Disabling, uninstalling, non-recording software

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gospel

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How important is it to get rid of or disable non-recording software? I've been reading about this and was wondering if it just applies if you are running with minimal requirements or if it will help any set-up? Also, what all software does it include?
 
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It only matters if it's running in the background when you are trying to record, or if you don't have enough free space on your drive and want to free some up.
 
The most important thing is to make sure that a bunch of programs aren't running in your task bar at the bottom right of the comp. They tie up resources and can cause clicks and pops.
 
Also I suppose you might benefit from an OS like WinXP where "other software" and audio software seem to me to better coexist than with previous OSs like Win98 where it always seemed the more games or software you install the more unstable and crusty the system becomes.
 
In Win9x, click Start->Run and enter "msconfig". In the msconfig utility, you should see a startup tab where you can specify which programs should load when you start your computer. Get rid of all the junk!

In Windows 2000/XP, right click on My Computer and choose "Manage". When the Computer Management console comes up, choose System Tools->System Information->Software Environment->Startup Programs from the treeview on the left. This will show you all the programs that are set to run on startup. To remove some of them, you must edit the "Startup" folders for the current user, the default user, and All Users. This can be done by right clicking on the Task Bar, selecting Properties, then Advanced->Advanced... To remove others, you must edit the following registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Be careful when editing the registry. Make sure you look each program up before disabling it.

Finally, on Win2k/XP, you can also modify the system services. A service is a program that runs without a user context, like IIS (web server), FTP Publishing, etc. Again, bring up the Computer Management console and this time choose Services and Applications->Services. You only need to disable services that are unnecessary and marked "Running". To disable a service, double click it and change its startup type to "disabled". Potential services to get rid of would be DHCP Client (Depending on your ISP configuration), Fax Service, FTP Publishing Service, IIS Admin Service, Internet Connection Sharing, SMTP, Telnet, Word Wide Web Publishing Service (IIS). Note, disabling services will not cause clients to malfunction. For instance, disabling FTP Publishing doesn't mean that you can't FTP to other sites, it means that people can't FTP to you. In other words, these are mostly "server" applications. I should point out, however, that many programs rely on these services. For instance, if you create Web pages with Macromedia Dreamweaver, you definately don't want to disable IIS on your system! If you don't have a public IP address for your internet connnection, you don't want to disable DHCP client! And so on..... look things up before you tear em down!

P.S. you'll need to do all of the above via an account with admin priviledges.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Sorry slackmaster, I didn't say what my OS is? It's XP home edition. The computer is a Dell. I just got it up and running today and there is 4gigs of pre-installed software!! I know I need to disable Norton's but would like to have it running for the net and e-mail. Does it have to run all the time? I think Tex was talking about the taskbar. Is that everything on the bottom of the screen left and right?
I know this sounds like I don't know at all what I'm doing, but this is the first time I've even seen XP much less worked with it. Windows 98 is the only thing I've ever worked with.
 
The icons on the bottom left are quick-launch buttons, very similar to the shortcuts on your desktop. They are very small one-click batch files, for lack of a better term and are of no real concern for recording. Leaving them there will have no great effect on your computers preformance.

Your taskbar on the bottom right are all the programs that are loaded at startup and are currently running. These consume system resources and should be disabled to the max extent possible prior to recording.

In WinXP, they provided msconfig as Slack mentioned above. If you want everything clean before you record, run msconfig as described above and select selective startup, then uncheck system services and startup. Do not uncheck win.ini or sys.ini.

One thing to make XP a little easier is to choose the classic desktop configuration. That way you don't have all these stupid icons trying to tell you where your files are at.
 
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