If you are running win98 there are several tweaks you can use to speed up the system, especially controlling HD accessing. One is the DMA switch. If you want it, I keep it handy on a notepad for just this faq. You can also go to Analogx.com and get his free utility for measuring disk thru-put, it clearly measures the effect of any changes you make.
shoot.. can't hurt to just post them again below
as for windows: PLEASE REMEMBER!!!!!!!!
these suggestions worked for my set-up, BUT I can't guarantee this for every system...and because winlite uses some of win95 ie and some of win98 I'm not sure everything works the same or is set the same way as mine. My set up in straight win 98, bare bones but not "lite"
a good idea is to get a utility to measure disk throughput (to avoid "data cannot be streamed fast enough) go to
http://www.analogx.com and check out his free utilities. one measures throughput. there are others available as well.
First make sure there is nothing running in the background that doesn't need to be
click to Start Menu > Programs > Accessories >
System Tools > System Information. Click "Software Environment" and choose "Startup Programs". See what's running. Mine is very lean. To change things, go to the "Tools" menu, select "System Configuration Utility" and choose "Startup". You can disable any apps from running at bootup and it's easily undoable
some things may still be running, but if you took the initial suggestion and created a dedicated boot partition for audio woth no games or any program not vital to audio, except Norton Utilities so you can defrag and also fix the other windows partitions when they crash, or just recreate them with the image you made with ghost.
Vcache gives you "diminishing returns" after 4MB, so I just set mine to 4048 or whatever that 4MB number is.
Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager/Disk Drives/Settings and ensure the DMA option is checked for your IDE drives.
Turn off Auto Insert Notification on your CD drives: This one is a biggie. Every couple of seconds it will scan for a CD in the drive if this one is on. Obviously we don't want anything like that happening. Go to Control Panel, System, Click CD-ROM and click your CD-ROM drives. Click the Properties button, select the Settings tab and clear the Auto insert notification check box.
Disable Read Ahead Optimization and Write Behind Caching: After years of telling us to turn these settings on, MS now tells us to turn it off for high speed apps like Video and Audio. Go to Control Panel, System Performance tab: Click the File System button and drag the Read-ahead optimization slider to None. (The default is Full.) While still on the File System Properties dialog, select the Troubleshooting tab and check Disable write-behind caching for all drives.
Keep the swapfile OFF of your audio drive. In one drive systems this is impossible. Use a two drive system, one for audio, one for the system.
also set the swap file so that windows doesn't waste time resizing it "dynamically", ie using cpu time
o back into the Virtual Memory settings window and uncheck "Disable Virtual Memory" then select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings". Set the "Minimum" and the "Maximum" to the same number... though you may want to play with this, hmmm, I'm not sure what I used, 150?.
Format your audio drive from a DOS prompt with the /Z:64 option. This makes the default block size on this disk 32KB. This is a respectable size for audio, but too large and wasteful for other apps. Use this only on your audio drive.
Use the network server performance profile. Definitely test this one after applying it, it helps some systems, hinders others and does nothing for many. This profile aggressively buffers data in memory, which reduces time-consuming disk operations. To change the profile, right-click My Computer and select Properties, then click the Performance tab. Click the File System button and you'll see a setting for "Typical role of this machine." Change this to Network Server.
Check the "task Scheduler" and get rid of all tasked scheduled to run at intervals... windows automatically schedules its update program to check for updates EVERY 5 MINUTES.
I also went into my BIOS setup and did things like turn off my USB ports (which I don't use) because they share my highest PCI IRQ... thus competing w/ my studiocard. BTW, put the studiocard in the highest PCI slot.
I also suggest using multiple booting partitions and reserving one for audio recording alone and set it up wohth minimal windows and hardware configuration.
anyway, hope this helps
