Utitlity for turning Live into your Windows Shell

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:52 pm

can someone check if there is any improvement on performance?

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:16 pm

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... c&start=45

a reported 7%

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 4:19 pm

SWEET JESUS!

thanks! Ill give that a go a little later as i have a couple of shows coming up.

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 4:23 pm

THIS IS SO SICK ,

i only tryed it on my laptop to try it ,i'll probably take it home & try to make it crash ,or push the pc to its limit & see what happens .

this shell kicks chuck norris's arse , no doubt .

thank you , thank you & thank you .

gomi · Post by **gomi** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 4:49 pm

forge wrote: BTW - I'm guessing norton AV and windows firewall etc arent loaded with this, so does that mean loading up firefox will leave me really open and vulnerable to nasty virusey things??

no , all that crap will still be loaded.

all this is doing is not loading explorer.exe
all explorer.exe does is give you a taskbar
and easy access to explorer.exe (which is what everything
in windows uses to browse the hard drives)

if you want to disable all the crap you've installed on your bloated
windows box (sorry had to

)
then go start>run>msconfig

this will give you access to all the little things it is running on start up
you can disable them.

ALSO look into start>setting>control panel>administrative tools>Services

there are some services there that you DON'T need to run.
But you will want to google them first.

definately turn off the stupid THEMES service as that slows EVERY windows
machine down.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 5:56 pm

Amo - yes my program pretty much does what is in that thread, i'm not sure about the methodologies the group policy editor uses, but suffice to say I do replace the shell.

Forge - I am humbled at your offer to have my baby, but I think I will stick to the beers man. Manlove doesn't cut it for me.

As for stopping you from using the net and missing your clock, I did some research and I believe I can easily start and stop services with my code, so in theory I can disable your networking and put a small clock in my program. If the clock adds additional resource usage to my app, then I guess it defeats the purpose of using my utility, perhaps I will make an option but I recommend going to IKEA and getting yourself a bigarsed wall mounted clock as a solution.

All the Norton AV stuff will load as they mainly run via services. There is an issue with NAV as often it replaces your networking drivers with its own as its way of intercepting and monitoring network traffic for virii.

As for power settings I'm not quite sure. I will research into this if I get time. Valid question though.

Patch & Minimal - The applications you wish to run can definately be run via a batch file. I highly recommend looking at that option for automating the loading of more than one application in a specific order.

Elemental - hope it goes well with your gig on the 24th!

Spiderprod - Sorry about all the warnings but as I had not had ANY testers of this program yet, I was quite worried and wanted to make sure people who feel comfortable with technical matters tried it out before your average loop-a-holic. Glad you did try it eventually.

Peeddrroo & Angstrom - There is a resported 7% performance increase. However that is if you use Live as the shell, whereas with my program the software I wrote becomes the shell and it happens to launch Live. I am fairly sure that there would be performance gains using my utility, but thats what this alpha testing thing is for and I would be most interested to confirm the results.

------

Few things for everyone...

a) Has anyone tested this with XP Pro yet?

b) This utility is not limited to launching Live as the default first program under windows, so if you are into games or other things where performance is a MUST I'm sure this program could come in handy.

c) I will update the program once I've had some XP Pro testing to have a more logical and functional GUI.

chis · Post by **chis** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:20 pm

This is obviously a fantastic little tool for those of you looking to eek out every little bit of CPU time out of your PCs for Live.

I'd prefer a half-way solution. Not using Explorer OR Live for the shell, but using a very lightweight shell to provide shortcuts to Explorer (for file management), Live, and any other audio tools I'd want to get to quickly. Something like Aston, Litestep or Blackbox might do the job here.

Some appropriate links:
http://www.shellfront.org/
Windows Shells on DMOZ
http://www.shellcity.net/

Edit: these programs are terrific fun if you like to control the look of everything in your OS. Watch out though, I've had some issues with these shells: e.g. the Windows Start button not always working, or programs not installing Start menu shortcuts properly.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:21 pm

chis wrote:This is obviously a fantastic little tool for those of you looking to eek out every little bit of CPU time out of your PCs for Live.

I'd prefer a half-way solution. Not using Explorer OR Live for the shell, but using a very lightweight shell to provide shortcuts to Explorer (for file management), Live, and any other audio tools I'd want to get to quickly. Something like Aston, Litestep or Blackbox might do the job here.

Some appropriate links:
http://www.shellfront.org/
Windows Shells on DMOZ
http://www.shellcity.net/

Ive tested most of the shells out there in the past and have to say that they are quite buggy.

I will include a button in my program to launch the explorer file browset.

chis · Post by **chis** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:23 pm

Well quite, hence my last-minute edit. I wish there was a small, lightweight shell that Just Worked. A clock, a shortcut to Windows Explorer, a replication of the Start menu, and I'd be happy.

... okay I realise I keep adding extra requirements. SJ, this is a very handy tool as-is, and I'm sure many Live users will use this!

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:43 pm

Chis, have you tried BlackBox? It worked well for me a while back.

SweetJesus - I'm on XP pro. worked a treat... I didn't test the performance though.

gomi · Post by **gomi** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:44 pm

BLACKBOX or bblean for windows is great.

http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:51 pm

i have tryed photoshop ,flash mx , soundforge & a few games .
this is sick , start the pc ,puff live comes up .it will probably stop me getting frustrated at start up .

in terms of performance it saves me around 6% of cpu ,& to my big surprise it free up around 20 meg of ram .
tryed on xp sp2

thanks again .

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:56 pm

gomi wrote:BLACKBOX or bblean for windows is great.

http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/

That's the stuff! BBLean is really cool shit.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:01 pm

spiderprod wrote:i have tryed photoshop ,flash mx , soundforge & a few games .
this is sick , start the pc ,puff live comes up .it will probably stop me getting frustrated at start up .

in terms of performance it saves me around 6% of cpu ,& to my big surprise it free up around 20 meg of ram .
tryed on xp sp2

thanks again .

dude that's really awesome to hear!
wow

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:41 pm

sweetjesus wrote:
spiderprod wrote:i have tryed photoshop ,flash mx , soundforge & a few games .
this is sick , start the pc ,puff live comes up .it will probably stop me getting frustrated at start up .

in terms of performance it saves me around 6% of cpu ,& to my big surprise it free up around 20 meg of ram .
tryed on xp sp2

thanks again .
dude that's really awesome to hear!
wow

i have the feeling somethink is wrong when i am in normal mode cos 20 meg of ram is a lot .
do you know what can pump 20 meg of ram ?

Utitlity for turning Live into your Windows Shell

BLACKBOX

Re: BLACKBOX