Win XP Startup Tweak

guitar3456

This is a good tweak for Xp users and PC recording:

MSCONFIG

As with other Windows versions, programs can be started automatically by XP. It is worth checking to see what programs (if any) your XP system is starting by itself on startup, as these may be using valuable processing power.

To investigate the automatically starting programs, use the XP msconfig tool. The msconfig tool is not new to XP and first appeared in Windows 98 and then ME.

To run msconfig, click on Start > Run and type in \"msconfig\" (no quotes) and click OK. Click on the Startup Tab and uncheck any programs, that you don't want to autostart. Dont' disable anything you're not sure about.

Reboot to save settings

Atkins

oldest trick in the book but works like a dream... being a network administrator i would definately recomend this and if there are things your unsure of u can do a search on google to see what they are might be something u don't need..... there is too much that windows loads that is junk

iliace

\Atkins\ wrote:

oldest trick in the book but works like a dream

Since the DOS days...

Atkins

hahaha that almost dates me in the computer world of how long i've been tweaking and hating microsoft ops did i say that out loud...

sans2012

Background services also take up a fair chunk of resources.

Control Panel/Admin Tools/Services

You can disable a lot of these to free up valuable resources and to patch up a couple of security leaks too.

I would recommend a quick search (Disabling services) to see what services are safe to disable before jumping in there.

There are also a bunch of reg tweaks that can improve on system performance.
Note: A lot of the common OS tweaking software's (e.g. Tweak XP) out there perform a majority of these tweaks with the click of a button.

Cobaltblooz

A couple of sites to learn what to disable and what NOT
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

even more exhaustive....
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php?filter=&letter=

ednrg

You might also want to try Black Vipers list:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12

svenpurple7

There is a freeware application out there that I use for freeing up resources. It is called FSAutoStart. You should be able to google it.
You can set it up so that it will shut down unwanted services and other apps running in the background and restart them when you are done with your recording. It will also start your recording application (PTP, Sonar, whatever you use) and it will also defrag and free up some of your RAM.

I have been using this for a very long time and it has never failed me. I use it for other purposes that use lots of PC resources such as gaming.