here. The friend that was suppose to talk me through everything wasn't around so I figured I'd try on my own. I partitioned the 500GB in half roughly more or less--it think it was around 250 for the OS and then the rest I just labeled as Backup for some odd reason. And the 1TB HDD I left unpartitioned.

Once Vista installed and stuff, it seemed pretty nice on the startups, but once everything was installed/updated (drivers, programs) it was still ok, but wanted to try getting faster out of it. So I followed some tweaking tutorials and I admit after awhile it seemed like it did get faster, however after more tweaking it started to feel slower (maybe a little too over-zealous with the tweaking like a mad half-retarded monkey had something to do with it? lol).

So my friend said he would be online this past saturday and I decided to try a fresh install and figure out my partitions better. So we did that and here's what I have:

500GB

• Roughly 400 GB - OS (for some reason windows showed less than that even though I went for 400GB)
• What was left went to Pagefile

1TB

• 400 GB - Graphic Design portfolio, WIP's, etc
• 200 GB - Multimedia (movies, music)
• 200 GB - Games
• 100 GB - Programs

Now obviously, with partitoning and such each amount showed a bit less than that, but thats what I was shooting for basically. As far as the external goes, that's where all my programs, email, etc was backed up to and used for.

Now after I installed Vista and formatted the HDD's (the long format, not the quick format) this time around, I noticed startup/shutdown times seem actually slower than the first time when I installed and didn't partition much--if that makes any sense.

I ran the .exe to test shutdown/startup time and it gave me a result of 118 seconds. So I followed the tutorials here on how to make startup times faster--such as adjusting how many cores are used. It said to try selecting the maximum amount in the list which for some reason had 8 as the maximum which stumps me, because isn't the core i7 only 4 cores? Well I selected the 8, and tried the rest of the suggestions and re-ran the test utility again. This time it showed a result of approximately 101 seconds....definitely not the result I was hoping for.

I admit, I'm really frustrated and stumped. I don't know whether to cry or throw myself out the window. Could something have happened during the partitioning? Should I even have bothered partitioning the HDD's? Should I have done quick format instead? I don't get it. I followed the tutorials and still startup takes forever.

I was wondering too, if the external USB HDD could be adding to the slow startup? I think it's listed at the bottom of the boot order in the bios. I notice that after the bios splash screen and all that ends and I guess its about to load vista the screen goes black for a minute or two and then I hear the external kick on and then another minute or so then the Vista orb animation comes on.

Man my head is spinning, I'm so confused right now. Sorry for the long-winded post, I just wanted to make sure you all knew as much details as possible. Hopefully I can score some help/direction concerning this. Thanks in advance!

Regards,

John

I have a similar set up to you.
I have 2 HD` but they are not partitioned, this is so I do not have to change a partition to make it larger or smaller.
Instead of using partitiones on the second drive I use folders. (it is all down to personal choice).
Try it with the external drive disconnected to see if it speed it up(I would use this as the backup device).
What programs have you got set to startup with the computer.
Go into Start then MSconfig
You can see what starts up with the system this way.

You made one BIG mistake. You were trying to outsmart thousands of programmers who have optimized Windows for years. There is NOTHING, absolutely nothing to be gained by tweaking and twisting Vista and certain things like this assignment of cores is even fairy tales - that does nothing. The function was left in there because it was used for certain testing at one time by the developers - but for you, it is completely useless.
I suggest you reinstall your Vista to get rid of all those tweaks. Then you reduce the Startup programs to a minimum (for fast boot times), assign about 50 to 100GBs to the OS partition ( of that assign at least 20GBs to shadowstorage so that you have enough restore points at all times) and a data partition (preferably on the other disk drive) of a sufficient size for your own data (Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music, Downloads) for now and later. That's all you need to do. The rest of the diskspace you keep for future use.