Ableton Forum

This thread is meant to be a catch all thread for Optimizing your current XP install so you don't have to go with specialized XP installs possibly losing data or screwing up your lappy in the process.

The first thing I would suggest is downloading and installing an ASIO driver if you don't already use one. http://www.asio4all.com/ ASIO4ALL is free and will make a HUGE difference.

The second thing I would suggest is creating a new Hardware profile. Before your OS loads it will allow you to pick the profile, I.E. Services you want loaded when windows starts. Services would be the main culprit as far as wasted processor cycles are concerned.


[This is where the list of Non essential Services will go.]

The third thing I would suggest is creating at least one more XP login. I have two. One is called Live and the other is called Mix. At the XP Welcome screen it asks me which login I would like to use. If I am going to be doing a Live gig I would choose the "Live" Login. If I am going to be mixing other peoples music I would choose the "Mix" login. Each of these logins boots directly into the program I would be using as the shell.

In windows we commonly think of the "Shell" as the Desktop. for a Vanilla XP install this is always the executable known as "explorer.exe". For my Live login I have the computer immediately load Live as the shell. I don't get a taskbar, a desktop, any systray icons or anything like that but since the only program I will be using is Live, non of that actually matters. For my Mix login I have the shell set as Deckadance. When I load with that login the only thing that loads is the program Deckadance.

Lastly I would make sure that under any of these logins, Non essential startup programs aren't loaded either. Things under the reg key LOCAL MACHINE are loaded no matter what Hardware Profile or XP login you use. These MIGHT need to be loaded depending on your Computer or peripherals. Things that start up through Start Menu/Startup more often than not do NOT need to be loaded in order for your computer to function perfectly well. This is the same with things under the Current User reg keys. They probably don't need to be loaded in order for your computer to work.

A handy program that I've used for many years can be found at http://www.mlin.net/ It's called Startup Control Panel. I would just download the executable version it's just as good as the control panel applet that goes into your control panel... but without the hassle.

This is a thread in progress, and all the info isn't here yet.. But I think it's a decent start. Doing some or all of these things will allow you to use your Laptop in the conventional manner when perusing the internet or whatnot, while at the same time having setups that will let you get the most from your computer when your only using for one thing.

There will infact be two Non Essential Service lists. One for pure audio, and one for audio and essential networking while using audio, say.. in a setup where you use MIDI over IP or want to use your nintendo DS as a MIDI control device.

By all means please add whatever insight you have to this thread right now. Future edits will go directly into this post.

Hopefully the info I put here will save people time and hair follicles.


Moderator Request: I had thought I put this under tips and tricks but apperantly not. Can I please have this thread moved to that sub-forum... or a sign that the thread is kosher where it is?

http://www.blackviper.com/

tells you which services are critical in XP, and he's now working on Vista apparently...

Clearscreen wrote:http://www.blackviper.com/

tells you which services are critical in XP, and he's now working on Vista apparently...

Yeah, That is going to be my default reference. For Non Essential services.. The work I have to do would be using that list and working up from there. In other words I have to cut out all of those services, see if audio works, and one by one test each one to see if it turns audio stuff back on. There is one in particular that I think is titled WDM, that I am pretty sure is absolutely needed for audio to work under XP, the others would be needed for Audio and Networking setups. DHCP would likely be needed for easily setting up a wifi router to use a DS as a midi controller, DNS Services wouldn't as I can't see people needing to check thier email while doing a gig.

Nice thread! I'm looking forward to reading what it comes up with.

Yep cool idea!!

I only have a question related to the shell thing. Myself I use litestep as shell anyway so I gues the performance inprovement will not be that big if I use live as a shell.

Does the prompt still avaible even if explorer is not loaded, I mean, if you hit windows+r do you have access to it.

I just don't see how you can shutdown after

Great post and welcome! You won't find any mods here - maybe Hoffman2k will put this in his little list of Tips & Tricks, that way people on that forum will find this.

Sound on Sound's PC Notes column this month was about fast startups/shutdowns in XP. There were a couple of registry tweaks which I've found sped up shutdowns significantly on an old machine (they involve shortening the 'End Task' wait times and the wait times for stopping services on shutdown - the latter may not be a great idea in some cases), I'll post them up when I get a chance. I'm more into speeding up startup times though, I'd love to know how to get this streamlined. Top drawer!

One thing sos did not tell is when you drop the end task time too much in winxp using that method, windows sometimes don,t have enough time to close everything right and you can encounters some serious fu** up.

Having a fast booting pc is quite fun and it's ok but for the shutdown you must leave it to the default.

2 cents drop

http://tarekith.com/assets/XPTweaks.htm

Check some of the back issues of SOS concerning disabling services. They (and I) have never seen a performance increase or faster boot times by playing with disabling your services. I highly recommend people just leave them alone, it's rarely worth the time to even disable them.

Tarekith wrote:http://tarekith.com/assets/XPTweaks.htm

Check some of the back issues of SOS concerning disabling services. They (and I) have never seen a performance increase or faster boot times by playing with disabling your services. I highly recommend people just leave them alone, it's rarely worth the time to even disable them.

+1

Tarekith wrote:http://tarekith.com/assets/XPTweaks.htm

Check some of the back issues of SOS concerning disabling services. They (and I) have never seen a performance increase or faster boot times by playing with disabling your services. I highly recommend people just leave them alone, it's rarely worth the time to even disable them.

I guess the main reason for disabling services is that if your short on RAM you will for sure free up some of it.
And one can't dispute that some services will at times take CPU cycles, but almost all of them is normally idle and I guess it's questionable if it's a worthwhile improvement.

On my old laptop I have six services running on boot with my nLite install, and it's really performing extremely good compared to a regular but tweaked XP install.
Since it's such an old machine any improvement becomes very noticable, but I haven't made any tests to confirm how much improvement I get and if so what is causing it.

One reason though to disable what you don't use is security. I don't want to run AV on the machine but do connect it to my network sometimes, and the less services you have the less possible security holes you have.

disabling indexing on your drive should speed up seek times or at least you wont have to wait while the drive is indexing for it to stop and then do what you wanted it too.

Myself I disable windows firewall, automatic updates, error reporting, indexing , system restore and the security center.

more stable that way and less annoying windows behavior.

For fast booting , I put my station in sleep mode

Tarekith wrote:
Check some of the back issues of SOS concerning disabling services. They (and I) have never seen a performance increase or faster boot times by playing with disabling your services. I highly recommend people just leave them alone, it's rarely worth the time to even disable them.

I agree.

Disabling services has only ever made my PC less reliable and no faster.