argh stupid slow grinding computer

music PC has clogged up, stalling inexplicably and being indecently slow.

Not entirely sure where the problem lies so planning on nuking it and starting afresh with a new OS

Was going to go with XP Pro SP3 again.... seemed to always do the job without any fancy bells or whistles - but has it been bettered yet?

Have Intel Core Duo 7200 , running at 2.53 with 2 gig ram.

Need to run ableton, reason, cubase, lots of plugins.
Then need to work with image files (illustrator, photoshop)
Beyond that, nothing really.

Anyone tecchy out there make me a recommendation?

And does having lots of firewalls, anti spyware, adware alert things screw up your PC? Its seemed to slow down with the buggers installed, but maybe I'm just imaging... running AVG, adaware and outpost firewall all at once.

Ta' very much

jp

from my experience having all the spyware, anti virus and adware crap does clog it up.

at the moment i run vista. i have AVG (full version), Ccleaner, Speccy (so i can monitor my system; temp, cpu etc) and recuva just in case.

I run FL9, Ableton and a hella lot of plugins, Toontrack and Tracktor DJ Studio. Not a single problem so far. Oh and she's hooked to the net all the time.

She has a Celeron 2.00ghz processor, 2gb of ram and its vista 32bit.

make 2 partitions on your hard drive, install 2 operating systems,. 1 of them use only for audio (no Antivirus, no internet connection, nothing except, DAW, and plugins)

Use the os in other partition for all other tasks, dtp, internet, gaming, etc, and secure it with your spyware/antivirus apps as usual.

Audio OS will stay stable for years, at least it is on my pc. In case the other os ****s up due some viruses, loads of apps installed, whatever, you can then simply restore it without affecting the other partition, so your audio os stays untouched.

also want to mention, that you can still run virus checks on the files which are related to audio os, because they physically appear in other partition (eg disk D, F, etc), which can be set as a location for antivirus checks so no need to have internet for audio work at all. Also I am working on Win XPSP2, I do not install any hotfixes as they are important mostly for computers connected to internet, which your audio OS simply is not. No worry about hotfixes on system running off internet connection and keep your other partition for dtp, work, internet up to date, and you will be fine....

one last note, NEVER EVER install Vista on your machine, it is apparently thw worst OS ever. go for Win XP or Wiin7.

Whatever OS you go for, you should definitely consider some disk imaging software. I use XP SP3 at the mo, and have got Acronis Home 2009. I just got my computer how I wanted it to be (with Traktor etc all installed and tweaked) and saved the disk image. Now, if I get a virus, malware, whatever, and can't get it running smooth again, I just restore the computer to that image and it's sorted. Takes less than 10 mins to restore :-) Best to partition your computer into a system drive and a data drive, cos then you can just reimage your system drive without losing any files. I use Acronis, and mates use Norton Ghost, but I think Windows 7 has disk imaging built into it if you end up using that.

brilliant advice, thanks guys.