Windows 7 Optimization.

ShanPeyton

Member
I upgraded my DAW PC this week and although i knew there were numerous resources out there for tweaking Windows 7 for audio, HR.com User Jimmy69 pointed me in the direction of this one!!

PC Optimization Guide for Windows 7 | SweetCare


It is super easy to do, No BS. Took me about 20 minutes to navigate my way around the tweaks and get it done. There is an additional link at the end of the article for some more "advanced user" kind of tweaks. But just the few listed in this article made a world of difference. :thumbs up:

Happy Computering!
 
I'd do it on OS X only if you're having issues.
If not, a lot of that stuff is pretty inconvenient.

Ya, but I think most of it can help. My 2011 macbook pro had been to hell and back before I repurposed it as my dedicated music-making machine. Upgraded the RAM from 2gb to 16gb, but unfortunately, it sometimes (not often, but sometimes) clicks. I think the processor is a bit outdated for some resource-heavy software but it certainly won't hurt to implement some additional changes.
 
Cool. Fair enough.
I think we talked about this before, but consider an SSD in that machine sometime. They're shit hot. :)
 
Cool. Fair enough.
I think we talked about this before, but consider an SSD in that machine sometime. They're shit hot. :)

Never say never, but i don't think i'd ever go back to a platter disk for the OS. I am a week into running a daw on a SSD in a windows environment and the difference i see is mind boggling. I love it and would encourage anyone to make this little upgrade. On a decent sale you can get a reputable 120GB SSD for 100 (or less) Dollars.

And to expand on that, I was talking to a friend just on Saturday about how stoked i was on the SSD when he asked me what browser i was using. (Yes i am committing a sin here with the internet on my daw but, unfortunately it has to be this way) When i told him i was using chrome, he pointed out i should look into possibly switching to firefox depending on my competency for command line stuff. Which just doesn't exist.

SSD's have a somewhat limited read write life expectancy and chrome has a pretty large cache / profile habit that can not be moved, at least easily. It has some switches and links he said i could do if i really wanted to geek out and try it, but apparently updates can botch the changes and you will require doing this frequently. This didn't at all sound to be up my alley so when asked for an alternative he suggested firefox as you can move it's cache and profile a little easier than you can chrome. I was o.k. with this because i had been a firefox guy for years and only switched to chrome because of the way it linked my work and home computer together. However my friend pointed out Firefox can now also do this? I have installed, and re-pathed the cache and profile in Firefox and it's been working great. Haven't tried to sync to another computer yet though?

It seems for the health of my SSD and DAW i am making the migration slowly back to Firefox. I'll just continue to use chrome at work only.
 
Never say never, but i don't think i'd ever go back to a platter disk for the OS. I am a week into running a daw on a SSD in a windows environment and the difference i see is mind boggling. I love it and would encourage anyone to make this little upgrade. On a decent sale you can get a reputable 120GB SSD for 100 (or less) Dollars.

And to expand on that, I was talking to a friend just on Saturday about how stoked i was on the SSD when he asked me what browser i was using. (Yes i am committing a sin here with the internet on my daw but, unfortunately it has to be this way) When i told him i was using chrome, he pointed out i should look into possibly switching to firefox depending on my competency for command line stuff. Which just doesn't exist.

SSD's have a somewhat limited read write life expectancy and chrome has a pretty large cache / profile habit that can not be moved, at least easily. It has some switches and links he said i could do if i really wanted to geek out and try it, but apparently updates can botch the changes and you will require doing this frequently. This didn't at all sound to be up my alley so when asked for an alternative he suggested firefox as you can move it's cache and profile a little easier than you can chrome. I was o.k. with this because i had been a firefox guy for years and only switched to chrome because of the way it linked my work and home computer together. However my friend pointed out Firefox can now also do this? I have installed, and re-pathed the cache and profile in Firefox and it's been working great. Haven't tried to sync to another computer yet though?

It seems for the health of my SSD and DAW i am making the migration slowly back to Firefox. I'll just continue to use chrome at work only.

Hmm. Hard to know how important that really is.
I plan to just run something like Drive X once every few months to see what drive health is like.
I've caught a few failing drives this way on other people's machines..within days of full failure on one occasion! :eek:

In fairness, though, the amount of shit I move around makes the browser cache the least of my worries. :)

Yeah, that link up lark is a lovely feature. I don't know which browsers do it because it's built into OS X now, but I was surprised how much I rely on it.
 
Hmm. Hard to know how important that really is.
I plan to just run something like Drive X once every few months to see what drive health is like.
I've caught a few failing drives this way on other people's machines..within days of full failure on one occasion! :eek:

In fairness, though, the amount of shit I move around makes the browser cache the least of my worries. :)

Yeah, that link up lark is a lovely feature. I don't know which browsers do it because it's built into OS X now, but I was surprised how much I rely on it.

It's scary how many passwords i had forgotten in setting up firefox. Real scary HaHa! I will agree that i have no idea how bad that sort of read write activity would be for a disk drive, but no doubt it is taking away some usefulness. I am just looking at it from the perspective of preventative maintenance.
 
Never say never, but i don't think i'd ever go back to a platter disk for the OS. I am a week into running a daw on a SSD in a windows environment and the difference i see is mind boggling. I love it and would encourage anyone to make this little upgrade. On a decent sale you can get a reputable 120GB SSD for 100 (or less) Dollars.

And to expand on that, I was talking to a friend just on Saturday about how stoked i was on the SSD when he asked me what browser i was using. (Yes i am committing a sin here with the internet on my daw but, unfortunately it has to be this way) When i told him i was using chrome, he pointed out i should look into possibly switching to firefox depending on my competency for command line stuff. Which just doesn't exist.

SSD's have a somewhat limited read write life expectancy and chrome has a pretty large cache / profile habit that can not be moved, at least easily. It has some switches and links he said i could do if i really wanted to geek out and try it, but apparently updates can botch the changes and you will require doing this frequently. This didn't at all sound to be up my alley so when asked for an alternative he suggested firefox as you can move it's cache and profile a little easier than you can chrome. I was o.k. with this because i had been a firefox guy for years and only switched to chrome because of the way it linked my work and home computer together. However my friend pointed out Firefox can now also do this? I have installed, and re-pathed the cache and profile in Firefox and it's been working great. Haven't tried to sync to another computer yet though?

It seems for the health of my SSD and DAW i am making the migration slowly back to Firefox. I'll just continue to use chrome at work only.


you could try running a portable version of a browser, im running a portable firefox right now :)

it will store its files on the drive where you unpack and run from there
 
Just to clarify, any decent new SSD you buy will have read/write failure in the millions of hits. Should take five or ten years at normal use to drop kick one. Having said that, if you are one who would rather it was 10 than 5, by all means move your browser cache, cookies, and your Windows temp and trash directories off of the SSD. :D
 
Just to clarify, any decent new SSD you buy will have read/write failure in the millions of hits. Should take five or ten years at normal use to drop kick one. Having said that, if you are one who would rather it was 10 than 5, by all means move your browser cache, cookies, and your Windows temp and trash directories off of the SSD. :D

Shit. the windows temp and trash. Good call man. Never even thought of that? IS that even possible to move those?? I got some googling to do on my lunch break.
 
i know guys that are already on their 4/5/6/7/8 SSD


wear levelling is only really gonna help if you got space to level .. the more you fill it up the quicker it will fail,if there's little space then moving even the smallest writes to another drive will help .. also moving/disabling the swap file ... but to a slower drive? kinda defeats it ?

could always move the swap to a ram disk if there's enough ram (i use a ramdisk in XP for swapfile using the 2.5gig XP cant see)... like swings and roundabouts,what you gain somewhere you loose somewhere else ...

think broken H meant trash files in general .. anything that gets written/updated ...


temp folders are under control panel > advanced system settings then system properties > advanced ...

careful ya don't break it :D
 
Yes, be sure you are ready to get rid of the file off the SSD and use SHIFT-DELETE instead of just deleting, so it doesn't use the recycle bin...again, be SURE.
 
Yes, be sure you are ready to get rid of the file off the SSD and use SHIFT-DELETE instead of just deleting, so it doesn't use the recycle bin...again, be SURE.

SHIFT-DELETE? What is this wizardry you speak of? Today i have learned such a great deal. Thank you guys tons! I am sure there is no end to the tweaks one can make.
 
Just an update on my computer build. It is working exceptionally well. The help and advice i got on how to tweak this rig has proved itself to be pretty trustworthy. No great hang ups as of yet.

I was really worried about the noise, I think it was just something i was over thinking from reading too much internet. I record vocals in the same room as the computer and i was worried the fans and stuff would be an issue. They aren't. I can hear them in my ear but they don't translate at all into the recordings. I use a MacGuyvered gobo or whatever made out of old closet bilfold doors and sleeping bags between mic and the machine and while it isn't much to look at or all that professional looking it works.
 
:) MacGuyvered gobo...too funny.
Doesn't matter if it looks good, as long as it sounds good! Just don't shoot video of your studio. :)
 
I use a MacGuyvered gobo or whatever made out of old closet bilfold doors and sleeping bags between mic and the machine and while it isn't much to look at or all that professional looking it works.

Better than my solution of wearing noise cancelling heaphones while tracking... ;)

:laughings:
 
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