synth

Micro Burner starts in 5 minutes? lol What could be delaying it for that long? It's similar like when you disable some driver(s) with ServiWin and it freezes up for a long while,until it finally gives up and starts...but does it burn then? About Nero 7 - forget it,it's a piece of sh**

gdogg,have you tried Planet nVidia's nForce 1/2/3 remix driver pack? (www.planetnvidia.com) It's much,much better than the standard one you recommend on the first page in this thread. It includes a much better and stable audio mixer and the latest stable drivers for your motherboard (even if some are not WHQL,they are thoroughly tested by members of the site forums) Included in this pack is also an optimised nVidia graphics driver that's better than the standard one from nVidia (something like Omega Drivers for ATi cards) I can't wait to test this 2.5 beta (themeless) version.First nLite 1.0rc2,then RVM 2.0 pack,then this - woohoo!

@gdogg: one more patch request: Ares Galaxy,especially the Lite version,which is coming soon - remember this filesharing app?

Two more software patch requests: cFosSpeed - an AWESOME program which uses network shaping to increases your download speeds,reduces ping and latency of everything you do if you have a Broadband,Cable,DSL or ADSL PPPoE connection. cFos - a driver for all types of modems,routers and whatnot with network shaping capability - it's even for dialup modems,too www.cfos.de just try this little app,and tell me if you have a largely reduced ping and higher response when playing games or using uTorrent while surfing. Read this: http://www.cfos.de/traffic_shaping/traffic_shaping_e.htm

Have you measured how long it takes to boot and how much RAM it uses without ghostwall or anything else? can you post a task manager pic and the time it takes to boot? (and another ServiWin html report) (my nLited install uses only 48MB RAM with all drivers installed: audio,graphics,modem,LAN,motherboard IDE,MemCtrlr,GART and SMBus).That's with the standard explorer.exe shell running) NOTE: I load the whole kernel and drivers in RAM,not paged to disk and I set the option run explorer and other stuff in separate processes. It boots really fast,especially with /noguiboot and /noexecute flags added in the boot.ini Boots really fast,considering it's on the outermost part of the hard drive on partition K: Can your microwinX beat that with these settings? (my install is really small,but \windows is about 220MB,too much junk) P.S. I have to do some tests and benchmarking on this install

@gdogg: More GOOD software requests for gdogg: 1. SilentNight Micro CD/DVD/ISO/AUDIO Burner v4.0.4 -> IMPORTANT! - get it ONLY from here: www.silentnight2004.com/Micro20.exe (all other download sites and links offer a reall old,crappy version) (the most compact and lightweight cd/dvd burner ever,it's just sooo similar to the concept of uTorrent - extremely small,no installation,single .exe file).A perfect app for MicrowinX.Forget the big fat Nero,this thing is really MICRO! 2.Image for Windows (from Terabyte Unlimited) WITH the PHYLock and BINGBURN plugins - the smallest,lightest and very effective drive imaging program.Forget Norton Ghost and Acronis TrueImage,this one is so small but packs a punch,it makes you laugh 3. CryptoSuite from Ghost Security (encryption app)

@ vci: Bloat for me doesn't just mean cramming a lot of unnecessary files in the Windows directory,but also putting tens of thousands of small files and folders that bloat the registry and waste HDD space.The smaller the files are,the bigger the wasted space. Java is one of the worst apps that creates a truckload of small files. Speaking of \windows bloat,for example,I have over 270MB in my \windows folder now,but most of the bloat comes from DirectX,Oembios.bin,ATi drivers .dlls,WBEM folder,Catroot folder,Driver.cab and Sp2.cab That's too much.I left WMI just in case it might be needed @gdogg: My request is to also be able to monitor and disconnect the dialup or PPPoE ADSL connection with the icon in the system tray,which I don't have now.I must have deleted too much. Can any of you help me what files to put back and what services must I have enabled to get this back? I use a tricky workaround now by disconnecting with the antivirus auto-update feature,but I can't monitor the toatl time I've been connected and the nummber of bytes uploaded/downloaded as before...I know,there's NetStat Live,but I want this back,If it doesn't prove a security risk. Will there be any extra tweaks with this microwinX,aside from those nLite already offers,like setting pagefile size manually and not creating two of them,when you install windows on a partition other than C: ? More software patch requests: CDRIdentifier 1.63 DVDIdentifier 4.2

vci,you complain much...but it does not bother me at all.Everybody has the freedom of speech If you really wanna know what *I* will use with microwinX,here's a near-complete list (excluding games): BlueFyre Optimized Firefox (browser) Thunderbird (email client) XnView (Image Viewer) Foxit (PDF Reader) Spybot S&D (anti-spyware tool) AntiVir PE Classic (antivirus) [for on-demand scanning only] Nero 6 (burning app) uTorrent (bittorrent client) WinDVD (DVD-Audio and DVD-Video playback software) [one of the 3 apps that will bloat microwinX,but it's needed] Tune-Up Utilities 2006 (tweaker,optimizer and manager) CCleaner (Junk and Registry Crap Cleaner) PerfectDisk (defragmenter) Winamp (audio player) OpenOffice.org (office software) [one of the 3 apps that will bloat microwinX,but I need this] GetRight (download manager) Alcohol 120% (virtual drive emulator) mIRC (IRC client) K-Lite Codec Pack & Media Player Classic (codecs and multipurpose media player) [one of the 3 apps thing that will bloat the Windows] EAC (CD ripping software) PhotoFiltre and/or GIMP (image editing tool) MP3 DirectCut (mp3 editor without recoding) Cool Edit (wave editor) Multi Frontend + LAME,OggVorbis and FLAC encoders (multipurpose audio encoder) Teleport Pro (website ripper/webcrawler) NetLimiter (bandwidth limiter) SpeedFan (CPU underclocking/cooling app,saves energy that goes to waste when your PC is idling and cools your system for that time) PCInspector File Recovery (the best recovery tool) FlashFXP (FTP client) Miranda (Instant Messaging,except IRC,I use mIRC for IRC chat) Everest (the best system information tool) eMule (eDonkey/KAD client) SpywareBlaster (antispyware tool that blocks everything Spybot S&D doesn't) kX drivers (audio drivers for Audigy soundcards with the least bloat and much better sound than that Creative crap) Notepad (the simplest text editor you cannot do without) See,there's not one single program that is bad or unnecessary,and 90% of them are free But people are different many don't like what I chose,for example many prefer MS Office over OpenOffice.org,or Sound Forge instead of Cool Edit,PowerDVD instead of WinDVD, Opera,not Firefox and thunderbird,WinXP Manager instead of Tune-Up Utilities 2006,FlashGet or Free Download Manager instead of GetRight,BitComet or something else instead of uTorrent, O&O Defrag instead of PerfectDisk,AVG or NOD32 instead of AntiVir PE Classicetc. See,different people,different tastes.You need to satisfy most of them,or they'll not it use because their favorite apps don't work.

More software test/patch requests: .NET Framework 1.1 Apps: WinXP Manager (needs .NET Framework 1.1) nLite (needs .NET Framework 1.1) FireTune Audacity Camouflage 1.21 BCRC Emulators: Project64 1.6 ZSNES WIP 20102005 Nestopia 1.21 KEGA Fusion 3.4 Stella 2.0 WinUAE 1.1 WinVICE 1.17 Chankast Alpha 0.25a KiGB VBASmooth 6.5 Gens32 Surreal 1.28 Nebula 2.25 Magic Engine 1.0 PR10 VirtuaNES 0.92e VPinmame 1.52 ePSXe 1.60 + ePSXeCutor 1.063 Connectix VGS 1.41 bsnes 0.013 Reality Boy 0.821 Oswan FreeDO MESS 0.101 ZetaMAME 0.99

" @Gdogg, I really need dialup support. Can you please include it in the next beta!! " I would like dialup modem support even more.It's very important Also test these apps and make them compatible,if possible: Mozilla Sunbird Process Explorer BugOff Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Plugins for Firefox

This is not MY list of favorite programs,but this is a list compiled by me and a whole group of other "power users" from the best programs for everyone's needs and for every situation you may come into. For example,you might need those benchmarking programs when you overclock or change a certain part of hardware that doesn't require reinstall of drivers,for example changing to faster RAM,CPU,Hard Drives,or when tweaking and overclocking the existing ones. Why Nero 5.5.x.x AND Nero 6.6.x.x you ask? Because 6.6.x.x burns DVDs perfectly,but CANNOT burn certain types of CD images correctly...but 5.5.x.x is not good for DVDs. Nero 7? OK,you can skip that.Nero is the only burning program you'll ever need. You will say why Alcohol 120% then,when you have Nero? Alcohol is here to satisfy your needs of mounting images as virtual drives,not for burning.It supports every image format possible. Every program I picked is used for a different purpose,or in a different occasion.Why Opera when you have Firefox? Because You can skip Azureus+Java (very bloated,leave that for the Linux users,hahaha) not needed,uTorrent is good enough and TINY. You see,it's not only MY list because it has some unneeded entries.I am sorting that out in this post. Everest Home Edition - why? Because you may lose displaying of system information and Everest is much better and totally free. Since Yahoo Messenger support cannot happen,can Trillian be supported then instead of Y! Messenger? I don't run benchmarks on a daily basis,but some of my friends are passionate overclockers/tweakers and use them quite often. Partition Magic is not needed,OK. Dynamic IP and dialup modem (this also has dynamic IP) support is very important A lot of people use ADSL or other connections with a dynamic IP. 56k dialup modem support is for emergency cases when your main internet conn. dies Wireless is good but lacks security.It's easy to hack through a wireless connection. This Windows will NOT be a replacement all-in-one Windows as vci said.If I planned to do such a thing,I couldn't do it with a very minimal install as microwinX is. Just using nLite is much better for that task. Why support for so many programs,you think? Because that's the nature of this windows installation - you install only once and never again...so if you need something later and you haven't installed it before...you're out of luck. Every user has his own needs,so there must be support for a broad range of users. And someone may like to install 2 or 3 of these microwinX's on different partitions for different needs. This can be used for low-powered PCs,car/kiosks for the kids,yes...but can also be used for amateur audio/video production PCs where RAM and CPU power are not that high,so they can work more comfortable and not need to upgrade their hardware. Also,can be used as an ultimate gaming machine,which is the main use.HDTV video playback/processing uses a lot of resources,so microwinX can help here greatly as a hi-def multimedia center. Can be used even to make high-performance micro-servers out of your old piece of junk PCs and breathe new life into them. Many different uses demand different software support,that's why.

@qdogg: You don't need the ATi control Panel,it eats a large chunk of RAM,but if you ever plan to use the TV-Out...(which I do quite often),you will need to install that bloody thing Do you add the parameter /noguiboot in the boot.ini to your microwinX installed in partition c: ? It loads even faster. There should be an option in nLite too,to set the /noguiboot flag in boot.ini after install And what's that funny thing with the nForce RAID driver? To install it,you also have to install Java,but I hate to have dung like Java or .NET Framework installed on my machine.All this crap lowers your security level badly. Oh,so you do know that site from before? Heh,it's a bit old,but have you read the replies at the end that some guy has managed to get rid of even Csrss.exe on Win2k3,leaving just the System process running...that's the really amazing part,and he's gaming like this for weeks. And,about your benchmarks - you claim your microwinX gets 25-30 fps more in SWAT 4 than a well nLited XP? That's very hard to believe. I made a most minimal nLited XP possible,including removal of unneeded exe's,dll's,folders and whatnot and then cleaned a lot of registry junk. And microwinX to give you at least 20fps more? Hmmm... I don't believe I can gain even 2fps more at best.To prove this,I benchmarked my system in 3DMark2001SE with that nLited XP,and then I rebooted and killed all services as in that site with process explorer, leaving just explorer.exe,Csrss,System and System Idle Process. Then I started 3DMark2001,KILLED explorer.exe and ran a new benchmark... Guess what? The result was 0% better...hmmmm... Note: I had my drivers integrated and no ATi Control panel installed. So,you won't get any FPS increase with microwinX,but you will get lower LATENCY,that explains the increased system response I experienced when I killed all the stuff. That's why your LAG was lower.So you'll *only* get - lower memory footprint - really small HDD space used (that's the biggest thing in microwinX,since now it can FINALLY fit in a 64MB USB Flash disk) - shorter boot times (have you tried how long it will boot if you have Kerio Personal Firewall instead of your firewall? This firewall takes a LONG time to start) - higher system response - lower network latency but no FPS increase,unless you have compared it to a normally-nLited XP,not to an extremely stripped XP. Oh,and there are those optimized ATi drivers called Omega Drivers (www.omegadrivers.net) which are faster and offer good overclock options,but if you can try them and make them use less memory,I'd rather use them instead of the regular ATi ones,if I wanted more FPS in games. You can test them and see if they are worth the trouble. P.S. I visited #microwinX on IRC and waited hoping somebody will come,but it was empty for hours

Just to note: Those optimizations in the 5.11 Drivers will be of no use for anything but the newest X1000 Series of ATi cards I wish my good old Radeon 8500 would benefit...even your x800pro won't gain a single fps more,sadly.It's only for cards with the 512-bit ring memory bus.Don't expect too much.nVidia cards are the kings of OpenGL,ATi are better for Direct3D and image quality,ESPECIALLY image quality,which I appreciate the most. And,here's part 1 of my list of programs (and some drivers) that I would like to be compatible with microwinX: Opera 9 BlueFyre (Optimized Firefox 1.6alpha) Nero 7 Nero 6.6.x.x Nero 5.5.10.xx WinDVD 7 AntiVir Personal Edition Spyware Blaster ProtoWall (this is NOT a firewall) (from www.bluetack.co.uk) Tune-Up Utilities 2006 Everest Home Edition eMule Azureus + Java2 SE 1.5 CCleaner Spybot S&D Ad-Aware SE kX Drivers 3538h (for Live and Audigy 1,2,4-series soundcards) ASIO4ALL 2.6 Winamp 5.11 3DMark 2001SE 3DMark 2003 3DMark 2005 PCMark 2005 Windows Media Encoder 9 Windows Media Player 10 FRAPS Vana'Diel Bench 3 (Final Fantasy XI Online benchmark) OpenOffice.org 2.0 Final XP-Antispy Xpy FLStudio 5.02c Sound Forge 6.0e Sound Forge 8.0 Cubase SX Logitech Rumblepad 2 Gamepad Drivers GetRight Soulseek Shareaza uTorrent mIRC 6.16 Task Catcher Alcohol 120% Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 XnView WinRAR 3.50 7-Zip ASUS Update ASUS PC Probe II Kerio Personal Firewall 4.2.2 (now this IS a firewall) Media Player Classic BSPlayer KL Mega Codec Pack & DivX 6 create Blocklist Manager (from www.bluetack.co.uk) TiMidity++ VMWare Workstation NOKIA Monitor Test 1.0.0.1 CPU-Z InCD EAC (Exact Audio Copy) Auto Gordian Knot FLAC Foobar2000 CoolPage Photoshop CS Vegas CDex Multimedia Fusion (Pro) RPG Maker XP MP3 Direct Cut OggDropXPd PhotoFiltre Axialis Icon Workshop Flash FXP Teleport Pro ClrMAMEPro MAME32FX NetLimiter 2.0 NetStat Live Yahoo Messenger Softes Windows Cleaner 2005 O&O Defrag Professional Dr. TCP SpeedFan ISO Buster nVidia tweak Suite HijackThis PCInspector File Recovery 4.0 McAfee S_T_I_N_G_E_R ROM Zipper Partition Magic Acronis TrueImage PSXMC Old games: Halo Morrowind Red Faction 2 Hitman 2 Soldiers of fortune II ... and all of this is just one part of the list...DUH!

After reading the whole topic here's some comments and questions for gdogg: 1. First,what Kind of CPU do you have in your PC - Intel (Pentium 4,Pentium 3) , or AMD (AthlonXP,Athlon64) ? If you have an AMD,you should check out the AMD-optimized Firefox build BlueFyre (based on the latest daily trunk) updated every day.Works well with my AthlonXP. Very fast one.You may want to try this build and compare the speed with the optimized Firefox you're currently using. It's a small 7-zip package.No need to install at all.Just unzip the folder and run Firefox.exe.Clean and easy. Get it at: http://pryan.org/firefox/BlueFyre/ 2. Have you thought of using BBLean as a replacement shell for explorer.exe? Just replace the explorer.exe with this one and you'll be amazed at how little RAM it uses. I just don't know if you will like the Linux-ish style 3. I noticed somebody recommended using UPX. Using UPX is a bad idea. Even the MAME team,which used UPX for a long time to compress MAME32,got rid of UPX because it was slowing loading time and it used more RAM.Now the uncompressed exe they use is bigger in size,but uses less RAM when it is loaded and loads way faster. 4. You recommend using ATi Catalyst 5.10 drivers.Why 5.10? By my (and everyones else) experience the 5.9 drivers are the most stable and fast drivers ATi has ever released so far. I'm so satisfied with the stability of 5.9,I'll never change them ever (unless I buy one of those high-end still unreleased X1800 cards) 5. MicrowinXP - Will it have sound/audio and MIDI support? You know,games,music and movies without sound are not fun at all And why MIDI support? Because kX project drivers (www.kxproject.com) for my Audigy2 won't install when I remove MIDI support with nLite 6. Problems with booting? If you can boot from a Knoppix Linux Live CD successfully,but not boot from a Windows CD or HDD,it must be your hard drive that is dying. 7. OpenOffice is a much better option than MS Office in terms of security.Much less security risks,has everything you need and more and it's free. It uses more RAM,but that is BY DEFAULT only.If you tweak the settings in the options menu,you can run it with half or third the RAM usage and startup time is decreased by 2 or 3 times as well. 8. Will Microwin ever support 56k dialup-modem connection support? This is very important.When your broadband connection dies,this is your only savior until it's working again. Besides that,there are still people that use only dialup,or ADSL with Dynamic IP,but DON'T HAVE ROUTERS,or do not plan to buy 9. I'm looking forward to beta testing the themeless version of microwinX. Can you send me the latest (themeless) beta of MicrowninX,please?(with instructions for doing those steps) I know,I know...IRC..but I don't know if I'll find you there,cause I go online only 15 minutes a day and I don't use IM,ICQ and other stuff,just IRC 10. If I have the beta,I must test and make sure it will run most of more than a hundred programs I use every day That's a lot of testing... The list is long,I'll post it next time.

gdogg,maybe this page can help you reduce memory usage to an insanely small amount and security tightened to a higher level : Just click and read carefully,you'll love this: http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/07/r...o-services.html