Any Windows services I shouldn't disable because Sonar is dependent on them?

benjaminfrog
Just wondering if any of the idiosyncrasies I've assumed are bugs may be the result of tweaking I've done to speed up my PC.

All of our QA testing is done on clean installations of Windows 7/8. When I was in Tech Support I tended to field more calls from people who modified their Windows installations. That's just anecdotal evidence though.
 
Personally, I haven't found a need to tweak in the last 2-3 years, modern systems have a ton of power to spare.

benjaminfrog
Thanks for your response, Seth. I appreciate seeing you on the board today.
 
Yeah, the risk/benefit ratio isn't what it used to be. My PC is 3 years old, but it's still probably powerful enough that I could go back to the default services settings without seeing too much of a hit. Just wondering if anyone knew of any specific dependencies. 
 
Thanks, again.
 

I remember a few, but I can't recall off hand. I'll see if I can grab a white paper on this.

There are 2 services which I turned off thinking they weren't needed. Both were related to audio.
 
Turns out Sonar needed both of them in order for Midi to function as normal.
 
Can't remember the name of them right now - if I get a chance later I'll have a look and see what I can find.

Personally i have used a W7 64bit setup based on one or two of Black Vyper's tweaks, but i tend to put the services on Manual, then stop them. That way if W7 needs them, it will call them. Eg : some of iTunes related services.

Bluetooth (don't use it for latency reasons), i have stopped. Again, see the Black Vyper site.

Do not select the famous Background Services option within Windows it i sredundant on W7 and above.

With plenty of RAM (8 and above) IMHO its not necessary, these days to do too much tweaking, nor turn off that many services.

Cheers,
Jerry

When configuring new DAWs, we do tweak the BIOS/OS.
 
A lot of this is shutting down power-management or options for the OS to throttle speed.
Generally speaking, you don't want apps running in the background that aren't necessary... and you don't want the system managing tasks (scheduling/etc) that aren't 100% necessary.
ie: Don't have backup software running on a schedule in the background.
When it's time to backup, start the process manually.
 
If your BIOS exposes them, there are settings that can affect DPC latency.
Graphics drivers often cause high DPC latency (as does WiFi).
If you're having DPC latency issues, disabling services likely won't resolve the issue.
In many cases, there's no solution to higher DPC latency other than to replace hardware.
ie:  Tried moving my GTX-560Ti to my new DAW... but the driver caused major DPC latency spikes.
Replaced with a 660Ti and the problem was solved.
 
Regarding services, on a current generation build, you'll see virtually no performance gain by randomly shutting down what seem to be needless services.
Years back, I remember shutting down unnecessary services on a secondary DAW.  Went to install a M-Audio Firewire audio interface (FW1814 I believe) and the unit would "install" but wouldn't work properly.
After hours of trouble-shooting, I realized that I had shut down "extraneous" services ~6 months prior (had completely forgotten about it).  Turned on those services... and voila!  The FW1814 worked fine.

First, just because an unnecessary process is running does not mean it's impacting your ability to record and mix music. If you're able to do everything you need to do at the required latency, then leave the O/S alone.
 
[Note: beware the widespread but illogical obsession with achieving the lowest possible latency. Low latency is really only needed for playing soft synths in real time. For mixing, editing, mastering, tracking live audio and recording MIDI from outboard sources, latency is a non-issue. If you're not tracking soft synths in real time, set the latency as high as you need and forget about it.]
 
Rather than preemptively killing processes that might affect DAW performance, and thereby risking accidentally disabling something important, it's safer to approach it from the other direction: find out what's impacting performance first and work backward from there. And by performance, I mean just one thing: the ability to use the DAW at the required latency without dropouts. Beyond that, there is no benefit to further tweaking.
 
Start with the Windows Task Manager. Look for processes that have allocated large amounts of RAM (some processes can gobble multiple gigabytes of memory) or that show high CPU usage. Then look them up and find out exactly what it is that they do. That will inform you as to whether or not they can safely be disabled. If they are a background service, stop them but don't disable them. That way, if things go horribly wrong you can just reboot.
 
For example, one of the services that SONAR (and your audio interface's driver) relies upon is Windows Audio. If you stop it, audio devices will not be recognized and you'll get no sound from any application. Less obvious are service interdependencies, services that rely on other services to run. For example, the Windows Audio service depends on the Plug And Play service, a non-obvious dependency that might seem to be a candidate for shutting down. Microsoft doesn't document such dependencies and they can change from one version of Windows to the next.
 
If you examine the Task Manager and find no processes that are hogging memory or CPU, but still have issues with dropouts, then the problem's likely something that's not reported in the task list: ISRs, DPCs, bus contention, IRQ conflicts - IOW, hardware. It may come down to using the wrong hardware (e.g. a gaming video card) or even a broken interface, but taking the problem hardware out of the picture may be as simple as stopping an unnecessary service. Topping that list would be network-related services, especially wireless network adapters.
 
I just read back what I've written and realized that my reply is largely off-topic relative to the OP's question. Oh well. I should have my morning coffee first, then babble, not the other way 'round.

This is interesting because when you open Task Manager, it is horrifying how much crap is running.   I am relatively technical and I don't know what half of it is.

Thanks for all the feedback, Folks!

My philosophy is to only install the minimum on my Sonar drive, rather than disabling stuff don't install a lot of software that is going to cause an inconsistent load on the CPU.

I don't have any antivirus or spam blockers installed and I can't even open a .pdf file because adobe is not installed...if I want to go online I boot on another drive that has all the other stuff installed...and takes much longer to boot...and is less responsive etc.

Without programs like these on your system Sonar should run smoother without the CPU being pestered by auto updates or ill-timed scanning.