Windows Laptop - Speed Boost

[PGB]

May have been done before but I'm basically just looking for some tips to give me laptop a speed boost. It's pretty lean with no 'rubbish' on there. Just what I need really.

When I use Ableton I can mix 2 or 3 tracks but 4 starts to max it out and it skips.

I looked in my 'processes' and there is loads listed but I'm not sure what I can and cannot end.

I have just de-fragged my HD (not much difference), usually turn my wi-fi off and set Ableton as a priority program.

Any more advice?

Thanks.

[Ciar2001]

Window Washer is a great program i have been using since the late 90's for cleaning up my pc it's clears out everything, temp files reg files you name it, on top of that make sure you defrag regularly as well, I saw you already did that.. updating your drivers on your pc can help aka flashing your mb bios you can also get tweak kits to speed up certain things.

on top of that making your pagesys file bigger can be very helpful if you have ram.

one big thing you might find is updating your sound card drivers they can cause big latency and lag issues when out of date, especially when other peripherals have changed.

hopefully some of this is helpful

[Mr.Nicklebe]

If you're running vista, upgrade to windows 7 it's alot smoother. Hell if you're on XP i'd still upgrade :P I upgraded from XP to win 7 a week ago and its much smoother.

How much ram do you have? Because ram is relatively cheap and easy to install. And would speed things up espcially if you get some high quality fast sticks of it.

If you type msconfig into the start menus 'Run' command line you can chose what programs open at start up which can save you some system resources.

You can also turn off all of windows animations, fancy start bars etc and go to a basic win98 looking menu layout which may or may not save resources. Can't quite remember where the option is for this though. It's an option on all windows OS's though.

With processes in the task menu you can pretty much cancel everything that is being run by yourself (except explorer.exe and some other tasks i can't remember) as apposed to the network, system or local. You might find that some programs wont work anymore if you cancel certain processes though.

I'd recommend googling any process you think you can close first though.

Hope this helped and wasn't too techy

[Ciar2001]

OT is windows 7 that much quicker than XP Pro as that's what i am still using on my PC and can it just be upgraded rather than a full format reinstall?

[Mr.Nicklebe]

I used windows XP Home edition on my main desktop for about 8 years and upgraded a week ago. Windows 7 is alot smoother. Looks nicer (if you care about that?) It looking nicer doesn't seem to slow down the whole system either like Vista did. It's less resource hungry than vista so and XP machine can run it just fine in my experience.

However it does require a clean drive to instal on if you're upgrading from XP. I have 2 hard drives so was able to move all my music and apps to my secondary drive then move them back once the installation was done.

It definately speeds up work flow much the same way that using a mac does. I'd recommend it to anyone really. You just might need to invest in a load of DVD's to back up to. Or some network space, or an external hard drive.

Not trying to sound like i'm tooting my own horn but i've got alot of experience using macs (at uni) vista on my laptop and xp on my desktop. Windows 7 is the best OS i've ever used. Very user friendly, gets things done on it's own without harrassing you for updates or whatever. Love it.

[LiveFastStephen]

After you reformat to 7 you just go into your "C:drive" then click "windows.old" & you'll find all your previous files. - that goes for XP and Vista.

Yes "reformat" meaning: clean install, not just upgrade.

i wrote down how to clean your PC here: http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/sho...highlight=safe

+ a comment in that post teaches you to optimize your settings.

[Ciar2001]

That's cool my PC is purely for games and generally nothing else it's a pure me time rig my macbook pro is where i store all my music media movies and the likes via a 1.5tb external HD...

I was more thinking can i be assed reinstalling steam and gigs upon gigs of games, I do also have itunes with my music collection on the pc, but losing that would not be a huge issue.

might give it a whirl and try out what you said stephen if that's the case then it should be easy hopefully lol

[BradCee]

May have been done before but I'm basically just looking for some tips to give me laptop a speed boost. It's pretty lean with no 'rubbish' on there. Just what I need really.

When I use Ableton I can mix 2 or 3 tracks but 4 starts to max it out and it skips.

I looked in my 'processes' and there is loads listed but I'm not sure what I can and cannot end.

I have just de-fragged my HD (not much difference), usually turn my wi-fi off and set Ableton as a priority program.

Any more advice?

Thanks.

if it's vista, go to control panel, administrative tools, services from there you can enable/disable various background services (or set-them to stand by so they start if you need them). can't remember how do this in xp

also take a look at what programs are running on start-up, might be a few you can get rid of, take a look in the registry under local machine - software - microsoft - windows - current config - run. tends to be stuff there not listed in the 'start-up' folder. if you're not sure how to get there, go to run and type in regedit.

set the display to basic rather than aero, and get a nice cooling fan mat thing to go under it. might be worth setting the power plan to high performance so the processor runs faster. these also works for xp.

or just upgrade to 7.

would be worth looking at a ram upgrade to, you can get 1gb for about 20-30 quid at pc world. or if it's vista maybe give 'ready boost' a try, plug in a usb stick and you can use it as additional ram - never used it though so can't comment on how well it works.

or just upgrade to 7....

[LiveFastStephen]

As a little test, I'm on my girlfriends desktop now windows 7 previously XP,

Okay First I just went to > Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows.old > Program Files > Limage Line > FLStudio 8 > Data > Projects > & just copied all my projectsto paste into the new location, next i visited > Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows.old > Documents and Settings > Owner > shared > & i just recovered her music which im listing to, so uncorrupted, Next > Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows.old > Documents and Settings > Owner > My Documents > My Pictures > I see her photos & albums & successfully transferred everything to her new picture location, Next > Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows.old > Documents and Settings > Owner > My Documents > Native Instruments > Trakor copied my .TSI to transfer back into traktor when i reinstall it on this beast

So looks like all files were saved threw the install of 7 (even though the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor said her computer could not upgrade, only do a clean install of 7)

still back up encase, but more particularly and importantly do not forget to backup your product keys and set up files (if you lost the disks).


After you've recovered all your files, open disk clean up and youll see a check marakable option to delete all the windows.old files (after which you should gain plenty of harddrive space)


FYI win 7 is only $30 if your a collage student
(or know one that will hook you up with there deal)

good luck, peace

[PGB]

Massive respect to BradCee!

My power plan was set to power conserving mode! Seems so much faster and smoother now. All 4 tracks are go with no skips or jumps!

Thank you sir.

Cheers to everyone else who gave advice. Implenented most of it. Thanks!