An article in ExtremeTech today refers to running a command to idle background processes while benchmarking a system. They were running XP SP1 and the command was "rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks". That sounds useful for NLE work that it CPU intensive. Not being in the same town as my system at the moment I wonder if anyone knows whether this command is equally valid for win2kpro?

David Hurdon

I don't think you want to do that while running an NLE system. The background tasks actually do useful work. Fine to turn them off for a minute or two while doing a specific benchmark. Bad to turn off any more than that.

The other side of the issues is you really don't need to turn them off. Right click on the task bar. Choose "Task Manager". Click on the "Processes" tab. This will show all the processes running in your system. There is probably thirty or forty of them. Now click on the CPU column header. This will sort the list by the percent of CPU time they are using. Almost all are 00. Occasionally one will pop up to a a few percent. These processes are not really stealing much cpu time from an NLE. Start up the NLE and do some work. You'll be surprised how little of the CPU it sucks. On my system scrubbing the timeline maxed out at 65% of the CPU. It will max out at 99 while rendering a mpeg video. You might gain a few second on a ten minute render turning off the other processes but not much more. You might also mess up your system a bit turning off all the other processes

Some background processes like the Real Player (realsched) and Quicktime ones (qttask) do take a few percent off your renders, and you don't need them. You can turn em off with run-->msconfig or by going into those programs and turning those off if you can.