What's running in the background of the CPU?

Have you killed all unneeded services and programs that run at startup?

Well i am using vista just to add using Nuendo.

Umm there wasn't much the second biggest ram eater at the time was svchost and explorer which is vista and cannot do much about that. But they are minimal. No other programs were running that I could really turn off.

Heres a screen of just 6 tracks of the 12 I have in use, using my CPU.
6 is the most that happens at any one time.

By the look of that picture all the RAM is getting eaten up. would be nice to see processes though.

Are the digital tracks on the same drive as Vista? How is your file fragmentation? Maybe your hard drive is having trouble keeping up.

I have had trouble when multi tracking about 8 tracks 24 bit x 44kHz on the same drive as my system. I think it was a 7200 RPM drive (maybe slower). Now I run a SATA 10k RPM dedicated to digital audio, and have run up to 20 tracks of simultaneous recording 24 bit x 44kHz.

GeckoMusic wrote: Are the digital tracks on the same drive as Vista? How is your file fragmentation? Maybe your hard drive is having trouble keeping up.

I have had trouble when multi tracking about 8 tracks 24 bit x 44kHz on the same drive as my system. I think it was a 7200 RPM drive (maybe slower). Now I run a SATA 10k RPM dedicated to digital audio, and have run up to 20 tracks of simultaneous recording 24 bit x 44kHz.

I am unfamiliar with the technology that your talking about here, is there some way for me to find out on my pc to help answer your questions ?

And in response to my proccesses :

Hmmmm, given that's like a 3rd of your process tree I would assume you have a bloated PC.
Malware, spyware... All that jazz.
Unless you got Alexander the Greats untying skills I'd say format and redo from start.

My computer has only just formatted like 2 weeks ago.

And 50 odd proccess is usually the normal on my pc once I got most of my programs installed.
Plus my above image clearly shows I have a good spare gig of ram which is why i highly doubted it was a ram issue.

How many processes does it say you have when you ctrl + alt + del ?

21, win xp here. I'll get the vista box out.
*waits*
It's a laptop with about 400 doo-dahs running, touchpad, hotkeys, camera, virus and firewall blah blah blah... When will people realise just because you have the processing power doesn't mean you should use it _all_ just running the OS.
*still waiting*
57... Jesus.
Umm yeah, looking through I could lose quite a few of these. But nothing is a real cpu whore...
When you run nuendo, have you got it set to the highest priority?

Why do you have appache web server running on your music computer? Kill that for sure. Also with the number of svchost instances I suspect a virus. Is it possible that some of your software installs are corrupted?

from a google search on cledx.exe:

The cledx.exe from H2O contains a trojan called Win32:Rbot-cxl

I think you are hit hard with a virus. I would suggest on a your main music machine, reformat, and only install software you bought.

As for the hard drive question:
If you didn't buy an additional hard drive, then you probably only have one. If it's a desktop, look for a 10k RPM SATA drive.

I see alarms. How legit is your system? Be honest now. I see "Team H2O CLEDX" there. I don't know what CLEDX is but I know that H2O is a hacking team.

I run XP with 2 Gigs of ram and I've never seen more than 512 megs in use at a time when running Tracktion. Gaming, maybe but not using my DAW.

Just to add another bomb, I don't think Nuendo 3 is compatible with Vista. For that matter, I'm not sure that Nuendo 4 is compatible with Vista.

sirchick wrote: My computer has only just formatted like 2 weeks ago.

And 50 odd proccess is usually the normal on my pc once I got most of my programs installed.
Plus my above image clearly shows I have a good spare gig of ram which is why i highly doubted it was a ram issue.

How many processes does it say you have when you ctrl + alt + del ?

Physical Memory:
Total 3325
Cached 1826
Free 22

22 is not a gig.

Try a ram checking program (Memtest is a great app.) and remove the Trojans/Virus's the other people spoke of.

Sorry. Just more nitpicking. In that one frame of what looks to be quite a long list of processes, I can see seven instnces or svchost. SEVEN!? Looks dodgy. Also, why is apache running? Are you running a server from your machine? Two instances of that going on.

I'm wondering what else is running. You've definitely got some bugs in there. I wouldn't be surprised if there someone in Tuktayuktuk using credit cards under your name by now.

And getting back to hardware...how many physical hard drives do you have in the computer?

If you have only 1, I'd be willing to be that this is the main problem - not ruling out bloatware/malware. Audio recording systems perform much better when you have multiple drives, one for your OS and programs and the other to record your audio on.

Agree with everything said here. That cledx.exe file is a software emulated dongle that emulates the security key, so it's probably not a virus although it may show up as one. Another problem may be if you have your disk drives set to cache to memory. You want to write directly to disk, bypassing the memory cache. Just switch to XP, your DAW will thank you. :)

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BrianaW wrote: Agree with everything said here. That cledx.exe file is a software emulated dongle that emulates the security key

Yeah, that's what I figured. Not something highly looked upon here. It does explain a few things though. A person who is prone to using p2p software will have more problems than a person who pays for their software.

My nuendo is legit i bought it with my university loan before we go on to that. I ain't good with computers to understand these p2p programs.
The cledx i aint sure what that is or what it is for though it has been on my pc since I have had a CD of plugins that I installed from a friend of mine so I have not wanted to touch it. I presumed its for one of the plugins. He did mention to let it install so it works with my sound card.

Back to subject at hand to answer some quick Qs and add some responses:

BrianaW - having that few amount of proccesses only suggests that you are not on Vista, vista is entirely different amount of procceses the lowest i have seen processes count wise on Vista (on a fresh install with no extra programs installed at all except the factory default) was about 31 processes. And Greener mentioned they had 57 processes using vista on a laptop which leads to suggest im in the normal range.

Yes xp is better option as it uses less ram, but I aint got the cash to buy xp as with university i live on the edge of money, with a special interest in one of the most expensive hobbies, music recording lol (im trying to get professional so bog standard sound cards etc, never bodes well with me)!

I have 2 physical hard drives 500 gig each and one 80 gig external for backup of music projects but I don't save to that hard drive I back up usually every friday evening. What svchost is I have no idea, nor do I know why there is how ever many there are. So I shall ask on a vista forum for that particular one.
Mind you looking at BrianaW, you have more than one svchost anyway and if thats XP then vista is probably using more than 2 which would explain its RAM usage being higher for a start. But yes seven does seem over kill but i shall let you know on that one.

Nuendo priority = High, how ever many things have been set to low to counter balance. I will put it to normal for a while to see a difference.

Right now I'm on Ubuntu. 20.7% of 1.5GB in use.
But I don't have a working soundcard for linux so I use XP for audio. I think it sits around 40 processes.

If I ever get into serious audio, I'm going to try staying with linux and using Ardour.

Edit: on XP now. My mistake: at bootup it would appear to be 27 processes and less than 250MB used. I think 40 was at the last time I formatted.

Nuendo 3 is not Vista optimized, so will run poorly but Nuendo 4, like Cubase 4.1 is supposedly fine with Vista. Assuming we are running legit versions and not dongle emulated cracks. They don't run great even under XP.

This is just factual, not a judgement on the OP b4 anyone misunderstands. But on the same subject, the plugins you mentioned, if you have stuff like the Korg Legacy plugins, Sampletank, Miroslav Philharmonik or others that are shall we say, reverse engineered trial versions, the original plugins used the same Synchrosoft dongle as Cubase/Nuendo, which is why an emulator would be needed. So you should investigate your plugin collection from your friend to ensure it's legitamacy.

Well I wasn't using any plugins for the recording so would they sitll have a effect when not in use? Other than EZdrummer for the drums and a free Hammond B4 plugin effect which was freeware on a site.

And yeh that is a good point with vista and incompatibilites. hmm, ill go on their forums there might be update or patch perhaps for earlier versions of Nuendo.

FWIW:
svchost is a manager of services that run on your computer. Services are things like Print Spooler, Auto Updates, things for networking etc. They run multiple services each and having 5 is normal. Many more than that, or if it's not found in (XP) Windowssystem32 then you have a virus.

Codemonkey wrote: FWIW:
svchost is a manager of services that run on your computer. Services are things like Print Spooler, Auto Updates, things for networking etc. They run multiple services each and having 5 is normal. Many more than that, or if it's not found in (XP) Windowssystem32 then you have a virus.

Thankyou for the infomation on that! Was still waiting for a reply on the vista forum about it.
Well anyway, i think its due to Nuendo's compatibilty issue with vista which is a good point made, so am waiting a reply on the nuendo forums about it now.

Thanks for your kind help and time everyone! :)

This link might be worth a read before reloading OS
http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php