benifin

Hi nuhi Just a few quick thoughts / suggestions for the next version - I dont know if these are possible, so my apologies up front if they are unworkable:- - AutoRun - disable all AutoRun - Swap File - so it can be set to a multiple of the total RAM installed ie:- 1x RAM Total or 1.5x RAM Total or 2x RAM Total - GUI fancy Video / Graphics stuff - turn it all off ie: I think its called adjust for "Best Performance" in the "System" icon - Start Menu - set to Classic - Start Menu - set "MenuShowDelay" in Registry to 1 [its 400 by default] Laslty, and I think this may be a biggie / maybe not possible. - with Vista, you cant access a lot of the Directories in Explorer without first going in and altering the Security settings for each folder - its a real pain, very time consuming and there are lots of directories that need the Security "cover" removed so you can access them. Is there are "global" setting in Vista that sets this ? that could perhaps be set to "off" ? Thanks again, all the best, Ben

Brilliant work nuhi !!!!! With a full strip, Boot CD is down to around 525meg [Vista Basic here with driver and key hotfixes integrated] A Clean instal including a quick format takes around 6 minutes from pc-turn-on to using the GUI [machine is a Quad core 6600] Ram foot-print, after video and audio drivers loaded is around 240meg [2gig in system] Runs nice and smooth and quick, and even boots up a bit quicker than before. Out of curiosity nuhi, the above clean install, on my hard disk, sits around ~2.2gig [not including the swap file which is 3.6gig fixed and set]. Is there anything in particular that still makes it such a space-hog ? Mind you nuhi, from memory, a full clean retail Vista install [with no Vlit'ing] sits around ~6gig - ~8gig [exluding swap file] so come to think of it, maybe ~2.2gig is pretty fantastic. You are an absolute genius nuhi !!!!!!!! Thanks, Ben

Hi nuhi Just wondering - with your next Vlite version update [hopefully still] due in the next week or so, are we likely to see a further reduction in the Vista Vlite RAM footprint ? With the current 1.1beta, a clean Vista Ultimate - fully stripped install on a 2gig RAM machine - with just the audio, chipset and video drivers loaded [no applications or utilities running in startup - ie: zero MSConfig items checked] I get appox. a 250meg <-> 280meg RAM footprint. nuhi - do you think the your next version update will impact on the RAM footprint ? Again, many thanks, Ben

Hi nuhi I normally wouldnt ask this, and please take no offence by my asking, but I have a couple of important PC builds to do in the next week or two, and was wondering if the next update was far off still, or if it would be worth my while waiting ? If its likely to be more than 2 or 3 weeks away, I'l happily do these builds with 1.1beta. Either way nuhi - magnificent work and keep up the great effort. All the best, Ben PS: How M/S havent head-huntered you and offered you a big $$ job yet is simply beyond me !!!

Just to clarify please as I also use Vlite for my Studio AUdio workstation. In the past, I have always stripped-out Superfetch and Readyboost . For an Audio recording workstation, is it actually better / best to leave these 2 in ? Also, as I have 2gig of memory, I no longer use a PageFile - set it manually to zero. I thought Pagefiles were irrelevant now in the era of Vista 32/64 and fast hard disks and lots of memory ?!? Any thoughts / suggestions please ? Ben

Hi all Dumb question I know ..... My motherboard is a Gigabyte P35C DS3R - it uses the Intel 965 Express Chipset. When I do a VLite, I can never decide which Intel Chipset Driver .INF to integrate. The ones available that I think are potentially relevant in the Vista Directory [once I've unzipped the chipst driver] are:- 965m 965g g33q35 There doesnt apear to be a "plain" 965 .INF or a " 965 Express .INf " ? Can someone please advise which is the right / best one to integrate ? Thanks, Ben

Out of curiosity, is it possible that a fully Vlite'd Vista 32 system [maximum strip back] which has fully compliant Vista 32 hardware BUT that is running either a 4 or 8 meg PCI video card like a Diamond S3 Virge or Diamond 3DFX, would run / work ? Would such a system even install with such a small PCI Video card ? Ben

Out of curiosity, is it possible that a fully Vlite'd Vista 32 [maximum strip back] will run with a 4 or 8 meg PCI video card like a Diamond S3 Virge or Diamond 3DFX ? Would a fully Vlite'd Vista 32 even install with such a small PCI Video card ? Ben

Hi nuhi As always MAGNIFICENT work you are doing !!!! One quick question please. Am running Vlite 1.0RC fully stripped - all is well. However, I wish to access the Standard PC HAL [Hardware Abstraction Layer] during installation - traditionally [in XP and 2000] it was done by hitting either F5 or F7 during the installation phase when it asks about RAID driver etc..... It appears that as I have fully stripped my Vista with Vlite 1.0RC I have also removed the O/S ability to access the Standard PC HAL . nuhi -> do you know which component(s) NOT to remove so can still access the Standard PC HAL ? Many thx, Ben PS: the above of course is predicated on my assumption that it is actually still possible to select a Standard PC HAL with Vista

Hi nuhi As always, great work. Just wondering, will you be releasing any further dot-point Beta's [ ie:- 1.0A Beta, 1.0B Beta, 1.0C Beta etc..... ] before you get to 1.0 Final or will you be going to 1.0 Final straight from the current 1.0 Beta ? Reason I ask is that if its the later [ ie: going to 1.0 Final straight from the current 1.0 Beta ] I suspect we wont be seeing 1.0 Final for another 1 or 2 months ? Dont mean to hassle in any way, its just that yours is such a great useful product !!!! Again, great work !! Ben

Hi impulse686 Its a misuse of symbols of the DPC Latency graph. You will see it reports at 1 second intervals, but they list that as 1000µs - its a mis-type in the graphical display part of the program. Ben

Hi aviv00 As I said, you are getting readings that are VERY high. You are miss-reading graph. Your system is peaking at 1000ms [ 1 full sec ] NOT 1ms [ millisecond ] . Ben

Hi aviv00 Ge this download and then report back. http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe Ope it, maximise it and let it run for, say, 5 mins - then advie the maximum peak and the regular peak There is NO WAY you will get, or are getting a stable 1ms reading with VLite Vista 32. Ben

Howdy nuhi and everyone else - keep up the great work. nuhi - even with the latest [ excellent ] beta, the RAM footprint of a fully-stripped Vlite Vista 32 install - with a video driver installed - is still around the 240 <-> 280 meg. My fully-stripped XP X32 SP2 NLite install - with video driver installed - has a RAM footprint of ~ 70meg My fully-stripped XP X64 SP2 NLite install - with video driver installed - has a RAM footprint of ~ 104meg In the XP X32 SP2 NLite install, the DPC Latency Checker runs at a consistent 1ms with occasional peaks up to 5ms - never higher. In the XP X64 SP2 NLite install, the DPC Latency Checker runs at a consistent 8ms with occasional peaks up to 16ms - never higher. In the VLite Vista 1.0B install, the DPC Latency Checker runs at a consistent ~30ms with regular peaks of ~60ms and semi-regular peaks up to 1000ms. nuhi Do you think it is probable / possible that VLite will eventually have a RAM footprint of around 100meg [with Video Driver installed] and a DPC Latency reading similar to the XP x32 and XP x64 readings ? Thanks and keep up the great work. Ben

Hi nuhi & pallavsuri & Jeronimo The following (2) links may provide a more specific “in-road” into how to address this Device Driver polling issue Firstly:- http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/...6/17/82189.aspx Secondly:- http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/CEC/mm-timer.mspx Again, thanks again for all your work !!! Ben

Hi nuhi This is DEFINETLY something I would like to disable. I cant possibily see or imagine that this would in any way be illegal - no diffent to removing WMP or IE7 or disabling the Destop cleaner etc...... My VLite has no WMP at all and no audio or video codecs other than my pro-studio sound card and the 30ms Device Driver Polling is still there Cant wait for the next version !!!!! Only a " ..... few days .... " away !!!!!!! Woooooooooo Hoooooooooo If the Device Driver polling can be "disabled / abled" at user discretion in the next or upcoming version, then words would not describe the achievment / benefit to all semi-pro / pro-audio users everywhere !!! Keep up the fantastic work nuhi - Thanks again, Ben

Hi nuhi Firstly, keep up the great work ... you are a legend !!!!! Now .......Vista great ....... EXCEPT ....... for low latency audio use. The key culprit here is the Device Driver Polling whereby device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware every 30ms for digital outputs and every 150 ms for analog ones to ensure that everything is OK. This Device Driver Polling causes MASSIVE problems and havoc [ ie: audio crackling, audio pops, audio glitchs etc .... ] when you are recording / playing back audio at virtual-real-time-latencies ie: 1.5ms or lower because even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers have to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that **nothing** continues to happen. Anyway ...... above speil aside nuhi ...... is it possible for you to make this Device Driver Polling *feature* "turn-off-able / turn-on-able" with VLite ? Thanks, Ben

Yep - I searched the Regitry with the word "Shutdown". The entry from memory was something like " ClearPageFile ....." - it appears about 3 or 4 times in the Registry. Each entry was set to " 1 " even though [ I checked ] my NLite disc had clear page file set to UNCHECKED. Changed each entry to " 0 " - reboot and all is fine - it needed a re-boot to take effect. Ben

FIXED !!!! Found the relevant Registry entry - changed to 0 - now shuts own perfect. Thanks, Ben

I *thought* I disabled it - maybe I stuffed it up though. Is there a way to turn Pagefile cleaning on / off without doing a new Nlite disk and install ? Thx, Ben

Hi all I just did a Nlite 1.3 + Win XP X64 SP2 install - all is great - super lean and super quick ..... EXCEPT ...... Shutdown and Re-Start are both taking around 40 seconds ?!?!? - PC is a Core2Duo 2 x 3.6gig O/C fully stable + 4gig DDR. Obvioulsy I disabled or turned off a critical element. Can anyone advise what the likely problem is and how to fix / what do turn back on etc .... Many thanks, Ben

Bilar Crais - spot on. pallavsuri - I've no doubt that reducing the RAM footprint to around 100 - 150 meg on a clean boot up will simultaneously address the latency issue which is the direct cause of the sheer "sluggishness" that Vista has. I also have absolutly no doubt that as nuhi keeps "dis-integrating" all the Vista components and services and "features", that the "tip-over" point will be crossed - ie: the point where Vlite will be as snappy as XP32 and XP64 on a same-spec'd machine. I am certain that the RAM footprint and the system latecny are interlinked - address one and the otther will automatically come .... and them ....bam...we'll have the Vlite we all want. There is no doubt that nuhi is not only the best person to achieve this, but that he will - and I reckon he's a lot closer than perhaps even he thinks. Ben

Hi nuhi Its essentially a measure of core and sub-core "noise" / "activity" which "gets in the way" of an uninterupted data flow between any external hardware input or controller device and the core of the operating system. As such, lower readings and less spikes are critical. The figures I quoted compared a stock XP32 clean install and a stock XP64 clean install to a Vlited [ .95 fully stripped Business Version ] install. If you run it in a clean full non-Vlite'd Vista install [ Business ] the results are pretty much the same as the Vlited [ .95 fully stripped Business Version ]. This suggests [proves to me] that there is some major memory and/or cpu cycling and/or driver /usb polling etc... going on at very-low [core] level which currenlty makes so sluggish [ compared to XP ]. I reckon if nuhi can monitor future releases and get the latency down to XP32 or XP64 levels using this tool, the "holy grail" will have been achieved - ie: what Vista SHOULD have been - faster, nimbler, more-reponsive, and more software and hardware tranparent than XP32 or XP64. Ben

Hi nuhi Again, you are a GENIUS. Check this out:- http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe - very small 200k d/l - standalone test application Its a Windows [ XP32/XP64/Vista ] Low Latency checker. Its brilliant. The lower the values and less spikes the better. On my XP32 rig and my XP64 rig, it settles down around 7us to 15us and never spikes above 35us to 40us. With VLite .95 32 bit - fully stripped and most services disabled - it sits around 35us to 75us and peaks every 30/40 seconds at +1000us - thats makes Vista 8 - 10 worse than XP32 or XP64. Clearly, there is a lot of "stuff" [ crap / drm / polling ] going on in Vista that is not there in XP32 or XP64. Maybe this tool will help you identify where all the cpu cycles and memory useage is, and how to "dis-integrate" them. I hope this tool can help you further "cleanse" Vista and identify areas of even further improvement so we will hopefully soon see Vista operating at the same or better speed, efficiency and latecny as a currenlty tweaked XP32 r XP64 system. Again, you are the man !! Ben

Hi nuhi FANTASTIC program - .95 is GREAT. Can you please advise, is full IE7 dis-integration ..... far off ? Also, is all the other internet and networking related "stuff" also far off from being "dis-integratable " ? Again, BRILIANT.