Preparing laptop for DJing

Haroon K, post: 5518 wrote: :rolleyes: Are you joking?

I’m sure most of it isn’t necessary, but I’d rather do anything to prevent any possible problem.

mr stifffy, post: 5270 wrote: Antivirus takes up a lot of memory and a lot of them do stuff in the backround… It depends what you use your dj laptop for… In my case its pretty much: traktor, download music, check here, check djtt, check facebook then more traktor.

And for that I dont need antivirus.

well if your downloading music i would keep the Anti virus. unless you buy legaly then there shouldn’t be much of an issue.

I do absolutely nothing but turn my computer on.

DJ Hessler, post: 9372 wrote: I do absolutely nothing but turn my computer on.

me neither although I do keep other program’s shut.

Cool Cats, post: 9839 wrote: Seperate partition – just Audacity and Itch – no internet. I don’t mix with sync, so any time I could waste on Safari I’m wasting on the set, the crowd or my drink.

Or the Ladies! lol jk

I go to task manager and kill anything running that I dont need. Since I have an HP Pavilion there’s a crap load of background processes running. I dont kill my antivirus but I do turn off the WIFI when gigging. Running Windows 7 I also change the Personalize settings to the very basic Windows XP visual style. No fancy menu options or visualizations. No screen saver either. Also I go to My Computer/Properties/Advanced settings and changed the Cache size and also set the option to “Background services” instead of Programs. I read that Windows treats audio as a background process which is stupid but changing this helps. I dont know why people Defrag a hard drive often because that isnt necessary unless you are adding/deleting/moving large bulks of files around or adding/removing programs alot. This cant be a regular thing and the analysis will tell you if the drive needs a defrag or not. Also under the My Computer settings there are 3 options, Best Appearance, Performance, Custom. I set this to custom and turn off everything but a few options. Windows can be very pretty to look at but all that animation takes up CPU power. The only 2 problems I run into is the fan is almost always running which seems to be an HP defect. And my audio driver sometimes gets crappy and I need to switch the USB port that its connected to. I use an Audio Kontrol 1 and all software is updated so I think its just an issue w/ this PC model.
Lastly, I dont reboot often. That used to help alot when Windows wouldnt release resources from RAM when a program closed but thats not as big an issue anymore. I also remove the battery when at home.

I don’t mind that you all disagree with me.

In my honest opinion when it comes to PCs, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing. My Thinkpad will run differently than someone else’s Toshiba, or Dell, or HP, or even a Mac.

I actually use SMITTTEN’s script now and it does great stuff. Before that though, I simply tried to maintain a “clean house”, since I can’t afford to have a laptop solely for DJ purposes. For me, keeping the drive clean and defragmented does wonders. Also bear in mind I don’t pull music from an external drive anymore when I play…so defragging helps for me.

I’ll have to look into Possess’ suggestion on the background services. It’s good we have some actual Windows experts here to learn from…since it’s obvious I’m only knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. 😉