Sorry to say it but you really do need to reinstall XP. It will probably run without it but you won't see the best performance until you do.

I was forced to do this once for a friend (until he found his OS disc) and it ran pretty poorly until the reinstall. Some of the mobo drivers didn't load properly and the registry was a mess. It's just not a good idea if you can help it.

It may not even start in my experience.

Thanks guys, 8-)

Not what I wanted to hear, but more or less whay I expected to hear...

I asked the same question to our IT guy at work and he said the same thing about the registry.

Oh well... :cry:

I want the best performance I can get. Installing is fun, right? Right?

I personally enjoy reinstalling... it's like getting a new lease on life.

David French wrote: I personally enjoy reinstalling... it's like getting a new lease on life.

Now, that is humor I can relate to :lol:

I actually kind of like re-installing too. Especially after finding "nLite". It creates an unattended XP-Install disc from your current install CD. You go through a GUI interface with nLite to create your new XP Install CD. Then, pop this new CD in your CD drive, choose your destination partition, and come back later - and you are at your desktop! No CD-Key entry, no "Time Zone" or "Name" prompts, etc. You can even add in your Drivers and stuff (Intel Chipset ".exe" installer or any ".exe" type driver installers still need to be run manually after the OS install), as well as SP2 integration and any hotfixes, and Service tweaking can all be done on the Install CD before you ever install the OS! It's a free program, too.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4324.html

Pretty cool what some people offer for free, huh?

:cool:

David French wrote: I personally enjoy reinstalling... it's like getting a new lease on life.

Is that an offer? :lol:

It's not that bad. It's just that I've already spent an evening changing DVDs when installing my DFH libraries (about 70 Gig) 2 weeks ago.

You know what? I'll stop nagging.

Randyman... wrote: [quote=David French]I personally enjoy reinstalling... it's like getting a new lease on life.

Now, that is humor I can relate to :lol:

I actually kind of like re-installing too. Especially after finding "nLite". It creates an unattended XP-Install disc from your current install CD.

Oh yeah..I think after the 200th + reinstall you become numb to it..

Nlite is the lazy mans Unattend.txt basically! lol

XP comes with a tool that does that as well...it's in the tools folder on the XP CD.

Opus

Why don't you put your samples on a different HD? Aren't they just WAVE files, or are they actually "installed" into the OS's registry somehow (like a program)? Of course, you would still have to install the programs, but Samples should be OK by simply telling the Program where these samples are located, unless I'm mistaken (I don't use samples just yet).

This way, re-installing the OS would omit that part of ther equasion :wink:

nLite is also cool for integrating Drivers and Service packs, too. I think it is easier than doing it manually w/command prompts. You can also tweak your services and installed components directly from the Install CD using nLite. Check it out!

:cool:

They're just waves. I had them on my OS drive to save space on my second drive (which I use for audio projects).
They play from RAM so it doesn't really matter where I put them as far as performance is concerned I think. I can probably just copy all files to another disk so I don't have to copy them from DVDs again. I could put them on my 3rd drive (which I use for video files). Good tip. 8-)

Why didn't you tell me 3 weeks earlier? 8)

I'll check out nLite for sure.

Now that I think of it: Maybe I should get a SATA drive and use that for audio instead of the IDE ATA-100 that I use now... (Can somebody please say that this is a really good idea, just in case my wife reads this :lol: )

Getting a SATA HD for your audio drive is the best single investment you could possiby ever make for your DAW. (There, did that help win over your wife? :wink: )

Seriously, it might realistically add a few more tracks for you since your ATA100 drive is probably a few years old? The ATA100 interface is 100% adequate, but the new SATA drives seem to edge out the PATA's due to their newer technology in the drive mechanics itself.

If your Audio drive is filling up, it will also run a bit slower. I'd say adding the SATA IS a good idea - for more speed and more room!

Sorry I didn't tell you about the Sample thing - my "ESP" was down that week :lol:

:cool:

Randyman... wrote: Getting a SATA HD for your audio drive is the best single investment you could possiby ever make, period. (that AND 2 more gigs of RAM)

Thanks! (had to make a slight adjustment there)

Actually, that drive is about 2 weeks old. (it was really cheap though, and I figured that it wouldn't make too much of a difference with my AMD 2600 anyway. I could have been wrong. Happens all the time)

I probably will add a SATA drive later on. (budget thing)
When my drive crashed I took the opportunity to change the case as well. I now have a coolermaster stacker, which gives me 11 :!: 5.25" bays, so there's plenty of room there.

As far as your ESP being down: It's OK. Just don't let it happen again. :P

Hey Groove,

The SATA is a great idea but if it's not in the budget right now why don't you partition your OS drive into 2 partitions, one for OS and a second for Samples. You could Ghost your OS partition or use n'lite as Randy suggested and you could have a quick way to reinstall the OS if needed but your samples stay safe.

Oh yeah..I think after the 200th + reinstall you become numb to it..

Only 200 ? Come on Gary fess up how many really? :lol:

Glad to see you hanging around man!

Yep. That's the way it's going to be. Secundum partitia est. :roll:

Thanks guys.

Big_D wrote:

Oh yeah..I think after the 200th + reinstall you become numb to it..

Only 200 ? Come on Gary fess up how many really? :lol:

Glad to see you hanging around man!

Well...that's hwy I put the + sign there...I think I lost count sometime after that! lmao! :D

Well, got to kill some time and mental brain power somehow!

Opus :D

OK. Sold one of my 250Gb IDE drives and bought a 250Gb SATA drive. I usually buy WD but in this case I bought a Maxtor because it had 16Mb of cache instead of 8Mb for the WD. (not sure how much of a difference this will make, but I figured it wouldn't hurt)

I have also bought a new video card (ASUS 9520 FX5200) to replace my noisy (fan) Radeon 9500.

I have printed Opus' XP-tweaks, so I'm ready to go.

Here's what I have now:(sorry for the boring list)

Coolermaster Stacker case
Zalman 400W PS
AMD A64 3500+ (s939)
Zalman 7700 Cu CPU cooler
ASUS A8V deluxe mobo
WD IDE 120Gb for a dual boot OS drive
Maxtor SATA 250Gb drive for audio
WD IDE 250Gb for samples (no DFD) and some video (nothing too serious)
3 Zalman HDD Heatsinks
ASUS 9520 FX5200 video card (driving 2x 17" LCD)
NEC DL DVD RW
1x UAD 1

The only thing I'm not too comfortable with is my RAM. I have 2x 1Gb of Corsair value select (Cas3). Obviously not the fastest around. I already had these. Would you guys think that these are going to cause a real bottleneck?

Do you mean in terms of capacity or bandwidth? You would have to be buffering a _serious_ amount of samples for 2gb to be a bottleneck capacity-wise. Just make sure they are properly set in dual channel and the cas latency should not be an issue. If you want, fiddle with the timings and see what you can get it to POST on, then boot into memtest 86 and leave it going overnight.

Sorry, I meant in terms of latency.

Capacity-wise it should be ok. (I'm running stuff DKFH C&V and the Bosendorfer, so 2G is far from overkill)

Thanks for the info. I will do some research on timing & testing. 8-)

(first I need to assemble the stuff)

Grooveteer wrote:

Here's what I have now:(sorry for the boring list)

Coolermaster Stacker case
Zalman 400W PS
AMD A64 3500+ (s939)
Zalman 7700 Cu CPU cooler
ASUS A8V deluxe mobo
WD IDE 120Gb for a dual boot OS drive
Maxtor SATA 250Gb drive for audio
WD IDE 250Gb for samples (no DFD) and some video (nothing too serious)
3 Zalman HDD Heatsinks
ASUS 9520 FX5200 video card (driving 2x 17" LCD)
NEC DL DVD RW
1x UAD 1

The only thing I'm not too comfortable with is my RAM. I have 2x 1Gb of Corsair value select (Cas3). Obviously not the fastest around. I already had these. Would you guys think that these are going to cause a real bottleneck?

First when your done with your build post it at the top of the forum "Tell us about your DAW" if you haven't done it already. This way everyone can see what you've built.

Second I agree with Dedalus, CAS 3 shouldn't be an issue. Lower CAS numbers are nice but not critical for a DAW. The dual channel will influence performance far more than lower latencies. Even Corsair's Value RAM OCs well so playing with the timings should be fun. If you hose it just reset to defaults and your back in business.

BTW how are you liking that Zalman PSU? I absolutely love mine, have to basically put my ear up to the exhaust to hear it. I have the older 400W (without the SATA heads).

As far as most latencies -- the performance gains are usually on the order of 2-5% for going from relaxed to agressive timings, however, a 1T command has given some people a sizeable boost (on the order of 8%). In context, going from ddr333 to ddr400 nets you roughly 20%. Not sure what the usual gains for dual channel are but I am thinking somewhere in between.

The Zalman is superquiet.

We have assembled all parts last weekend. Stupid video card will not let me connect to analog LCD. (The DVI connector does not have the 4 VGA pins) Ditched the card and bought another one, works like a charm.

Installed XP and did the tweaking as mentioned in Opus' link in another thread. (Ran into a small problem, but I will post in Opus' thread about that)

Installed my brand new Sonar 4 PE (I upgraded from SE)

Have not been able to do any serious testing but I tried running my Bosendorfer in Sonar at 1,5ms (WDM drivers) and it was rock solid without any noise, crackles or pops.

Looks good so far.