Computer Hardware User Manual

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Optimizing Windows 2000 and Windows XP for Audio

Introduction.................................................................................................................................2

Deciding on an OS.....................................................................................................................3

Windows XP – Home or Professional? .................................................................................3

Hardware requirements.........................................................................................................3

Update or fresh install? ..........................................................................................................4

Give it Time..............................................................................................................................4

Preparing for installation............................................................................................................5

Installation...................................................................................................................................6

Formatting your Hard Disk.....................................................................................................6

Booting from CD .....................................................................................................................7

Setup Tweaks – Things to Do During the Install.......................................................................7

FAT32 vs. NTFS..........................................................................................................................7

ACPI .........................................................................................................................................8

Dual Boot .................................................................................................................................9

Mass Storage Devices............................................................................................................9

Multiple Users........................................................................................................................10

Updates and service packs................................................................................................10

System Performance Tweaks – Stuff to Do After Installing...................................................11

Windows Messenger ............................................................................................................11

Display properties.................................................................................................................12

Windows Sounds...................................................................................................................14

System Restore......................................................................................................................15

Performance .........................................................................................................................15

Virtual memory.....................................................................................................................16

Fast user switching................................................................................................................17

Auto Start and System Services ..........................................................................................18

Disk I/O Performance Logging ...........................................................................................20

Write Behind Caching..........................................................................................................20

UDMA/ATA Mode for Hard Drives.......................................................................................20

Separate Drives – How and Where.....................................................................................21

Defrag Often..........................................................................................................................22

Virus and other Utilities.........................................................................................................22

PlugIns and other Goodies..................................................................................................23

XP and Win2000 Resources.....................................................................................................23

Stay Up to Date.....................................................................................................................23

Summary of content (23 pages)

PAGE 1
Optimizing Windows 2000 and Windows XP for Audio Introduction................................................................................................................................. 2 Deciding on an OS..................................................................................................................... 3 Windows XP – Home or Professional? ................................................................................. 3 Hardware requirements .........................................
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Introduction Many of our users have asked us for an update on Dave Casey’s excellent article on PC optimization for audio. They’ve observed that, while the hardware info in the article is useful for all PC users, the article is heavily focused on Windows 98 and Windows ME, the dominant operating systems when the article was written. As more and more PC’s ship with Windows XP, we’ve prepared this addendum to address those users’ needs.
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Deciding on an OS Should you opt for Windows 2000 or a version of XP? Windows 2000 has been around longer and many pros consider it more stable. It’s true that XP’s still working out some of the kinks, but by and large it’s proving to be pretty robust. W2k has had more time in use, thus benefits from more users’ problem reports and (hopefully) the resulting fixes. Chances are, if you’ve bought a new computer within the last year, it’s already got XP installed. This pretty much makes the decision for you.
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Update or fresh install? Generally speaking, a fresh install on a wiped hard drive is the best insurance against potential problems; leftover registry items and other orphaned legacy files can lurk in your system for months, only to cause unanticipated conflicts with a newly-installed program or driver at a later date. Unless you are upgrading from Windows 2000 to XP, a fresh install is recommended.
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Preparing for installation Even after confirming that the computer you want to install XP or 2000 on meets Microsoft’s recommended minimum specifications, you still may wish to do a little more investigating before you attempt an install or an upgrade, to make sure that all of your hardware is compatible with Windows XP or 2000. There are two valuable Microsoft resources that you should employ before installing Windows XP or 2000 on your existing hardware: the Hardware Compatibility List (www.microsoft.
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Before you begin the install, it’s a good idea to download all necessary drivers for your PC hardware from the Internet. Pay particular attention to drivers for your graphics adapter, and any audio and MIDI interfaces. As well, make sure your printer, CD burner and any other peripherals are covered. If you’ll be using the computer for connecting to the Internet, also pay attention to drivers for your network card or modem.
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Booting from CD You will need to tell your computer to boot from the Windows CD-ROM instead of your (presumably blank and formatted) hard drive. To do so, you must access your computer’s BIOS (usually hitting DELETE key during boot up will access the BIOS; some computers use F8 or another key, so check your computer’s documentation or the manufacturer’s website). Once in the BIOS, you will need to change the order of boot up devices. This is normally set for (1) floppy drive, (2) hard disk, (3) CD-ROM.
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One other interesting point: NTFS can read the "resource fork" of SDII files from MacOS, and can therefore recognize the timecode stamps used in these files; FAT(32) can’t do this. If you do a lot of work with ProTools or other MacOS-based DAW applications, you should consider at least one NTFS partition in your system.
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Dual Boot The compatibility with legacy (older) software in Windows 2000 and XP is considerably more restricted compared with Windows 9x; this is intentionally designed to insure stability against any kind of application failure. If an incompatible program is run, Windows 2000 or XP will stop it as soon as it tries to access that program. It normally will not crash or cause instability, but it will not allow the program to be run. 1.
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Multiple Users While Win9x also offers the option of setting up multiple users on a single computer, the implementation under W2k and XP offers far more independence between these multiple user accounts. If you will be using your computer for multiple functions, it’s a good idea to set up separate user accounts for audio applications and general use. This will allow you to slim down the audio profile in order to gain maximum performance from the OS.
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System Performance Tweaks – Stuff to Do After Installing Windows Messenger One of the ‘features’ of XP is the deeper integration of Windows Messenger. While Messenger may be useful for on-line communication, it’s a real resource hog; we recommend disabling it for audio use. To do this, right-click on its icon in the task tray and select 'open'. (If an animated assistant pops up just cancel it…..we’ll deal with getting rid of those later.
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Display properties While pretty photos and animated graphics are fun, they also contribute to bogging down your lean mean audio machine. And in keeping with Microsoft’s tradition of making looks a high priority, those fancy visuals are programmed to take processing priority away from what we consider important, processing audio. Disabling those effects is a good idea unless you don’t mind a pretty drop-down menu causing a frustrating dropout or audio glitch.
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Now disable visual effects. Select the “Appearance” tab, click the Effects button and disable "Use transition effects…". It's also a good idea to disable "Show window contents while dragging". Figure 5 – Disabling Transition Effects Figure 6 – Selecting Color Quality Now select the “Settings” tab. Set your display color quality to 16Bit. Setting it to a higher (24 or 32 bit) depth detracts from audio performance since Windows will need to allocate more resources to screen redraws.
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Next select the ‘Screen Saver’ tab. Screen savers generally tend to kick in when you least want them to; we recommend choosing None. On the same page, select your monitor power saving options. Windows usually defaults to relatively short times of inactivity before shutting off your monitor and hard disk and activating hibernate mode. We recommend deactivating hibernate mode (set to Never). In fact, in most cases it’s best to set all the energy saving functions to 'always on'.
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System Restore Windows is set up to write periodic “restore check points” so that, in the event of a crash or a corrupted file, your system can restore to its most recent functional settings. Some users recommend disabling system restore to improve performance. NOTE that this is not recommended unless you make regular system backups. To disable system restore, open the Control Panel and select System. Select the System Restore tab and check “turn off system restore on all drives.
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performance of background services” to ensure lowest latency with ASIO-based drivers (ASIO drivers run as background services in Windows). W2K: Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Select the Advanced Tab, then click the Performance Button. Change the mode from Application Response to Background Services Figure 10 – Adjusting Display for Best Performance Virtual memory Windows defaults to setting virtual memory automatically.
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NOTE: Some users advise disabling virtual memory for increased performance. We do not recommend this unless you have at least 512 MB of RAM. Even then, note that this is not practical for all systems, as it can tend to make some machines less stable. That said, if you choose to disable virtual memory you can do so on the same page (Control Panel/System/Advanced). Figure 11 – Setting Virtual Memory Fast user switching Windows NT and 2000 introduced a new feature – multiple user logons.
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machine. All those applications running in the background require some degree of CPU usage, as well as RAM. To disable this feature, go to Control Panel, and under “User Accounts” click on “Change the way users log on and off” and uncheck “fast user switching.” Figure 12 – Disabling Fast User Switching Auto Start and System Services Earlier versions of Windows used the startup menu to specify programs which are loaded into memory on boot up.
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particular service is running presently, as well as whether it loads automatically on boot up, manually (called up by either the user or a program), or is disabled. You can edit any service by double clicking on it. Some services can not be disabled for safety reasons – without these Windows will not run, or will suffer serious performance issues. It’s strongly recommended that you not completely disable any services without knowing what they do, and whether other programs or services depend on them.
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Disk I/O Performance Logging Windows defaults to continual logging of Input and Output data to your hard drive. Disabling this will free up some resources. To disable performance logging, go to the Start menu and select Run. Type in “diskperf –n” (minus the quotes) and hit Okay. Write Behind Caching Windows defaults to write-behind caching, holding data in a memory buffer before writing it to disk. Disabling this function will increase your system performance by writing data immediately to disk.
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Windows 2000 and XP can recognize a DMA capable device, and will detect and activate DMA mode by default whenever one is connected. Most drives manufactured in the last few years support DMA, and most modern motherboards’ chipsets detect this. You can check or change your settings by opening Device Manager (right-click on My Computer, select “Properties”, then select the “Hardware” tab and click “Device Manager”.
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drives, and while SCSI still has clear advantages in using multiple drives, UDMA drives are now rivaling them in throughput and performance; that and a much lower price point have helped find their way into more and more audio setups. Probably the single most important thing you can do for your system to increase performance and track count is to dedicate a separate physical hard disk to audio exclusively. It is simply not enough to create a separate audio partition on the same drive.
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PlugIns and other Goodies The Web is full of DSP PlugIns, ranging from freeware to shareware to demos of high-end packages. You’ll also find hundreds of virtual instruments in VSTi and DXi formats. While many of these are of excellent sound and quality, it’s best to carefully consider before you install. Do you really need 26 different reverb PlugIns, or ten different vocoders? Before you install that third virtual Theremin, remember that a bigger plugs folder will contribute to slowing down your system.