Microsoft revealed some changes to their Windows Genuine Advantage protection scheme for Windows Vista which determines if the copy of Windows Vista is legit. A non validated Windows Vista operating system would reduce its functionality after 30 days and make only security updates available for that system.

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The following article describes two ways of speeding up hard drives in Windows Vista. The first tip describes a way to speed up SATA drives and the second to speed up USB drives. Both options can be easily configured in the Device Manager. Advanced write caching features are supported by Windows Vista but not enabled by default. I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to disable the feature by default but it surely helps system performance to enable it. Just make sure you have an SATA drive installed.

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You can use the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool to test if your router supports various technologies that have been build into Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. The test itself seems to be working only on Windows XP or Windows Vista and requires the Internet Explorer which is using Active X for the test. The following features and technologies are tested with the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool: Basic Internet Connectivity, Network Address Translator Type, Traffic Congestion, TCP High Performance, UPnP Support and Multiple Simultaneous Connection State.

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Maybe you have already encountered the strange behavior that it takes much longer to copy large files in Windows Vista than in Windows XP. You thought that the change from XP to Vista would at least be not a disadvantage speed wise but Vista somehow seems to have a problem copying large files. This happens especially with mapped drives but it could also be that you witness network disconnects.

The problem is caused by a new feature called Auto Tuning which is by default enabled in Microsoft Windows Vista. What Auto Tuning does is that it reacts on changes in the network by tuning the receive windows size. The solution would be of course to disable Auto Tuning in Vista. Some users reported that disabling Auto Tuning had a positive effect on their ability to connect to services such as Windows Live Messenger which did not work before.

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