What other things do you have going when you are using Live? Basically turn off as much as you can, such as Antivirus, and anything you have set to run automatically at any point. The next level of optimization is at a software level. You will find a number of articles to read that will also offer other optimizing tips, if you feel you need to go to a deeper level. Try googling 'Optimizing Win XP for Audio'. The two that made the biggest difference for my machine was the CD/DVD drive and the wireless card. Some of them can be disabled permanently like the Floppy disk controller and the LTP printer port, and some on an as needed basis like your CD/DVD drive, wireless internet card etc, and then double check the DPC Latency tool. You will see a list of devices your computer uses. Right click My Computer>Properties>Hardware Tab> Device Manager. Now you can think about disabling a few things. I found with my machine that red spikes occurred on a regular basis every 10 min or so. You can get a visual look at this by downloading and running this DPC Latency Checker Its a free application. This made a big difference for my machine.ĭepending on the above and how much is already in place, the next level of attention is how your machine uses its resources.
You will have to find drivers for your video card (I had someone do this for me so I don't know what else driver wise).
If you can find someone to help you install a fresh Vanilla copy of XP, you will have a good chance of getting rid of unwanted software conflicts. I upgraded to 5400rpm, and would have gone to 7200 rpm if I could have found one. Compare the spec's between your system HD and Ext HD. It will tell you the speed and the data transfer rate. A very good free little application is HD Tach Download it and use it to check the spec's and performance of both of your hard drives.
The Hard drive in my machine was a 4000rpm PATA drive. Ram is cheap or even free if you are in the know. 512Mb of Ram simply is not enough, even though the official spec's said it was. I am definitely no expert (hopefully others can correct this info if it is wrong) but after wrestling with a compaq p4 3.2ghz xp machine with Live 6LE, I came up with the following levels of optimization, all of which helped tremendously:Īt a foundational level, the three things that made the biggest difference to performance was Ram, Hard Drive and a clean Vanilla install of XP.