The Team Fusion blog has an article about optimizing Vista on VMware Fusion 2. Since it’s from the VMware folks it’s titled as VMware specific, but it’s appropriate for any Vista virtual machine.
Suggestions include:
Disable System Restore
Disable Screen Saver
Optimize Power Management for Virtual Machine
Disable Windows Sidebar
Disable Remote Management
Run Windows Disk Defragmentation Utilities
OPTIONAL: Change to Classic UI
Disabling [...]
