Tips For Speeding Up Windows XP, Without Utilizing 'Defrag'

If you're still relying on 'Defrag' to improve system performance, you are behind the times. Defragmenting is the process of reorganizing all files on a hard drive so that each file is arranged into...

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this is quite fair, i appreciate an honest answer

i think you are misunderstanding, there are limitations on applications and OS in general, and it cannot do something that the current code does not allow.
The one way he speaks of, is "not real time" you cannot make standard XP run in real time, it's not possible, it will not keep up, even setting all processes to "real time" is not actually real time.

XP embedded is a good example, the best example of real a time OS is the OS running pace makers and software of the sort, where it is more important that the software work w/ 0% error than having multi-functionality. The time you spend waiting on an application to run, or your computer to restart is the proof of a non real time OS.

There are degrees of RTOS (real time OS... getting tired of typing the whole thing), soft and hard, these define the error and wait time, both are ridiculously quick. The basic idea is that it for the most part correctly predicts and reacts to situations just as you do, running efficient algorithms.

i started out breaking dos years ago.
then when win 3.1 came out i started tweaking till i broke it.
oh yeah, some things can really slow things down.
but in all the years of tweaking and breaking i have found that microsoft, although they wrote the software, did not write the bible on tweaking it.
thats just years of experience speaking.

yes windows is not a realtime os, neither is any other os for that matter. it takes time for things to happen, regardless of how fast the machine may be.
as for messing with the page file, ahh 1.5 times the ram is not windows controlled default, that is windows controlled max.

trust me, i have run audio apps for over ten years, windows default is not the way to go, i would never advise anyone trying to record large projects " just leave it alone, windows works best with its default settings ". what i do advise is " dont have it net enabled, and disable everything that runs in the background that "you" as a user don`t need.

some other things that cause large problems on recording machines. RealTime player. Quicktime player. norton anything. msn is one of the worst. along with a whole pile of things that set processes running in the background. gama loader, blah blah blah.

my wife has her computer and i have mine, all of the people that come over to our house and visit or whatever, know that to touch my computer means death.

no facebook, no myspace, nothing like that. email done through online secure email trough our website host. and so on.

on the wifes computer, because she deals with the myspace and all other band related things, she uses linux apps that run in windows, i find they are easier to use, less suseptable to hacks, and there are tons of freeware that outdo microsoft. some of my programs that i use for digging out crap out of the reg and other places, i have been using since win 95, they still work, and work better than any micrsoft thingy that has come down the pipe in the past 10 years. cleaning out the registry of invalid entries is a tedious task at the least, i have done it, i know. i have a little program i found for win 95, that still works better and faster. and finds all the history of all the programs that have ever been installed on your computer.

and for the coup de gras, i dont use antivirus software, because i don`t offer the things a way to get onto my computer. anything microsft comes up with as the new improved way of doing things, there is a better way. non microsoft.

this is what i have learned over the years.
having friends that dig up obscure stuff and try it out helps, as well as reading up on all the latest hacks that are ever present in the microsoft world. if linux had better recording programs and a better support for my pro hardware i would go with that. it just works. but they dont and i am stuck in the scenario of recording high end on a low end os. blah blah blah mac. yeah if i could sell my left nut and get a million bucks for it i might get somthing that would be in the range of what i do, but i cant afford 15 grand for the computer and plugins, let alone the external hardware.

lets face it, highend studios afford the highend gear beacause they finance the hell out of it. how many big a room studios have gone under in the past 5 years? capitol records crystal room is now gone ( captain and teniel recorded all thier hits there ) sony in nashville, ( elvis, johnny cash, the list goes way on ) thats just last month. digital recording has hit the home, and lots of people are into doing it themselvs, and like me they cant afford the highend mac stuff, so they are stuck in the same boat. trying to tweak out windows to get the next track to run. thats why i ended up here, thats why lots of people will end up here. i get the how can i tweak windows for recording question all the time. getting into a debate of why it says this and that on microsofts website is not really helping. it`s hindering things.

like me they don`t have the time between recording and working to pay the bills to read what microsoft has to say on this topic or that, they want something that works, and they want it now. that why these things come up on google.

i am ranting because i have read the thread, and to the original reply you came off like a pompus bastard, not to sugar coat it. sure you have a lot of knowledge, but you lack people skills, try something like, i found that this worked better on my machine, rather than, have you even read the microsoft website on what they had to say about it?

i mean the world needs people with big brains, they don`t need people trying to prove they have a big brain. so either help out with some proven tweaks that you in your own experience have come across, microsoft approved or not, and post those. my guess would be that is why the thread was started in the first place.

or just shut up.

Could be...

What I liked about this meandering around was that no one took their bat and ball and went home I really respect you guys and gals that "know" what you are talking about, or at least talk a good line. One cannot help but learn as the maestros of varying talent duke it out...

I never took a single computer lesson of any kind...self-taught from the start and while suffering a number of mental disabilities Empirical evidence has been my mentor. I have reformatted my hard drives out of existance. If there was something stupid to have been done, I did it. It got to the point where I was obsessed with "controlling' the damn thing. I spent almost 48 hours once, trying to solve a problem...got real sick over it. Now, some 15 yrs later, I succeed 90% of the time...in fairly short order. For the other 10% of the time, I go to the internet, and to places like SYSCHAT.

I know nothing about programming. My attitude, is that if programmers did it right in the first place, there would be no problems but that is my bias. e.g. I have asked repeatedly, for some time, all over the net, for someone to step up and solve the XP problem of saving folder options [check SysChat's archives under my handle] ...not one programmer came forward!...and the issue is rampant after using XP for a couple of years, or with later modifications to the SP1 version. Hundreds of users could have benefitted.

I too started out in DOS, and I too wish MS had left things alone, re: DOS, but they didn't and "we" users demanded, indirectly, that they abandon it. And, MS found it uneconomical to support it, and their mistakes in programming in their rush to the shelves...and with following versions of its OS's...thus the constant upgrading...to reduce the cost of assisting us. So, we are stuck with "all of our" mistakes, their bottom line, and the FACT that we now need to depend on each other for our survival. So, keep it civil...I need you guys to kiss and make nice

Sami: I did not do any of what was noted in the beginning...but one thing caught my eye: "Highlight the 'Explorer' folder. Then in the window to the right, 'Right-click' anywhere in the white space. Select 'New' > 'DWORD Value' and name it 'AlwaysUnloadDLL'. After creating the key, 'Right-click' on it and select 'Modify' and under 'Value data:' type '1'. Select 'OK' and close 'regedit'. Restart your machine."

I tried this, and the newly created D-word is impossible to create. My mistake? or what? To modify the key, you are given 0000_00_00_00_00 and no place to effectively put in a single "1." It cannot be done. Windows won't allow it. It says that that is an invalid entry. Don't shoot the messenger ...that's what it said. So, if do-able...what did I do wrong? Creating a new string value allows you to modify to "1." Is that what was meant?

Now, let's get back to HELPING each other...and put down our epeés

yes you are right.
i am in the wrong here.
he does have some good points.
so i apologize to all that have been offended by my comments.

a little bit of history.
Bill Gates bought DOS from IBM for $1.
they weren`t going to pursue it because they realized it was a broken operatng system. or inferior.
there are all kinds of errors in the code to begin with.

and this is what windows was built on till NT came out.

bill put a pretty face on it and his marketing was better. how many of us use unix? the operating system that IBM did pursue. was the standard on server systems for years.

the difference between the two are, DOS and windows made hardware calls through "drivers" esentialy interpriters. and things get lost in translation.

UNIX, MAC, and LINUX make direct hardware calls, they have "drivers" but it is like teaching the os the language of the hard ware, without the use of dll`s.
that is why they have always been more stable.

and LINUX is GPL so for your average user downloading it and using it is free.
there is tons of free software that is pretty damn good. the wife and i both use xp, but we use open office for all the things that one would do in MS office, it will import and export to MS OFFICE with no problems. but windows will not do the same, and open office is free to use for the home user, and a small licensing fee for profesional organizations, under $200 with updates and support being offered. you still get the support being a home user, with no cost.

Trillian will interface seemlessly with ICQ, MSN, AIM and all the other point to point mesaging services, at the same time. in the same window. another liniux app that gets things done.

viruses? windows way to many to count, and growing everyday.
mac, still under 10. linux? i dont think that there are any yet? if someone knows i would like to know weather there are or not.

but as i have said before, with what i do, windows=problems. mac=high cost. linux=no programs or support for my high end hardware.

budget + hardware = windows

all the high end video editing houses have thrown out their macs and went linux a while back, i wish the same could be done for us audio guys as well.

more and more games are being written to run on linux, its as easy to use as windows and sets up just as easy, not like the old days, red hat 3, you really had to know your hardware and system to get it running right. now it is more intuitive, so anyone can set it up. you can even download and run versions off of cd or dvd and not have to have the os on a hard drive. the os can be assembled and options chosen as to what to run off of another os like windows. disk management tools are way more powerfull.

when setting up windows, i run knoppix ( runs off of a cd ) and format my drives to whatever partition i want.
has anyone here had DOS, win 98, linux and win 2000 running on the same system? i have. havent done it with xp yet, but then again i have to get things done, not play around with what windows won`t do. or better stated, what windows wont let you do.

i am running my XP on ntfs, and all my other drives are fat 32, it gives you better perfomance with audio apps believe it or not. even though i am running XP x64. XP x64 gives me better access to my ram, 4 gigs and better uses my dual core cpu. but then again, to get max usage out of you computer you have to do some playing with it.

ntfs is fine for most users, but fat 32 has better access, because of partition tables. not as many empty blocks. and some other mumbo jumbo i dont really understand, but i can run more tracks off of fat32 than off of ntfs. so fat 32 it is.

speshualy for tha audio junkie .. its tru


this is the one thig that truly makes me mad
Fragmentation (computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

this make me more sane = ::google:it!: O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware

its free
it will save ur hdd

pagefiles and ram disks aside

audio performance = contiguous-data
*Contiguity ="the blocks of each file are contiguous and in order"

as audio(+video) data - are this way

digital offers many advantages in editing and manipulation

because it works with in a system that abstracts from
Contiguity

if this is a consideration of the system design -performance = maximum
(close to at least )
if it is not considered in the system design/use -performance = minimum
(atbest! at worst los of data , hardware damage ect )

the lesons learnt dealing with audio as data
giv valuble insite in to
the implcations of system design
ther in data "flow" and asocated bottle necks

sloutions - are a trial an error , observation and reserch
100%+ system spasific and most often ther root cause is


microsoft are in deeeeeeepp denial over the above quote
..... vista is proof wher is the new file-system hmmmm
neway

laterzzz

*fat32 smaller max file size (limitation of file system 4gb)

zMith#-|

also!! damit
system restore = heavy fragmentation

I haven't tried all you menyioned above but have made a lot of changes. Right or wrong. My sytem is running way fatser now. So I will say thanks for the tips here

Hey idiot Crappertech, just shut your mouth....im so tired of people like you trying to find something wrong with what everyone says. Newsflash: YOU DONT KNOW HALF OF WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW....so shut yo trap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!