Optimizing Windows 7 64bit

Is there any guide out that anyone knows of that will help streamline windows 7 64bit for Sonar? I gotta new HP Athlon2 Quad Core 2.8ghz and 6gb ddr3. Ive had it for a week now and Sonar kept freezing and i would have crackling and distorted audio so i dropped the latency settings from 50ms to 10ms and my audio probs are fixed (EMU 0404 soundcard). Sonar hasnt crashed in 2 days now but i wanna know if theres a way to optimize like there was in XP? Thanks for your time

Peace & Blessings

New OS installations always have lots of debris hanging about.

Many of the suggestions for XP/DAW are still valid:
Separate disk for audio data
  stop sys restore, pagefile, and indexing for this drive

Stuff to stop for w7:
 windows search and indexer
 windows defender
 disable auto updates for: adobe, flash, java, AV, windows,...
 some of the network stuff:
   such as: the distributed transaction coordinator

If the machine is a dedicated DAW then more can be done.
 including: Disabling the network card, and all the network services

Blackviper.com and other sites provide info.

J

I spent most of today optimizing my Windows 7 64-bit system.  Before getting to all the details of what those changes were there are a couple things I did consistently throughout the process.

I used "The Sonar x64/Windows 7 x64 Install, Tweaks & Compatibility Thread" found here and the Black Viper's Tweaks found here as the basis for the tweaks I implemented on my system.
• I ran DPC Latency Check everytime after logging in and left it running to watch.  Before any tweaks the latency check was topping out just below 8000us often.  This should be below 500us.  So I definitely had some performance issues to contend with. I would then run SONAR X1a 64-bit and create a simple project that had two audio tracks.  Using two mics setup for stereo I then did some audio recording and monitored the DPC Latency Check.  On playback even this simple project was cracking and popping.  Some background: Before today's tweak madness I tested doing this 2 audio track project in SONAR 8 and 8.5.  There were no problems with cracks and pops.
• After each major tweak I rebooted the computer.  Be cautious though.  There were a couple times when I restarted that the computer seemed to go into la-la land before shutting down.  BE PATIENT!  At one point it took about 10 minutes (maybe longer) before it actually shut-down and restarted.  If it's taking long to shut-down go do something else and comeback.
• WARNING: There are some tweaks that involve modifying the registry.  If you are not comfortable with doing this and backing up the registry don't do it!
• DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for anything that happens to your system as a result of what is presented here.  These are tweaks I have done to MY system.  If there is a term, feature, function or anything else you are not familiar with do the research to learn what it is.  This is what I've spent the day doing.
• Some of the tweaks listed assume some basic knowledge like how to get to Services, stop them and change their startup type.
• Before stopping services I used Black Viper's Services chart to read about each service that was started before deciding if I could safely stop the service and change the startup type to "Manual"

My system is as follows:

Gigabyte EP45-DS3R System board
Intel Core 2 Quad (Q9450) @ 2.66GHz, 64-bit, 12MB L2 Cache, 1333 FSB bus
4GB RAM
VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 video
4-SATA 7200RPM drives
CD/DVD dual-layer reader/re-writer
E-Mu 1820m Audio interface (64-bit drivers)
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Cakewalk SONAR 8, 8.5 and X1a (Producer editions) are installed along with all the various plug-ins and soft-synths Cakewalk offers
FXpansion BFD2 Drums
E-Mu Emulator-X2
Dual 22" displays

 The Tweaks
>> Start->Right-click Computer->Properties->Advanced system settings->Advanced->Performance:Settings->Visual Effects
Select "Adjust for best performance"
 
>> Start->Control Panel->Appearance and Personalization->Personalization->Theme
Under Basic and High Contrast Themes, select "Windows Classic"
The "Themes" service can now be stopped
Start->Control Panel->System and Security->Administrative Tools->Services
Double-click "Themes"
Change Startup type to "Disabled"
Click the "Stop" button
Click "OK"
 
>> Start->Right-click Computer->Properties->Advanced system settings->Advanced->Performance:Settings->Advanced:Processor scheduling
Select "Background services" in the "Adjust for best performance of" section
Reboot
 
>> Start->Right-click Computer->Properties->Advanced system settings->Advanced->Performance:Settings->Advanced:Virtual memory->Change
Set C: drive (OS) to No paging file
Created paging file on F: drive (least used) and set the Custom Initial size: and Maximum size: to the Recommend Size
Reboot
 
>> Start->Control Panel->System and Security->Power Options->Show additional plans
Select "High Performance" then click "Change plan settings"
Change "Turn off the display" to never
Click "Change advanced power settings"
Expand "Hard disk" then "Turn off hard disk after": Change setting to "0"
Expand "Display" then "Turn off display after": Change setting to "0"
Click "OK" then click "Save changes" in the "Change settings for the plan: High performance" window
Reboot
 
>> Core Parking: Run "regedit" and search (F3) for 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583
Change the "Value Min" and "Value Max" to 0
Press F3 to find the next entry as the number of instances depends on the number of power profiles in the system
Reboot
 
>> Windows 7 Fault Tolerant Heap: Run "regedit"
Go to this key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\FTH\Enabled and change the value to "0"
This disables the Fault Tolerant Heap entirely on the system
Reboot
 
>> In SONAR 8, 8.5 and X1 (only do this for quad core processor systems)
In Options->Audio->Advanced tab click Edit Config File (aud.ini)
Changed "ThreadSchedulingModel" from 1 to 2
 
>> Turn off System Restore and file versioning
Start->Control Panel->System and Security->System->System protection
Select hard drive where Protection is set to "On"
Click "Configure" button
Select "Turn off system protection"
Click "OK"
Repeat for other drives with protection on
Reboot
 
>> Turn Windows Features off
Start->Control Panel->Programs->Turn Windows Features on or off
Uncheck "Windows Search"
Uncheck "Tablet PC Components"
Uncheck "Windows Gadget Platform"
Uncheck "Remote Differential Compression"
Click "OK"
Reboot
 
>> Disable Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop
Start->Control Panel->->System and Security->System->Remote Settings
Uncheck "Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer
Ensure "Don't allow connections to this computer" option is checked
Reboot
 
>> Disable IPv6
Run "regedit"
Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters\
Look for "DisabledComponents" entry
If not there, create it by selecting "New" from the "Edit" menu and then click "DWORD (32-bit) Value"
Modify the "DisabledComponents" entry by double-clicking it
Enter "FF" as a hexadecimal value to disable IPv6 over all interfaces and prefer IPv4 over IPv6. Other values are possible but they
only disable specific components. "FF" disables all IPv6 components
Reboot
 
>> Stopped the following Services and changed their "Startup" to "Manual"
* Bluetooth Support Service
* Windows Media Center Receiver Service
* Windows Media Center Scheduler Service
* Windows CardSpace
* Peer Networking Identity Manager
* Peer Networking Grouping
* Remote access Auto Connection Manager
* Remote Access Connection Manager
* Remote Registry
* Smart Card  
* Smart Card Removal Policy
* Remote Desktop Configuration
* Print Spooler
* Tablet PC Input Service
* Telephony
* Remote Desktop Services
* Remote Desktop Services UserMode Port Redirector
* Windows Defender
* Windows Remote Management (WS-Management)
* Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
* Parental Controls
* Nero Update
* IP Helper
* Offline Files
* TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Reboot
 
>> Disable unused devices in Device Manager
Start->Right-click Computer->Manage->System Tools->Device Manager
If your system does not have a floppy drive then select
Floppy drive controllers-> Standard floppy disk controller: Right-click, select "Disable"
Read DPC Latency Checker's page to learn about disabling other devices and warnings.
 
That's all the tweaks I applied to my system.  Using the DPC Latency Checker I was able to monitor progess made after each reboot.  Slowly peaks at around 8000us started to drop and become less frequent.  After I finished with all the tweaks I am happy to say I have not seen any peaks above 500us and the Absolute Maximum I'm currently seeing is 272us.  In SONAR X1a I opened the 2 audio track project and added the TruePiano 64-bit and BFD2 drums soft synths.  I had the drums playing while recording to two tracks and was also playing the piano.   The Current Latency hovered around 100us and I rarely saw it go above 150us.  Tweaking made a huge difference.  Well worth the effort.
 
John

Good to know you were able to improve performance.

No doubt something was interferring with your happiness.

Most of the suggestions seem resonable.

It is difficult to know which of the changes is/was most significant given each change was not followed by testing. But as long as you got the result you wanted knowing what was really done is less of a concern, other than when recommending such to others.

Some comments:

CW techs told us last year, and before, that most Sonar bits run as daughter processes and therefore setting priority to background tasks to have priority may not be a good thing.

This includes ASIO.

Apparently other DAWs do better with the background setting.

Yet, lots of dudes testing both ways found no difference using Sonar.

================

It has been demonstrated that setting the pagefile to system managed is best for operation.   I have it only on the OS disk.
(billions of threads about this for way too many years)

For me: System restore is off for all but the OS disk: a good butt saver.
 (Just set a restore point before making one of the changes you suggest.)

And so on.

J

Yo Whyz, I applaud the effort. I have been doing the same thing to Cakewalk since DOS. Here is what I came up with, in a nutshell.  It’s kinda simple, and there are a lot of heavies (reminded me of the Brand New Heavies, are they still around?) here that probably can give you much better advice.  Anyway…
Use it only as a Music box.  That means cut Office, games, etc.
Then type these in the blank box above the start button.  Act on anything that looks like its loading the box.
Performance Monitor
Reliability Monitor (there is a check for solution thing here)
We can start a list of what anyone can turn off and not affect SONAR, in the “Computer Management, services and applications”  that would be fun.
I’ll start:
Fax
Credential manager
Bluetooth support services