Set up with win XP home how to fine tune set up?

[Zool]

Hi,

I have been running GBPVR for a while now and I must say it is one of the best pvr's\front end's I have seen. All of the functions seem to work well for me and it was easy to set up So I just wanted to say thanks for such a great program.

Now what I wanted to get, was some input on fine tuning my system. I am running on a P4 1.8 with 512 megs of ram WinTV250 card and a Geforce 5600 to a samsung 43 RPTV via DVI all on XP home. I just wanted to know if anyone has tuned their XP set up in the way of shutting of some of the service's and such, or any other XP tweeks/hacks? If this has been asked many times I am sorry to ask again. I did a search but did not find much regarding this kiind of thing. If any of you know what services can be shut off or know of any other hints/tweeks for XP your help would be great.

Thanks for your time.

Dave

[reboot]

XP service configuration:
http://web.archive.org/web/2004112302322...icecfg.htm
Use the "Safe" settings for best results with a computer that's connected to the web.

Turn off "thumbs.db":
1. Go to Run in the startmenu
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. Click OK and the Group Policy will open
4. Go to User Configuration/Administrative Template/Windows Components/Windows Explorer
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the long list of stuff that now shows up in the menu on the right. Double-Click on Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures.
6. Click on Enable then Apply, Ok. And now you no longer have this annoying problem.

Increase recording quality, without (large) increases in recording size, by changing the GOP.
Open regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Globespan\Parameters\ivac15\Driver\GOPSize
Right click, select modify.
Change the entry so it says 503 (originally f03).
This will give you a GOP of 5, which means a full I frame, every 5 frames.
Better for frame accurate cutting of commercials too.
Filesizes are no more than 10% larger, at the same bitrate, yet the quality is much better (YMMV).

What else would you like? I have a library full.

[Zool]

Hi here is the info.. I know the pc is not a power house so I am not looking for a big improvemant just to tweek a little.

Totals
Handels 6030
Threads 307
Processes 31

Physical Mem
Total 522992
Available 228188
System Cache 162784

Kernel Mem
Total 54200
Paged 29372
Nonpaged 24828

CPU is running at 0 to 5% with GBPVR open and idel as well as Firefox as I post this.

CPUZ shows 256K for my cpu.

Thanks again for your time.

dave

[reboot]

Shut down about 10 processes, or more. I have 20 running with gbpvr open.
Grab another 512 of RAM when you find some on sale. XP tends to eat 512, yet smooths out at about the 768 mark, and a gig is good if you multitask.

Those numbers show your swapfile (page file) about 50% used.
With a gig of RAM, mine is at 12,256 Paged Kernel Memory.

[reboot]

I don't agree with the page file sizes. Having different max/min allows it to fragment too much.
I set my min/max at 768, and see how it runs for a couple of days. Multitask lots, and keep track of the pagefile useage. If it's constantly near the 768 mark, increase it to 1024 max/min, to allow a little leeway.
This is the very first thing I do on a new install, so the pagefile never get's fragmented, and stays whole, all in one place on the drive.

[Zool]

Great.. I will give this stuff a go. I will get some more ram for sure in a few days I think. I am lucky in a way, as the company I work for just moved and are throwing out a lot of older pc's with sd ram. I just have to wait a few days to get my hands on the left overs. As for the other tweaks thanks for the info I am not much of a windows guy. We run mostly AIX\UNIX and LINUX in my job.

Again I would like to thank you two for your time.

dave