Windows XP tweaks for video editing
 

Back in 2001-2002 David LaBorde wrote an excellent article about Windows XP and presented a list of tweaks to make a PC run faster for video editing. The article (actually a series of two articles) are still available on the Videoguys website (a DVi sponsor): http://www.videoguys.com/TweaksWINXPVE.html.

I wonder if anyone has implemented them, and if yes, have you experienced improved performance? Are all of those tips still valid?

Thanks,

A couple of things recommended that I would not do

Disable Human Interface Device Access - If you have a Wacom, it may not work as expected.

System Restore - it can save you. If you do drive image backups, turn it off. But it can fix bad installations and configurations so I hestitate to agree.

SFC - System File Check will fix some problems with folks that like to cleanup the Windows directory and some bad apps overwriting system files. Disable at your own risk (see system restore)

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Note that clearing the pagefile on shutdown will length the time it takes to shutdown.

And the biggest performance boost you can get is... buy more memory. If you have problems with a system because of tight resources and start looking to turn stuff off, buy more memory. A fellow geek did a comparitive on recommended settings from sites like Black Viper and found that the gain was minor compared to just adding more memory. The risk of some settings is not so minor and some settings actually degrade performance. I knew the page at Videoguys was good because the first thing he does not recommend is turning off paging.

I've implemented several of those tweaks on my systems. I haven't really messed around with the ones where you go in and tweak with your registry though. In my opinion, I do think they help to streamline your system's performance and give you a slight boost. By slight, I mean that your boot time will be reduced somewhat- especially when you turn off extra services like MSN Messenger and other things that start up along with Windows. The Operating System acts a little snappier during normal operations, but making all these changes isn't going to do anything crazy like cut your rendering time in half. Like I said, I've seen some very minor boosts in performance.

I'll agree with George though about keeping the System Restore. It's saved my rear end more than a few times! It really comes in handy when you install new drivers or patches that make your system go nuts- and when uninstalling those drivers/patches doesn't work. If you're system is running well and has been for a while, you can always go in and delete all but the most recent restore point to save some hard drive space.