Tuning Windows XP for Audio

Sorry in advance for the long post, but I thought it might be less annoying if I put all these points in a single email rather than ask them separately.

I have gathered the following Windows XP tweaking points from 3 different sources (direct links are at the bottom) and before implementing them I wanted to run them by you all to see if some are not necessary (or good) and if there are others that are not covered here.

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BEFORE INSTALLING

As a final resort, to free up IRQ's, you can consider disabling unused devices in the BIOS. For example,

• If you don't use your COM ports, then disable these and this will give you two extra IRQ's.
  
• If you don't use your motherboard USB, then disable this.
  
• If you don't use your parallel port, then disable this
  
• Any other unused devices can also be disabled in the BIOS if it lets you
  

TUNING WINDOWS XP

• It is best to reboot after a series of changes to clean the slate of any system components that may be running. For example, make all of the Service changes at once, and then reboot before making other changes.
  
• Check all of the running applications in your System Tray. Turn off any you do not need, as they take up memory and resources, as well as increasing boot time. The general procedure is to right-click and uncheck settings like "load at startup" and "run in background". Then exit the applet.
  In particular, disable Windows Messenger
  
• Stop unnecessary apps from running on boot-up by removing their shortcuts from your Start Menu Startup folder.
  
• Disable visual effects in Control Panel -- Display -- Appearance -- Effects. Turn off things like "Show window contents while dragging".
  
• To speed up screen redraws, set colour depth to 16 bits in Control Panel -- Display -- Settings.
  
• Turn off the screen saver in Control Panel -- Display -- Screen Saver. On this same panel, set monitor power saving to "always on" and turn off any hard disk or CPU power down features.
  
• In Control Panel -- Sounds and Audio Devices turn off system sounds as these can interfere with recording.
  
• In Control Panel -- System -- Advanced choose "adjust for best performance" under Visual Effects and "adjust for best performance of background services" under Processor Settings. This ensures the lowest latency with ASIO drivers.
  
• Disable "fast user switching" in Control Panel -- User Accounts – Change
  
• Disable unnecessary "System Services" in Control Panel -- Performance and Maintenance -- Administrative Tools -- Services. This can save between 12 and 70 MB of RAM. However, doing so is for advanced users only. Be sure you know what you are turning off! For a detailed reference see the Black Viper site. Some of the following tips assume a knowledge of these Services.
  
• If you wish, disable System Restore to reclaim about 3GB of space.
  
• Disable Themes to save 4-12 MB RAM by going to Control Panel -- Performance and Maintenance -- System -- Advanced -- Performance Settings -- Visual Effects and selecting "Adjust for best performance". Then disable the Themes Service.
  
• Disable Automatic Updates
  
• In XP Pro, turn off "Remote Assistance" and "Remote Desktop Sharing" in Control Panel -- Performance and Maintenance -- System -- Remote.
  
• Disable "Disk I/O Performance Logging" by selecting Run from the Start Menu and typing diskperf –n.
  
• Disable "Write Behind Caching" in Control Panel -- System -- Hardware -- Device Manager. Select each drive, choose Properties and uncheck "Write Cache Enabled".
  
• Check DMA settings in Device Manager (access as above). Under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" branch of the tree, do the following for both Primary and Secondary Controllers: right-click, select "Properties", go to the Advanced Settings tab, ensure "Transfer mode" is set to "DMA if available" and "Device Type" to "Auto Detection". If these options do not exist, you likely need a BIOS update for your motherboard.
  
• Disable AutoPlay so CDs don't start up automatically.
  
• After all of your installations, uninstalls, and optimisations are complete, defragment your hard drives. Do this periodically or after major file changes. If you followed the partition advice given earlier, you can quickly defrag your current work partition after each work session.
  
• Download BootVis from MSDN and run it now and whenever the system changes significantly. It will optimise files on the disk for fastest sequential access during boot-up.
  
• Processor scheduling should be set to background services and not Programs (Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced Tab > Background Services)
  
• Disable Fast User Switching (Start > Settings > Control Panel > User Accounts > Change the way users log on or off > Untick Use Fast User Switching)
  
• Switch Off Hibernation
  
• Do Not Map Through Soundcard
  
• Startup and Recovery Options (Start > Settings > Control Panel> System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery Settings > Untick Automatically Restart)
  
• Disable Error Reporting
  
• Fix Swap File (Virtual Memory) (Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory Change > Custom Size. Set initial and maximum size to the same value). It's also a good idea to defrag your drive after changing Virtual Memory. If you have access to a third party defragging utility (like System Suite, Disk Keeper, etc.), it's preferable to defrag with it, rather than Windows defrag utility, which doesn't do a true reorder of a swap file. (Note: Some users advise disabling virtual memory for increased performance. This is not practical for all systems.)
  
• Speed Up Menus (Start > Run > Regedit > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Desktop Folder. Set MenuShowDelay to 1)
  
• Disable Offline Files
  
• Disable Internet Synchronise Time
  
• Disable Hide Inactive Icons
  
• Disable Automatic Desktop Cleanup Wizard
  
• Disable NTFS Last Access Time Logging (NTFS File Systems Only) (Start > Run > regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System > CurrentControlSet > Control > Filesystem. Add a new DWORD value - "NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate" and set value to 1.)
  
• Disable Notification Area Balloon Tips
  
• Disable Disc Indexing Service
  
• Disable write behind caching
  HELPFUL TIPS
  
  
• Complete your security setup by modifying your accounts. For XP Pro disable the "Guest" account and rename (not disable) the "Administrator" account.
  
• Do not customise the Virtual Memory swap file, despite some recommendations to the contrary.
  
• Do not install virus scanning apps that load in the background or run as services.
  
• Do not install RealPlayer, Quicktime, games, or any other large multimedia system. In fact, install only what you need to get work done, at least on your audio boot partition. Play around with new plugins and fun stuff on your other OS copy.
  
• If you change the Windows registry manually (recommended for experts only), make the change to a .REG file, and archive all of these so you can replicate the changes easily.
  
• Note where apps store their configuration info and try to standardise this. Don't forget to backup this data.
  
• To improve system stability, at the cost of slightly decreased performance, go to Computer -- Tools -- Options -- View and turn on "Launch folder windows in a separate process".
  

SERVICES

(Is it recommended to disable any of the services?--or set them to manual?)

REMOVE ITEMS

• Use Notepad to edit the sysoc.inf file in the Windows/Inf folder. Do a search and replace for the word "hide" (leave match case unticked), replacing hide with nothing. Save the file.
  
  
• Go back to "Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel and select "Add/Remove Windows Components". Components that couldn't be seen before can now be viewed and removed. You will notice that Windows Messenger can now be removed, which can be a resource hog.
  
  
• Reboot after removing components to take effect.
  
  Typical components that can be removed are (there may be others depending on your requirements):
  
  Accesibility Options
  Indexing service
  Update Root Certificates
  Windows Automatic Updates
  Windows Messenger
  Games
  Desktop Wallpaper
  Explorer (Unless you use the audio PC for surfing of course)
  Communications
  MSN Explorer
  

USEFUL TOOLS

• Microsoft Power Toys
  
  Power Toys are additional programs that Microsoft developers work on after a product has been released to manufacturing.
  
  Microsoft has taken great care to ensure that Power Toys operate as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft.
  
  For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys.
  
  Download the XP versions of Powertools from Microsoft
  
  
• MSCONFIG
  
  As with other Windows versions, programs can be started automatically by XP. It is worth checking to see what programs (if any) your XP system is starting by itself on startup, as these may be using valuable processing power.
  
  To investigate the automatically starting programs, use the XP msconfig tool. The msconfig tool is not new to XP and first appeared in Windows 98 and then ME.
  
  To run msconfig, click on Start > Run and type in "msconfig" (no quotes) and click OK. Click on the Startup Tab and uncheck any programs, that you don't want to autostart. Dont' disable anything you're not sure about.
  

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These links are where the above information came from:
http://www.musicxp.net/
http://www.execulink.com/~robin1/a_xp_for_audio.html

I cant stress the point enough that it is crucial to have your music computer NOT connected the internet. I know it is useful for updates etc, but you pay the price in stability. Not just from adware and viruses but also that having network services enabled is another drain on resources, especailly if you are using the built in ethernet on the motherboard. Of course if you are using midi over lan this is a moot point.

Another issue is video. The game here is audio, not pretty colors! You will get better audio performance if you lower the demands the video subsystem places on the computer. You can do this by downgrading to a lower class of card if you currently are running a top of the heap DX9 card. Then you will also want to lower your screen bit depth to 16bpp.
This will lower the amount of data you are asking the computer to shuffle back and forth. This gives you more headroom for you audio apps, Powercore, UAD1 etc.

Nathan, curious as how your setup is going. With p-5 and midi over LAN you have a lot more going than I do. Where are you putting your page file? I set my 250 drive to two 60MB partitions (DAW is c:) and the third for storage. I'll get a second drive for audio later. So far, I'm just beginning to trim things down. Have any probs with anything you've listed so far?

kellog

...set my 250 drive to two 60MB partitions...

Uh, 60GB sounds better. Yeah, well don't feel like you're alone in tweak zone. These forums are great tools. I'd recommend just following musicxp's page, as they have instructions and explanations as you go - at least for a start. I've done all that before and haven't had problems. I've never set my swap file to another partition, so I'm interested in getting that set up. I just put mine together from various mail order parts and locally bought case and am just burning it in from 2:00am last night. I'm headed over to AMD forum to see about utilities to check RAM etc. I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.

3700+ San Diego
Stock cooler and fan (for now)
GA-k8NS Ultra
OCZ 2X1 GB RAM
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 250, 3.0 @ 1.5. Nidec motor, two platter. (Main and only current drive)
Antec Sonata II (w/o ducting)
Matrox G-450 dual head 32MB
Main audio card - Delta 1010

I'm looking for another drive - probably will stick with Samsung single platter, and upgrading to Sonar 5, but am leaning to Studio. I almost went with a dual 4400+, but figured I'd feel like a fool using at most 10% for what I usually do. Besides, I'd rather feel like a fool with more money than the other way around. I don't think you will have problems tweaking after APP installs, but it's always good to ask. I've had no problems myself. Good luck.

kellog