help - optimisation bug

[Steve Moore]

I have a dual instalation with two copies of XP/PTLE on two different drives (I do this so that I can always boot if my primary OS drive goes down). My C drive (OS) was optimized using the settings found in the main optimization thread while #2 is not.

So far, #2 is running rock solid albeit I did finally have one DAE the other day due to a fragmented volume and reckless waste of resources on my part.

The optimized volume however is unusable. After optimization, PTLE locks up whenever I press record or play and the OS refuses to shut down properly.

I am going to try and reinstall the OS on the first drive and start over. Anybody got any ideas which optimizations might be suspect? Or do I have to try them one at a time (there are over a hundred) to find the culprit?

Steve Moore

[QuikDraw]

I find almost all XP "optimizations" to be suspect. I've tried pretty much all of the so-called "optimizations" at one time or another. I'd make a tweak and then run the DaveC test. Each time I found no performance improvement. At one time I had applied virtually all known "optimizations". XP and PTLE 5.3.1 always ran just fine, but there never was any performance gain. I eventually decided to reload XP from scratch and apply no optimizations and see what the results would be. There's no difference in performance running without all the so-called optimizations.

The only things I have done are to set my visual effects settings to "performance" (mainly because I like the Win9x look better), and I set a permanent swap file size (only becuase I prefer a permanent swap file, PTLE doesn't care). And I've turned off auto-play on all drives (because I hate autoplay. Again, PTLE doesn't care).

That's been my experience. Take it for what it's worth.

Mike

[minimoog]

i'm with quickdraw on the trail of suspicion. aside from what digidesign recommend, the only thing i have found speeds things up a bit is to turn off a lot of the slick graphics features. i hate waiting for computers and when a session is really up to the line, the fade menus in/out option really gets clucky.

aside from that, just install and go!

[Steve Moore]

While I tend to agree with this point of view in general I suspect that some of the many services can be turned off safely which should at least theoretically free up system resources.

Anybody know how I can monitor this tangibly in XP? Task Manager perhaps?

The other option would be to just add another stick of 512k to go to 1MB and be done with it. With that amount of RAM the little bits saved by tweaking services would certainly be of no consequence. The issue of CPU cycles might still be, however...

Steve Moore

[Bolweevil]

Dude; I have been seeing some bad stuff being
written about LE 5.3 & WinXP home. As an adminis
trator of A small network running both NT technology and fat32, I have stood and watched
(once) an NT volume evaporate in an endless
succession of blue screens full of messages like
"unattached clusters found" & "deleting orphan files" after "optimizing" or defragging the
volume. NT kernels do not like IDE hard drives.
Any corruption whatsoever to the file system
on an IDE drive running any flavor of NT will
eventually produce this "effect". Lesson I
learned from this bad-rush producing event,
32 bit OS + scsi HDD good, 32 bit OS + IDE HDD
bad. Fat 32 + IDE OK, Fat 32 + SCSI very good.

[minimoog]

Steve,

there is nothing to be gained by removing services. monitor performance from the Windows Task Manager and you will see that PTLE and system idle process get all the cpu's attention.

on the point of RAM, i still have 290MB free with a 32 track, plug-in filled session playing at DAE buffer setting #2 so RAM is not an issue either.

if you have a system with no unnecessary devices installed, you need do little more than install the operating system and PTLE. the amount of performance that is gained by freeing up CPU cycles these days is so negligable that i doubt even the biggest tweakheads would notice a difference running real world applications. sure, it was a big deal back in the 486 and early pentium days but now...

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Bolweevil,

i have never experienced any trouble with IDE drives under NT. mind you, i have always formatted system drives NTFS. i don't understand why you would format a system drive FAT32, especially if you are a system admin.

[Steve Moore]

Minimoog,

You say you have 290 left. How much is in there to begin with? 512?

Steve

[vocalvoodoo]

Minimoog as absolutly right, I have run PT with unneeded services and certain hardware disabled (vidcard, usb ports, NIC card) and with everything running including Norton Internet security in the backround and the performance difference is pretty insignificant so far as I can tell.

[Bolweevil]

Originally posted by minimoog:
Steve,

there is nothing to be gained by removing services. monitor performance from the Windows Task Manager and you will see that PTLE and system idle process get all the cpu's attention.

on the point of RAM, i still have 290MB free with a 32 track, plug-in filled session playing at DAE buffer setting #2 so RAM is not an issue either.

if you have a system with no unnecessary devices installed, you need do little more than install the operating system and PTLE. the amount of performance that is gained by freeing up CPU cycles these days is so negligable that i doubt even the biggest tweakheads would notice a difference running real world applications. sure, it was a big deal back in the 486 and early pentium days but now...

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Bolweevil,

i have never experienced any trouble with IDE drives under NT. mind you, i have always formatted system drives NTFS. i don't understand why you would format a system drive FAT32, especially if you are a system admin.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

[Bolweevil]

Originally posted by minimoog:
Steve,

there is nothing to be gained by removing services. monitor performance from the Windows Task Manager and you will see that PTLE and system idle process get all the cpu's attention.

on the point of RAM, i still have 290MB free with a 32 track, plug-in filled session playing at DAE buffer setting #2 so RAM is not an issue either.

if you have a system with no unnecessary devices installed, you need do little more than install the operating system and PTLE. the amount of performance that is gained by freeing up CPU cycles these days is so negligable that i doubt even the biggest tweakheads would notice a difference running real world applications. sure, it was a big deal back in the 486 and early pentium days but now...

----------------------------------------------

Bolweevil,

i have never experienced any trouble with IDE drives under NT. mind you, i have always formatted system drives NTFS. i don't understand why you would format a system drive FAT32, especially if you are a system admin.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Gee Mr. Moog, I thought....in other words, Win98
(Fat32) installed on an IDE drive is good, installed on a SCSI drive is better. NT installed
on an IDE drive, especially one used as a file
server, is a train wreck waiting to happen. On
Systems running IDE RAID this is not a problem.
And you won't find this mentioned in any Micro-
soft publication. The day after my hard drive
evaporated I read it in a third party book (one
of the several I had purchased to fill in the
holes in the Microsoft book) and if you'd like
I'll mail you the authors name tomorrow. I
think it was an O'Riley book. Am I mistaken
that XP is based on the NT kernel/file system?
If the NT file system gets corrupted on an IDE
drive, first you will get error messages, and
it will show up in the event viewer. And
eventually chkdsk will run the next time you
reboot, or if you let it go, the machine will
reboot and chkdsk will start running, and you
are toast. That particular drive that is. If
you get no warnings, or it doesn't show up in
the event viewer, no problemo. But it's still
lurking there. Needless to say, having witnessed
this apparent phenomenon, all our NT machines
now have SCSI drives. And yes, why would anyone
format an NT volume FAT32? That's as rediculous
as formatting the system partition with DOS so
you can boot it from a DOS floppy, "just in case"
isn't it? Whatever. The only place I'll ever
load an NTFS is a SCSI drive.