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Speed up Windows Vista with a flash drive

If you use Windows Vista, you can make it less sluggish with an old USB drive you may have lying around.

Tom Merritt Former CNET executive editor
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Tom Merritt

Want to speed up Windows Vista? Got a flash drive? Good. You can make your computer faster. Watch this video and then refer to the steps below.

One of the cooler things in Windows Vista is something called ReadyBoost. Normally if a system is slow, you have to open it up and add RAM. ReadyBoost lets you use external storage for that. Nothing new there. Windows 3.1 let you do that, but ReadyBoost makes it really simple.

  1. Plug in your USB flash drive.
  2. You will be given a menu. Choose "Speed up my System." You can access the same option by right-clicking on the USB drive in the computer section and choosing "properties," then the ReadyBoost tab.
  3. Next select "use this device." You can adjust how much of the device will be used for memory, leaving the rest of the space for file storage.
  4. Press OK.

That's it! You now have a slightly faster computer, no screwdrivers needed.