Stripping down your playout laptop....

[Mark Wild]

This is for the guys that have a PC laptop solely for playout. So you strip it down, taking out all bloatware and and unneeded programs that come loaded on it, is that as far as you go?

What about services running in msconfig? What do you stop in there, if anything, what needs to be running in startup and what doesn't?

How many processes do you have running on your playout lappy?

Keep your "get a Mac" comments to yourself please, they're about as original as Justin Bieber jokes

Any hints, tips, advice on how you do it are appreciated

[DeckstarDeluxe]

I just went to the add/remove programs and took everything I knew didnt have a reason to be there.

[ianforest]

get a mac!

on a serious note is there no way you can install Windows on it without all of the added extras? I'd rather do that than have failed uninstalls that leave crap everywhere.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

This is for the guys that have a PC laptop solely for playout. So you strip it down, taking out all bloatware and and unneeded programs that come loaded on it, is that as far as you go?

What about services running in msconfig? What do you stop in there, if anything, what needs to be running in startup and what doesn't?

How many processes do you have running on your playout lappy?

Keep your "get a Mac" comments to yourself please, they're about as original as Justin Bieber jokes

Any hints, tips, advice on how you do it are appreciated

What O/S Mark?

[Mark Wild]

What O/S Mark?

Vista home premium, this stems from me stripping it back further yesterday and then using the MC6000 for 6 hours lastnight without it freezing once, thought I might be missing a trick if you see what I mean.

[DJEP Troy]

An even better suggestion would be to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS. I do that for ALL of my computers...laptops, desktops, and servers. The first thing I do when I get it home is wipe the drive.

This way I know that nothing extra is installed.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Vista home premium, this stems from me stripping it back further yesterday and then using the MC6000 for 6 hours lastnight without it freezing once, thought I might be missing a trick if you see what I mean.

I had a decent link somewhere, but can't find it.

This might help.

[Jason]

I dual-boot, so Win Vista (it came with the laptop..), booted with Ubuntu as the primary OS.
The Windows partition is solely for DJing, so no wifi/ethernet, no anti-virus, no firewall (no network anyway! lol), themes are disabled, autorun disabled and also the usual not-required services disabled.

If I want to scan for viruses, I do this when booted into Linux.

I started out on a Laptop, but then went DDS80 - but recently brought a VMS4 and paid £100 for VDJ7pro...

I've got a small netbook, and have XP installed, again with Ubuntu installed as primary OS. As I can install VDJpro on 2 PC's, this is installed with a Netbook friendly Skin, and basic tests here show it to run fine - not something I'd like to do.


I would advocate disabling networking - or at least Wifi. Anything that can trigger an event (so autorun, wifi etc) can cause problems. If Windows detects a Wifi point mid-gig, it will need to add it to the list, and possibly display dialog offering to connect.... not ideal! Same applies if you plug a USB stick in..

Disable Windows Update (and the associated services) - you can always re-enable (with networking) if you feel an update is required.

Of course, if you're using the Windows installation for normal use (ie email/surfing etc) then this does become a bit of a nightmare, apart from "don't!!!", the other suggestion is to have a "dj" account and see what you can optimise within the relms of a Windows Account.


I've been watching the "Mixxx" open source DJ project closely, as for me - a Linux Distro with this installed could be a fantastic project, but its still some way off..
http://www.mixxx.org/

[Excalibur]

Come Spring,I may have need of this. The lease expires on my Laptop, and I may rebuild it as a gig machine, and get a new one for all other things.

[Digital Jack]

If you visit pcdj dot com , you will find a plethora of info' .