Disabling Useless Windows Services

good info. how 'bout vista 32 tips?

I remember reading a very interesting article proving that all the trouble people go through to "optimize" their DAW only results in marginal improvements.

thanks. found 2 for vista that look good.


http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.php

ORIGINAL: dlion16

good info. how 'bout vista 32 tips?

Stay away!!!!!!

Regards
Freddie

Granted you're not likely to see much performance improvement, unless you have antivirus software or Windows indexing that is doing realtime scanning of files on your hard drive.
Where the bang for the buck is with disabling these processes is reclaiming nearly half a gig of ram, which creates more headroom for Sonar.

ORIGINAL: Freddie H
Avoiding tweaks of dubious value

That's good advice, as far as it goes...

there is a ton of information on the web, unfortunately, there is also at least a ton (maybe more) of misinformation out there. What's a person to do?

Well, as has always been the case, you need to do your homework - if you don't have a clue as to how a computer actually works then tweaking it is probably not a great idea to start with.

The good news = there are things you can do if you need to get that last little bit of performance from your system.

The not-as-good news = that last little bit of performance may still not be enough, and you are going to have to hunt, and you are going to have to experiment, or, you are going to have to pay someone that has the knowledge you need.

To draw a parallel, there are countless (or maybe I'm just too lazy to count?) web sites out there that will suggest that the best way to defeat a ground loop induced noise problem is to defeat the safety ground on your equipment. You'll even find this suggestion here in this forum. This might be the absolute worst advice you will ever read! Not only does is mask a problem, it is dangerous. They call it a safety ground for a reason... it provides a safe path to ground, and away from you, should dangerous currents start flowing where they ought not to.

The point is, well meaning or not there is bad information out there, and it is not always immediately obvious whether or not information is good or bad. If you need the information you may not have the knowledge necessary to figure out whether information is good or bad.

Folks that make a living building systems have a definite incentive to sit back and watch, but oddly enough there are at least two folks on this forum who understand the issues inside and out (Scott and Jim) and they share this hard won knowledge freely. So pay attention to their posts.

That said, if you really do want to learn it isn't real difficult to do so... while you can cripple a computer with inappropriate settings you would have to work really hard to actually damage it. Just make your first task learning to backup and recover so that you can reinstall an known good version of your operating environment if necessary!

And while I do not have the depth of knowledge that Jim and Scott possess, I can share my experience. In the past (think Celeron class machines) I was an avid over-clocker, and it was well worth while! My current computer (Q6600 on P5K-C w/4GB) is sufficiently fast that I don't need to overclock. I still turn of some of the really obvious services more from habit, or for security reasons. I have not "run out of steam" yet, and I doubt that turning off services is the reason<G>!

If you are curious - and remember this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it - I disable:
1) firewall, security center, remote access, remote registry access etc - strictly for security reasons, I trust my external firewall far more than I do an internal one, and I don't need reminders about security issues, and I don't want to grant remote access to anyone!
2) all quick-starters, iTunes, OpenOffice, etc - I don't need them
3) all automatic updaters, Java, MS, etc - I don't need them
4) most accessories (the control panel for the Dakota does come in handy<G>)

There might be a couple of others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

These are all common sense things, and while I doubt that they add to track count I suppose they give me the illusion of being in control<G>!

Good luck...

ORIGINAL: wintaper

Copied this from an older posting. This advice is for a dedicated stand-alone DAW only (it disables Windows Networking).

Use at your own risk.

If you have 3GB or more of RAM, turn off virtual memory completely. Sonar doesn't use that much and the machine will run faster with vm turned off

an easier way to turn off those unneeded services is to paste the following lines into a text file, save it with a .cmd extension and then double-click the file. All of these services are non-essential for DAW...

net stop netman
net stop NVsvc
net stop HidServ
net stop PolicyAgent
net stop CryptSvc
net stop winmgmt
net stop MSDTC
net stop "Apple Mobile Device"
net stop "iPod Service"
net stop w32time
net stop spooler
net stop wuauserv
net stop wuauclt
net stop TermService
net stop PolicyAgent
net stop ProtectedStorage
net stop SENS
net stop LmHosts
net stop netlogon
net stop lanmanworkstation
net stop lanmanserverpause

NOTE: this will also stop most MS networking as well (file+print sharing, although tcp/ip will still be running)

-Dan

PS: Some machines may not have all these services, others may have additional services running, but this is the general idea

XP32bit only not on VISTA!


I have 8GB RAM total 16GB RAM and VIRTUAL MEMORY shall be ON in VISTA 64bit!
The rest; some apps you refereed to here in this TWEAK doesn't even exist in VISTA or WINDOWS 7 system!


Hope everyone get my point!

Regards
Freddie

... an easier way to turn off those unneeded services is to paste the following lines into a text file, save it with a .cmd extension and then double-click the file. All of these services are non-essential for DAW... net stop netman net stop NVsvc net stop HidServ net stop PolicyAgent net stop CryptSvc net stop winmgmt net stop MSDTC net stop "Apple Mobile Device" net stop "iPod Service" ......

Very interesting, I'm running on Windows 7 64 bits and, as I am not familiar with writing code, I would like to know if I could write two simple .CMD routines that I could launch with just one click to ACTIVATE (for "every-day use" of my laptop) and DEACTIVATE (for DAW needs) a precise list of windows services...

To re-activate services, should a line be like:

net start netman     ??

I am also wondering if the bakers could publish a list of the essential services needed to run SONAR and most of the DX/VST plugins to the best of their knowledge?? (even an "AT YOUR OWN RISK" list would be fine for me...)

With this list and the above CMD start/stop routine, it would be easier to quickly toggle back and forth, no??

Bitflipper proposed something like this to activate/deactivate networks quickly... I need to find it again. Anyway, it looks promising but a little difficult for me to program and set-up...

I understand that little improvements are achived, but I am stuck between a rock and a hard place here...

My DELL STUDIO 17 / Win 7 64 bit laptop has a DAW-only BOOT under wich I managed somehow to control the DPC spikes (did so many things, disabled so many components, that I do not know anymore what tweak made the difference... LOL) ... Am I just lucky??

Anyway, now my DPC is 99% of the time under 400 "us" most of the time around 200.... BUT, SONAR 8.5 still experience full-stop DROPOUT form time to time, even with small projects... CPU and MEMORY resources meters show very little system usage when DROPOUTS are happening, so it is not a question of power in my case!

So it seems that there is only ONE thing or service that still cripples SONAR... does not seems to happen with Pro-Tools M-Powered or my other softs...

And the 10% of times that I have problems are CRITICAL problems when working on audio productions. I can never feel safe when recording or producing or giving clients ETA's on delivery...

Real PITA.

I've disabled all kinds of things...the problem now is constant HD activity. It could be any of a thousand things...I never should have installed the OS onto a 1TB drive for starters

Windows will rearrange the swap file, the indexer will run, daily restore point, super fetch,..

Use the disk manager to reduce the size of the current partition. And then create a couple new ones. use the 2nd for w7 32 or 64. Use one for backups of the audio files which will be recorded on the 2nd drive.

Most samplers will load into ram and not stream, so putting samples on the OS partition will not degrade performance.

Start | run  type msconfig. 
  Startup tab: quicktime/qtask, adobe, real audio, java,...
  Services tab:
    fur shur: ATI hotkey poler, if it exists.
    wlan config, if no wireless card
    windows media sharing
    And some others. I have over 60 services disabled.

But, before you do the above create a restore point. This function has been stupidly hidden: Control panel, system, Advanced Settings, CREATE.

Always do such before making major changes.

And so on.

J

(Is that really a picture of you? Or a picture of how you want to appear?)

w7 "disk management" interface can resize and create partitions.

Also: easus.com has a free version.

One more thing: adding a partition to your drive does not improve your system performance like having a second physical drive for your audio. But I always do it on any system, even if just to simplify the management and creation of drive backup images.

The more stuff on the drive the longer it takes to defrag, optimize,... The farther the heads have to move the longer the seek time. For most stuff this does not matter but:
When a file is deleted the space is not immediately used. But after a while it is and hence future files become fragmented. Every bit of space on a disk is referenced in the File Allocation Tables. Every time a file it written to disk, each sector must be allocated and listed in the FATs. This requires head movement. The more files the more head movement, the longer the access time. The page file gets fragmented, the OS needs to clean it and add to it,... more time.

Partitions are useful when doing stuff that is not simultaneous. This is because the same set of heads must travers the disk, updating the in-use partition's FAT.

So, I allocated one disk to 3 partitions: w7 32, w7 64, and CD projects and storage. 
Only one of the first two partitions will be used during recording. But the heads will not have to move over lots of space when needing to access files for the OS, Sonar, plug ins, the page file, temporary files,...

And with SATA the issue with "slave" drives is of less importance. When using IDE I had the CD rom connected as slave to the OS disk. And since the samplers I use are mostly not streaming, the samples disk was slave to the audio projects disk.

It is true that SATA appears to use master/slave because of the use of "channels," similar to USB. But it is less of an issue than IDE was.

==========================
How I did it:

500 gig disk:
  C:\  win 7 32      (100gb)   all audio programs, VSTs, sonar picture cache
  J:\  (C when booted)  win 7 64      (100gb)   all audio programs, VSTs, sonar picture cache
  O:\  stuff            (~~280gb)   CD projects, and storage

200 gig disk:
D:\   samples, misc

500 gig disk:
E:\  audio projects\
          sonar projects
          cal
          presets
          templates
          and most of the other sonar folders

I installed Sonar to  C:\Sonar7, Sonar8.5,...

I attempt to install all plugs in c:\AudioCommon: shared plugins, shared vst, shared surfaces,..

And all non-sonar audio programs in c:\AudioPrograms.


And so on.