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Happy New Year friends! Thought I would kick it off with a hopefully-useful article on tweaking XP for TOP performance.
Essential XP TweaksRecommended setup for production work (as of Dec 06)- Intel Pentium 4 2.66ghz or better (Duo Core 2.66ghz or Quad Core recommended)
- At least 1.5GB of RAM (2GB of Corsair XMS Dominator RAM recommended)
- Asus P4C800 deluxe board is extremely stable (recommend Intel D975XBX2). Only other mobo I will recommend besides Asus and Intel is Gigabit.
- M-Audio soundcard (recommend RME Fireface 400 or 800)
- Seagate hard drives - 7200 rpm, 4mb+ cache, 8ms or less seek time --- one drive for system, one for audio recording (SATA drives recommended)
- The biggest monitor you can afford (don't skimp on this.. your eyes will thank you.. in addition tons of new studies coming out are showing that bigger monitors equate to far more prodcutivity and more efficient computing for end users... believe it)
- If you're going to use a MIDI keyboard, stick with M-Audio keyboards for troublefree operation.
Windows XP TweaksNote: do all these things at your own risk. JForce, Motifcity.com, and Mark Johnston do not make any guarantees about these tweaks and the impact they will have on your computer. In other words, like me, you are on your own. None of these tweaks have ever disrupted or comprised my computer's performance in over 5 years, but your mileage may vary.- Download the latest service pack (2) for Windows XP
- Get Kapersky anti-virus and do a full system scan on all of your drives (it is the most efficient, quality laden anti virus app out there - kapersky.com)
- Get Diskeeper Pro and defrag your drives (also do boot time defrag and swap file defrag) http://diskeeper.com/defrag.asp
- Disable themes and remove desktop wallpaper
- Set system for 'best performance' and 'background services' (start > control panel > system > advanced)
- Disable write caching on your audio recording hard drive (start > control panel > system > hardware> device manager > select your drive > properties > uncheck the box > apply)
- Kill all startup programs (start > run > type 'msconfig' -- no quotes) > start up > uncheck ALL boxes except your soundcard icon and those you absolutely MUST run)
- Kill unnecessary services (start > run > type 'services.msc' -- no quotes) . Browse list of services and decide which ones you need. if you're not sure whether you need a service, Google the service name and you'll get a ton of results telling you about the necessity (if any) of the service.
- Disable screensaver
- Disable AUTOPLAY on all CDROMS and disks
- Create a new hardware profile specifically for music production (start > control panel > system > hardware profiles > select the first entry > click COPY button, name the profile MUSIC, a new profile is created > click on the one with "(current)" after it, click RENAME, name it STANDARD.
You now have two profiles, one for music and one for standard computing. Each time you boot your computer now, you will choose which hardware profile you want Windows to load.
Note: your desktop and files will still be exactly the same no matter which one you select.
So reboot your computer, select the MUSIC profile, log into Windows, go back start > control panel > system > hardware > device manager and for every piece of hardware you DON'T need for music production (i.e. your internet adapter card!) right mouse click on it, select 'properties' and then select DISABLE THIS DEVICE IN THIS PROFILE. Now, whenever you select THIS profile (MUSIC) when your computer boots up , your internet adapter card would not be loaded, thus making your system far more optimal for audio and midi. Yes, you could simply skip this entire step and instead just disable your adapter manually each time, but who wants to bother? Not me. - Disable System Restore (have you ever needed to use it? if so, maybe skip this step, but in over five years I have never used it).. start > control panel > system > system restore > check 'turn off system restore on all drives' and click OK and then OK/YES again when prompted.
- Disable error reporting. start > control panel > advanced > error reporting > select disable > ok button
- Disable Automatic Updates start > control panel > automatic updates > turn off > follow prompts to turn off
- Kill the annoying Security Center notifications in system tray (red shield).. start > control panel > double click Security Center icon to open > click change the way security center alerts me.. and uncheck ALL boxes .. click OK
- Disable system sounds start > control panel > double click 'sounds and audio setting' icon.. SOUNDS tab... in 'sound scheme' field select NO SOUNDS > click OK (when prompted to save , select NO button)
- Disable fast user switching .. start > control panel > user accounts > click 'change the way users..' link.. uncheck FAST USER SWITCHING. .. click OK
- Turn off Indexing Services.. full instructions here: http://www.lifehacker.com/software/tag/turn-off-indexing-and-speed-up-windows-xp-31440.php (don't worry, it won't 'break' anything :)
- Defragment your drives nightly if you're doing heavy audio work
- If you can afford one, get a THIRD internal hard drive to store all your samples and other misc files. My advice is to NEVER store ANYTHING on your system hard drive. Not even a single Word document.
- Run CCleaner (the first C stands for 'crap' I'm told) app every week. It will wipe out the constant MESS of temporary and unnecessary junk files Windows poops out constantly. It's freeware and highly recommended by Extreme PC mag as well: ccleaner.com.
That's it for now. Will update as I think of more tweaks. Enjoy!
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About Mark Johnston
Singer, producer and songwriter since 1989.
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