A question about WindowsXP and performance

music251 · Post by **music251** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 10:36 am

Hi!

I asked a question a couple of weeks ago, if I should use win98se or winXP. Now that I've decided to use XP, I have a dilemma. I already have a windowsXP system which I have installed all kinds of programs, office, games etc.. I can make a different user account for audio purposes, but this will still have almost all of the programs, games etc. installed too. Will this make my windowsXP running much slower than a clean install?
The reason I'm asking, is that you can't dualboot with two winXP systems, so there is no easy way for me to figure out if I have to delete my existing windowsXP (which would lead to A LOT of extra work), to get an optimal performance.
I'm going to use a combination of scope software, logic audio and gigastudio. This is of course some heavy duty multitasking, and I'm wondering what to do here..
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
(Sorry if this question seems strange..but I've never done audio-stuff with winXP before.

thanks!

my system:
AMD64 3500+
1024mb ram
A8N-SLI-deluxe
geforce 6800GT

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 10:44 am

Having programs installed on your computer doesn't affect anything, it only matters if you have programs running in the background. WinXP is far faster and better than 98, go with XP. Simply make sure you don't have lots of programs running in the background and turn off any services you don't need (find an Internet guide to tell you what to turn off so you don't ruin your computer).

XP is clean, stable, and efficient, and it works fine for me. Turning off extra services did speed up performance a bit so it's a good idea.

You don't need to dualboot, and you don't need two different user accounts. Just set up things properly and you'll be fine.

Good luck,

Shayne

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 10:44 am

I'd stick with XP. I've tried the Dual Boot thing, and ended up never using one of the 2 partitions. XP is stable enough to have lots of stuff installed. What matters isn't how many apps and games are installed, it's how many of them are running. If you tweak your system a bit, having games and other apps shouldn't matter too much. Just turn off the fluff and eyecandy and it'll be perceptably just as fast as Win98, and a whole lot more stable.

[personal opinion, but I have a similar AMD64 3000+ system, and it's running very well.]

music251 · Post by **music251** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:29 am

Many thanks for the replies. It's really appreciated. You just saved me A LOT of work. (Thought about adding an extra harddrive and seperat music xp-win installation - fortunately I don't need to do that!)
Again thanks!

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:49 pm

Hello there...

All the things we could explain you here, are much better and in short here:

http://www.musicxp.net/

I can't recomend you better and stronger! Please, take time and read all about it, you'll be surprised at how much you can do with your XP. Learn to do the basic tweakings too.

We all have agreed here in Planet Z about two important things:

First:
Windows XP is the best version to use with music apps in general.

Second:
Do not over tweak your PC, there is no need and you'll most certainly complicate your life absolutely for nothing

Good luck

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:07 pm

xp is the only choice today.
However, though it is very stable with other apps, if you plan to push the system, just having other crap installed WILL make a significant difference if theres a lot of it[also depending what it is].

Go Dual Boot
I've been dual booting for years and although i have used boot magic, bootItNG and others, i found that plain old nt boot loader works best. if you loose an os a simple edit or rewrite of the boot ini file will fix it.

It is much better to have an os you can load anything on and not care if it affects your audio.

music251 · Post by **music251** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 10:45 am

Thanks.

Yeah, I do the dual boot-thing with xp, and it works very well. In fact, I just use the dualboot screen that winxp provides by default. Good enough for me.

There's a lot of rumors out there that two seperate partition with each their winxp-system (on the same hd) doesn't work, so I was a bit confused in the beginning on what to do. But it does work very well, so now I have a great setup.
Thanks again!

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:48 pm

i'm still unsure about the dual boot thing. i have a second partition on my system drive, do i need to re-install windows and then mozilla/avg/ghost/etc, leaving my audio partition as is (app wise) and tuning it up? i know, for example, i should disable avg and turnoff the firewall, for example...or can i use ghost and copy my entire system drive and apps and install it on the new partition, and then de-install the apps i don't need? sorry, i'm still new to Windows/Pcs in general, i built my pc but have no previous experience with XP (mac ex-pat)...btw, i only use my pc for music and web browsing, everything works fine now, i'd just like to squeeze as much power out of the cpu as possible...

thanks for your time,
rg

music251 · Post by **music251** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:46 am

ross g:

You need to make a complete new winXP install because of register files and other stuff slowing XP down.
It's really very easy, just make a new partition on the harddrive and leave it unformatted (let the old partition stay active). Then just restart the pc with the winXP install cd in the dvd-r player. Then just install XP on the new unformatted partition (let the winXP setup do a full NTFS (not quick) formatting).
Next time you'll have a winxp dual boot screen, where you can select the windows system you want to enter.

I guess it goes without saying, but you need a legal winXP. You can't use some unlegal #-product key, then you'll get all sorts of weird problems.
Good luck!

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:43 am

On 2005-09-25 02:46, music251 wrote:
ross g:

You need to make a complete new winXP install because of register files and other stuff slowing XP down.
It's really very easy, just make a new partition on the harddrive and leave it unformatted (let the old partition stay active). Then just restart the pc with the winXP install cd in the dvd-r player. Then just install XP on the new unformatted partition (let the winXP setup do a full NTFS (not quick) formatting).
Next time you'll have a winxp dual boot screen, where you can select the windows system you want to enter.

I guess it goes without saying, but you need a legal winXP. You can't use some unlegal #-product key, then you'll get all sorts of weird problems.
Good luck!

hey mr. music....

i built my pc and i have a legal XP disc...am i allowed to install on a second partition? (i alreay made it on the c/ drive in case i decided to do a dual-boot setup)...so what about my other apps? as i said, i'm only doing browsing, i may get into other things, regardless...it was a pain to install/configure my DSL setup (yahoo is a pita), i'm using Mozilla, not sure what i need/don't need, or how to copy my settings and such...in other woeds, can i copy some stuff from the current system?

thanks for your patience, i'm rather old in computer years (ha ha), i get shit done, just not too up on XP/Windows and such....

thanks again,
rg

music251 · Post by **music251** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:59 pm

If you have a normal license, there is no limitation. Just install the second xp system, no problems there.
Well, if your xp system is fairly new, and there isn't a lot of programs installed in there, then speed/stability shouldn't really be a big issue. The big advantage with having an extra windows for audio, is that you can optimise everything for audio production - few graphic effects etc..
Check out musicxp.net for more details on how to finetune xp. Sure, you can easily make everything work with one windowsXP if you don't play games and all that crap (I need my dose of Doom3 and HF2 once in a while

) .
It's really up to you, I guess. Either way, you should do fine.

[ This Message was edited by: music251 on 2005-09-25 15:00 ]

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:10 pm

On 2005-09-25 14:59, music251 wrote:
If you have a normal license, there is no limitation. Just install the second xp system, no problems there.
Well, if your xp system is fairly new, and there isn't a lot of programs installed in there, then speed/stability shouldn't really be a big issue. The big advantage with having an extra windows for audio, is that you can optimise everything for audio production - few graphic effects etc..
Check out musicxp.net for more details on how to finetune xp. Sure, you can easily make everything work with one windowsXP if you don't play games and all that crap (I need my dose of Doom3 and HF2 once in a while ) .
It's really up to you, I guess. Either way, you should do fine.

[ This Message was edited by: music251 on 2005-09-25 15:00 ]

where i get confused is what i can get away with...i know there are things that should be turned off like firewall, virus protection, etc, to squeeze the cycles out of the cpu...i'd do a dual-boot but i'm not sure if i can copy some stuff or if i have to treat it completly like a fresh install (as far as setting up my dsl account)...i don't have any games or stuff like that...it's like this: i'm just an older guy who digs synths, i ain't completly ignorant to tech stuff, but i don't have a PC backround...i built a PC by asking questions and taking my time, so far so good...i've just heard that it would be best to "tune it up", but i don't know if this would affect web browsing...if it's better to go dual-boot, i'll do it, if it doesn't matter, i won't....my problem is i only have these forums for info, the local pc guys don't know audio, ya know? if there is an easy way to manage the firewall/virus protection when i go online, and then shut off those things when doing audio, and turn off everything else unnescesary, i'd go that route...is that more clear? (probably not ha ha ha)

thanks,
rg

valis · Post by **valis** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:50 pm

Tweak your active services (under the management console or in "System Administrative Tools" under start menu. Tweakxp has a decent guide to these. If you disable something necessary you'll find out later and its easy to re-enable a service.

Go into your system bios (accessible on boot) and disable EVERY peripheral you don't use. Parallel/serial ports, extra raid chipsets, unused usb headers, onboard video/sound, etc.

Set swapfile min&max sizes to be the same (1x to 1.5x installed ram is a good rule of thumb) and make sure your swapfile & OS/apps are installed on a different drive than you use for audio (unless on a laptop). Don't go overboard with partitioning either, it increases workload on the drive's hardware. Try to get each important drive (non-longterm storate) on its own IDE chain, don't use onboard IDE RAID chipsets for drives that will be used at the same time as your scope cards.

Disable disk indexing (info on tweakxp.net), remote assistance & remote desktop. Use msconfig (start>run) to tweak startup & tasktray apps.

Tweak your active services (under the management console or in "System Administrative Tools" under start menu. Tweakxp has a decent guide to these. If you disable something necessary you'll find out later and its easy to re-enable a service.

Buy an external router to sit between your cable/dsl modem and the computer's networking card. 4 port models are easy to find, just check & make sure that it includes 'stateful packet inspection' in addition to NAT (network address translation). Then you can block the really suspect ports (445 etc) and have no worries when u disable the software firewall to do audio. I still run antispyware and antivirus during 'normal' usage (non-audio) but disable during audio work.

Some people even disable the windows themes and set it back to the 'classic' look. I prefer to use StyleXP or the hacked msstyles dll and a nice minimal theme as the 'classic look' still uses the same windowing calls and only gives better performance than stock XP skins due to lack of gradients, curves and transparency. Minimal skins will do this as well.

Useful tools from one of my kief.net forum threads:

Nicer registry editor (free)
http://www.resplendence.com/reglite

HDD health tasktray app to monitor disk health (close when doing audio work):
http://www.panterasoft.com/index.html?s ... h_shortcut

XP Antispy removes even more windows gunk:
http://www.xp-antispy.org/

[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2005-09-26 06:22 ]

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:50 am

just wanna say thanks for all the info, patience, and thread invasion tolerance...

rg