It is not that all of it is needed. Powering down USB ports not in use is not a priority with me. I leave the power up, and the computer powered up all the time. No, not all of has to be done, and Windows Defender never interferred with running audio anyway, and neither does my anti-virus. For me, instead of hibernating anything on the computer, my computer is either started-up from power off (the computer off) or else my computer is on all the way. The point is I guess, do what you want to do as to regards to your computer, and most times most things will not interfere, and the Internet I Enable or Disable all the time, and I turn on my computer all the time and power down completely instead of hibernate. It all takes a little time from Windows Defender running when the computer starts like my anti-virus checking out the computer, but even after that, I can have it running while recording audio or not. Right now, that does not interfere with anything as far as I can tell.
 
the links I gave should have worked,  they worked for me, that is all I can say about it.
 
But just to give you an idea of what can be done with an OS, to tweak it persay if you need to.
I don't understand everything in the computer anyway, with some stuff so I may look at it and not do anything with it. But with what I have found out, the only things I do manually, is once a month on or after the second Tuesday, is the time for Windows Update. Once a month probably is enough. Anti-virus everyday, but I choose to do that manually an it usually takes a minute. (unless it was on my XP computer and then since it had been a month not using it - I had 120 files to download - it still updated and everything that was needed was done on that computer).
 
Defragging the harddrive, I do myself, since I have partitions on my harddisk as logical drive letters and that does not take that long, plus the fact that with Windows OS 7 you can do that and still run other programs or be on the Internet while doing it. My harddisk partitions are not monsterous  size partitions, but that will be that. (on XP now, perhaps running defrag program meant that was it, since it was a 32-bit computer, thus a standstill, thus why some people do it at night when asleep.
 
All that is meant is run the computer the way you want to, and be aware that other programs needed to run or not may be running because either the program was not set not to do that, or because the person on the computer had to look at the programs and see what it will do. I guess some people would not bother.
 
But for audio, some of it may help and certainly it won't hurt to know about it though.
Good luck, I can get up to 54 tracks of audio without a problem but Sonar version I have only goes up to 64 tracks. I rather not try that many again, but then again, once I did that and the song - goofy as it may be - is in my signature, because 11 or tracks were just her singing, the rest of the mess was done by me.

Mainly for the yucks of it I guess now.
 
as to that song, if you want to listen to Guitarhacker's or Frank Tanton's version both on this forum with other songs, then the link is her page at Soundcloud. I did it late, just to add to the already 8 trillion version as I say it for the yucks of it I guess.
 
https://soundcloud.com/imogen-heap
 
can do your own version also if you want to, her vocals are down at the bottom of all those same songs.
But after that her page to send it to her is still there also.
I'm done.
 
 P.S. if the link did not work then perhaps it is because it is Startpage, I don't use Goggle directly anymore, not that it makes much difference, but then.........................
https://startpage.com/eng/download-startpage-plugin.html
 
but that may be the reason then for that search link.
 
And for that reason I do not use Bing from Microsoft either.
 
Well, that should do it for a few years, enough babbling.
 
 

Those Imogen Heap files are a great find!  Made my day.  Listening to your remixes, I am reminded I am way out of my league here, but enjoyed them all (Tanton's "Never Was" was almost too well disguised and only found it after quite a bit of searching).   Maybe something play with another day.  Thanks for sharing.  

To re cap what I think I was saying, It's really a crap shoot with computers and especially laptops it would seem on whether they will be DAW ready or not out of the box. And then there are some that just plain are screwed.  
 
Most only need minor tweaks, and shutting off wireless is sometimes all that is needed. I found there was very little to gain DPCLAT wise in shutting down most background processes but I do it anyhow, audio or not, I hate that stuff. I did an experiment once with my old Acer. 
 
I installed  window XP and ran DPCLAT immediately after it booted.  It was spiking red. I disabled the wireless and all was good. 
I then proceeded to install my usual software, including MS Security essentials  and ran updates etc. Still in the green. No Change as long as internet is off. 
 
My Asus Netbook needs the wireless and the  Battery management disabled or it will spike. 
Everything else is standard office set up. I use this for playback at my gigs and 2 track recording. Never has failed me.  
 
My 2004 Toshiba SAT pro needs wireless  off , there's a switch :) and there is no battery management because I couldn't find the drivers for this dinosaur. It is also used for day to day office stuff  and E mail - is in the low green when Wireless is off. 
 
My Wifes Lenovo T420 seems to stay green even with the wireless on? go figure. I'm not sure what the tech did to it, but it's main purpose is remoting into the office server with a high security level for this. It's got major AV installed.  I will buy one when I get rich. 
 
My desktop DAW is under 50ms? and shows no signs of spiking. It has absolutely nothing other than Sonar, Cubase, Win Amp and Wavelab installed. 
 

DellAnderson, I feel your pain.
 
This seemed to help my situation a month or two ago:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/The-Sonar-x64Windows-7-x64-Install-Tweaks-amp-Compatibility-Thread-m1862515.aspx
 
Hope that helps -- good luck!

Thanks, cwestmont.  That looks like another really great resource....for next time (I've saved it in my newly bulging MS OneNote "Cakewalk configuration file")
 
Having just spent 4 hours this morning trying (and eventually succeeding) in getting my wireless access turned back on, I don't think I will be using Cakewalk or any audio recording programs on my Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 0578-N8U Windows 7 Professional i3 for a while - perhaps not until MS Windows (or some other OS designer what works with my Cakewalk UA-25EX USB external audio card without requiring me to mutilate the whole computer extensively and semi-permanently.
 
I am not an computer ignoramous -- I suppose some would even call me a geek - I have studied assembly programming, C++, networking, web development, Java, cryptography, 3D computer graphics, and video editing.   I don't know it all, there are many things I still don't understand (who does know everything about a modern OS?), but the current level of difficulty MS Windows has in prioritizing Real Time audio recording over background processes is insane and not tending towards either creativity OR time effectiveness. 
 
Even with two days effort, I never was able to stop the red spikes from appearing every 25-30 seconds in DPCLAT.  But I was able to record a complete Audio Book in mono 44.1kHz.  That's all I wanted to do for now.  And it only took 4 times as long as it should have with a User Friendly system.
 
PS By the way, in case anyone else was following this thread from the beginning, the way I reenabled wireless was 1) Device manager enabled 2) Updated wireless drivers 3) Reinstall ThinkVantage System update 4) Reinstall Access Connections  (that's the one I forgot about) 5) Reenter LAN Wireless passphrase (I had completely removed everything -just to be 'sure').
 
Sometime when I have nothing better to do I will read and try the voluminous suggestions on the above links.  Meanwhile, I have other fish to fry.   Thanks to all for the help getting my audio book recorded.
 
 
 
 
 
 

You didn't read what I was telling you, Don't blame the OS or Software for DPCLAT spikes,
My son's experiment proved this. The spikes remained the same just like yours no matter which OS he used, He used XP, W7 and then various Linux and even managed to get OS 10.? to run on a PC. The Dell remained unusable for audio. This is what I'm saying, some laptops will not work, ever. The Processor, the RAM all that is not what is preventing the audio, Like I say I can record a whole band live in 14 audio tracks 44.1/24  for hours on end to a 2004 1.7 Mhz with 1.5 G or RAM. The hard drive IS important so I always buy a newer 7200 RPM drive. They are cheap.  
I don't understand why on one hand you say you know your way around a computer and then you had so much trouble with your wireless card. 
Every laptop I've ever used has this either in a Fn key or a hardware switch on the side. 
If not, disabling in device manager and re enabling takes a few seconds. 
You don't have to uninstall the drivers? 
What you need to do is forget that laptop and move on to one that works. This could be used or new. 
This is why my son did the DPCLAT test on the laptops before he would buy it. Virus? 
Why would my son have a USB drive with a virus on it? And people who are trying to sell stuff are very cooperative. 
 
You are wasting your time reading all those tweaks, sure some are useful, but they are not the root of the problem, the hardware is. 

@Cactus Music - I won't be responding to every subsequent question, but your last post had the strong whiff of 'blame the victim laptop' so I will answer what I have time.   And yes, you may be possibly right that it is a hardware issue, but I don't know how you are so sure that my 2012 laptop is physically incapable of real time audio.  The every 25-30 second spike does not really sound like a video card or hard drive issue to me (only gut instinct but it is better than nothing).   It is a very generic Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 14 with dual CPU i3 and 8Gb ram and 5400 RPM drive and can render video in real time so why can't it record low bandwidth audio?   Is it so different mechanically from other computers that it can not record 44.1k audio?  If that it is the case, should not Cakewalk put out an advisory?     Yes, to get multiple audio tracks I'd definitely want to get a 7200RPM drive, but I've been around long enough to know we used to do fine with 5400 so why is a newer, faster computer less capable?  Something stinks here.    Big time.
 
And, in response to your question about your son's intentions:  I did not mean to imply that your son would install a virus on a laptop in a store.  Far be it from me to suspect HIM  in particular.   What your story about him told me was that if a computer store would allow any Joe Customer off the street to insert USB drives into a computer, there is no reason to suspect that this would be a nearly ideal method for a criminal to put malware on a computer.   Just another reason for the truly security conscious to completely wipe a drive and reinstall software prior to using a drive -- probably a good idea anyway, even for a non-display model.  Oh, and in this particular case I would have recommended for his own good that he bring the data in as a non-recordable CD - that way he would be protected from infection.  As it is, even though he came in innocently, he may have picked up a Stuxnet like virus by practicing unsafe USB with his USB stick in the (possibly already tainted) store computers.
 
And yes, I do know about the F9 (wireless off) key, but I still had DPCLAT red spikes with wireless button turned off and some post on this thread continued to repeat the mantra that turning off wireless should be all that is necessary so I suspected perhaps it was not completely inactivated (and only running as a background service or something).  Somewhere I had read that Access Connections still might be an issue unless completely uninstalled (this is one of the undocumented hazards of googling too much!).  Therefore I made sure that it was completely unable to cause problems by disabling it entirely.
 
I hope that clarified things a bit.  And no, I am not going to buy a new computer momentarily just to record mono audio.
 

This Sound on Sound link is a bit dated, but strongly implicates firmware (BIOS) as a common culprit.  This means that if each Audiophile/ DAW user lobbies the computer companies perhaps they will pay attention when designing their lousy sloppy BIOS firmware.   At least one manufacturer did: (Sorry, I seem to considered a second class citizen here and restricted from posting links, but I will edit the link so it will post but you can still follow it hopefully ):
 
www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=pcmus&Number=588140&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=365&fpart=4
 
The screen captures are convincing to me -- no hardware was changed in some but simply changing the firmware made dramatic improvements.

For those interested in my saga, I am moving the discussion to the Lenovo community forum.  I hope to raise some awareness with the manufacturers.   Using a laptop as a Digital Audio Workstation can no longer be considered an esoteric use of a computer.  Perhaps in 1995, not in 2013.   Here's the link to the page where I posted full details and summary, including links to some of the pages here and a screen capture of my DPCLAT output after most tweaks:
 
forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-Edge-S-series/Thinkpad-Edge-terrible-for-audio-processing/m-p/460041/highlight/false#M3742

What is learned here is you can't even go by a brand , it's model by model. ( bios by bios?) Therefor the need to run the test before we buy.
 
That is why you either need to purchase with the ability to return the item for full refund, or better yet go into an actual store with staff willing to help you with this. If they are not willing to cooperate then go to one that is. A local repair tech who does a little retail too is the best place , I find they can price match and supply you with top notch service.   
 
DPCLAT will run from a USB drive so you don't have to install it to the machine your testing. Put the app on an empty drive and let the store clerk scan it first.