Vista performance tip

“Performance tip” is the easiest way to describe this link, but the truth is that it’s really a way to avoid an ugly problem in Windows Vista. It turns out that if you’re a power user, and tend to have a lot of windows open on your desktop, you could very well run into what appears to be a flaw in Vista’s memory handling when it comes to the “desktop heap”. If you have no idea what that means, don’t worry. We’re not sure exactly what it means either. The gist of it is that Windows has a certain amount of memory set aside for handling open windows, and by default it may simply not be enough. If you run up against this issue, you may experience one of the following problems when attempting to start a new program:

• You get a strange “out of memory” message, despite the fact that you’re using only a fraction of the RAM installed on your system.
• The window opens but its contents refuse to load.
• The window opens, but menus are missing, dialog boxes are empty, or buttons don’t work.

Luckily Ed Bott has some great instructions on how to go about working around the problem.

The fix involves editing your registry which isn’t for the faint of heart. But honestly, we’ve done this sort of thing a million times, and it’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re experiencing this kind of slow-down in Vista, it’s probably worth the risk.