XP for DAW

[Kapitano]

Hello all.

I've spent a very painful week cutting XP down as far as it'll go for an unnetworked laptop that's dedicated to making music. And I thought I'd share a little of what I'd learned, in case there's anyone else who'd find it useful.

I should stress that this system is not at all network capable. I have a dual boot system with composing, recording, editing and mastering on one partition, and a small XP installation just for internet on another.

The reason is that the netless XP installs to around 200MB, and the netted version takes 650 - with almost all componants cut out except those needed for networking. If you want net, you've got to have bloat :-).

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I started with an XP VLK installation disc with SP3. These are the components I didn't cut out:

Hardware Support

Battery - Because this is a laptop, and one day I might unplug it from the mains.

USB Audio Support - Because I've got USB speakers. If you don't, you won't need this.

USB Video Capture devices - Because I make videos to go with my music. If you don't, leave it out.

Video Capture - Ditto

Windows Image Aquisition - So I can back up to a USB hard drive

Multimedia

DirectX - This isn't DirectX itself, but necessary support for the DirectX you'll install later.

Operative System Options

16-bit support - For some older software, like Stomper. If you're sure you won't be using anything more than (say) five years old, you can omit.

Application Compatibility Patch - Ditto.

FAT to NTFS converter - Not strictly necessary, but useful.

Format Drive Support - Ditto.

Visual Basic Scripting Support - I'm not sure this is necessary, but the idea is to leave out the VB5 and VB6 runtime files, and install newer ones for any software that runs their scripts.

Services:

RPC Locator - In retrospect, may not be needed at all.

Shell Services - Goes with Windows Image Aquisition.

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The ISO was 95.9MB, and once installed I set up the Services like this:

Automatic:

Remote Procedure Call - Don't even think about stopping this. You're thinking about it aren't you? Well...don't. This is, I'm sure, the only service on XP that's absolutely necessary - even though I'm a bit vague on exactly what it does.

Windows Audio - Kind of useful for a DAW, but if you don't use sound at all, this can be disabled.

Event Log - You can happily run Windows without this, but it'll probably take several minutes to shut down and load up.

Manual:

HID Input Service - Used for recognising some USB keyboards and mice. Or is it mouses? Moose?

Network Connections - Maintains the Network Connections folder. If you're setting up a network, or modifying it, disabling it or reenabling it, you need this service running. But once you've got the network running as you want it, you can stop the service.

Plug and Play - Used mainly for recognising USB scanners and printers, but may be needed for some other USB devices.

Remote Procedure Call Locator - I don't know what this does and I've never seen it active, but it looks important so I leave it on Manual.

Shell Hardware Detection - Goes with Windows Image Aquisition.

Windows Image Aquisition - Used for recognising when cameras, webcams and USB hard disks are plugged in.

Windows Installer - Used for running installers and deinstallers. Although it should start when it's needed, for me it doesn't, so you may have to start it from the Services window, and stop it when you've finished installing.

Disabled:

Application Management

Computer Browser

Cyptographic Services

DCOM Server Process Launcher - You'll need the little "DCOMbobulator" program to make this stoppable. Microsoft thinks DCOM is vital to Windows running at all. Reality disagrees.

Security Accounts Manager

Server

Telephony

Themes

Workstation

Some Installers - for things like DotNet, Acronis True Image and M-Audio MIDI controllers - install their own services and set them to Automatic. I turn them off and set them to Manual. Often they then won't start when they're supposed to, so I keep an icon link to Settings on my desktop so I can switch them on and off when I need them.

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If anyone doubts that all this rigmarole is worth it, my laptop is a six year old single core AMD with 1GB of RAM, one 100GB hard drive, and an 800MHz processor. Not exactly top of the range, but now it's a recording studio and video edit suite, with the OS, all software (including the 1.3GB Propellerhead Reason) and the 1GB page file sitting on one 5GB partition with 1.5GB to spare.

Oh, and it's fast too :-).

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If anyone's going down a similar route and has different perspectives or knows why I'm wrong about something, I'd be interested to hear.

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Kapitano

kapitano@btinternet.com