Utitlity for turning Live into your Windows Shell

[forge]

Hey guys

well, I've been really excited by this idea, so much so I've spend alot of today exploring the added benefits of going back to Black Viper etc and figuring out the services running that dont need to be and ending them all, but sadly after all this I took a quite intensive track and A/B compared the two scenarios -normal boot and boot with Live as shell, then live as shell with ending all unneccessary services and found no visible difference whatsoever to the CPU meter in Live.

I "perceived" it to be more solid overall, but it's pretty hard to tell if tht's real just imagined

So as for how much it affects things, only time will tell if it makes it more stable, but for now it doesnt look like it affects things here.

Shame, I was really hoping it would be a good resource saver

another really interesting thing there too is with norton AV, etc off there seemed to be no change.

is this an inaccurate way to test it? Is it meant to benefit in different ways I havent been looking for?

I still really like the idea, but there are too many handy things I want that I dont know how to load up through task manager etc

[Anubis]

So there won´t be any "speed-gains". I was thinkin of CPU gains.

I don't know about that, we'd better wait for SJ to wheigh-in on that. But I think the primary benefit of this tweak is to have Live as the main focus of Windows instead of Explorer. So theoretically you should get less crashes and that sort of thing, not so much an increase in speed or memory. But that's just speculation on my part.

[gomi]

So there won´t be any "speed-gains". I was thinkin of CPU gains.

I don't know about that, we'd better wait for SJ to wheigh-in on that. But I think the primary benefit of this tweak is to have Live as the main focus of Windows instead of Explorer. So theoretically you should get less crashes and that sort of thing, not so much an increase in speed or memory. But that's just speculation on my part.

you can also just open up taskmanager and assign the live app to the highest
priority setting..

explorer.exe doesn't do anything until you call upon it.

[sweetjesus]

So there won´t be any "speed-gains". I was thinkin of CPU gains.

I don't know about that, we'd better wait for SJ to wheigh-in on that. But I think the primary benefit of this tweak is to have Live as the main focus of Windows instead of Explorer. So theoretically you should get less crashes and that sort of thing, not so much an increase in speed or memory. But that's just speculation on my part.

A year n half ago when I first tinkered with such concepts as what my utility does, it was with the intention of unifying Live with the computer hardware. Making it so that you do not even notice you are running a computer for the most part.

By turning Live into the first program that launches, you will avoid addtional startup times associated with waiting for Explorer shell to load and going through the motions of starting up Live. This is most beneficial in the event of a crash during a live performance in which the whole computer needs to be restarted.

Some people noted performance gains associated with replacing Explorer with Live. .. its obvious from posts that performance benefits are associated with major tweaking of Windows and its services, but in the event that you have not done those tweaks.. or you are not the type of person who would run such tweaks, simply using my utility will provide most of those benefits.

The main point of my tool is to try and trim your system down so Live starts in the most optimal timeframe possible and take out the 'computer' interface beetween you and your sequencing instrument.

That being said, here are features I will add in a future beta..

* Selectively stop services which you do not wish to run
- things like networking
- themese service
- remote assitance
- numerous other unnecessay services

* A small launchpad with shortcuts to your most utilised programs
- direct launch of those application
- integration of the start menu items

* Start up a sequence of programs
- Run programs that you need to open before Live
- Run programs that you need to open after Live..

* Clock

* Notes

* Integration with Autohotkeys

[word]

I also have a toshiba laptop (m30) with xp home and the utility doesn't work. Is there any info I can give you that would help figure out why toshiba laptops don't seem to be working?

[andrewbrewer]

So there won´t be any "speed-gains". I was thinkin of CPU gains.

I don't know about that, we'd better wait for SJ to wheigh-in on that. But I think the primary benefit of this tweak is to have Live as the main focus of Windows instead of Explorer. So theoretically you should get less crashes and that sort of thing, not so much an increase in speed or memory. But that's just speculation on my part.

A year n half ago when I first tinkered with such concepts as what my utility does, it was with the intention of unifying Live with the computer hardware. Making it so that you do not even notice you are running a computer for the most part.

By turning Live into the first program that launches, you will avoid addtional startup times associated with waiting for Explorer shell to load and going through the motions of starting up Live. This is most beneficial in the event of a crash during a live performance in which the whole computer needs to be restarted.

Some people noted performance gains associated with replacing Explorer with Live. .. its obvious from posts that performance benefits are associated with major tweaking of Windows and its services, but in the event that you have not done those tweaks.. or you are not the type of person who would run such tweaks, simply using my utility will provide most of those benefits.

The main point of my tool is to try and trim your system down so Live starts in the most optimal timeframe possible and take out the 'computer' interface beetween you and your sequencing instrument.

That being said, here are features I will add in a future beta..

* Selectively stop services which you do not wish to run
- things like networking
- themese service
- remote assitance
- numerous other unnecessay services

* A small launchpad with shortcuts to your most utilised programs
- direct launch of those application
- integration of the start menu items

* Start up a sequence of programs
- Run programs that you need to open before Live
- Run programs that you need to open after Live..

* Clock

* Notes

* Integration with Autohotkeys

sweetjesus, your idea is starting to sound really interesting to me ... i'm sure some of us have a reasonably powerful "internet pc" (i do) that we have just sort of "let go" and just allowed to become bloated and inefficient, i'm sure simply because of the myriad of services/spyware/background utilities that inevitably weave there way in for the casual pc user.
if your app could basically force any given machine to boot in a "stripped down" mode, sealed off from any irrelevant utilities (including disabling internet, networking, etc.) ... I know that of all things could breathe some new life into some sad bloated machines out there.

wow, i'm specifically thinking about some of my friends ... their pcs, their laptops, they just couldn't be bothered to "optimize" ... but, your utility could possibly make those optimization steps irrelevant.

[sweetjesus]

I also have a toshiba laptop (m30) with xp home and the utility doesn't work. Is there any info I can give you that would help figure out why toshiba laptops don't seem to be working?

please send me as much info as you can.

1) do you have more than one account login
2) do you get any error messages?

[T_Zox]

only one account here and no error massage.

[sweetjesus]

T_zox and word,

My technical support department has sent you guys a PM.

[word]

I have the utility working on my system now. i was confused with the labelling of the program buttons. I thought that when the button said 'on' the programs was turned on, but actually the program is turned on when the button is labelled 'off'. Looking forward to the final release!

[ModuLR]

There is a great ultra lightweight shell call LiteShell. It's always been stable in my experience, offers configurable hotkeys and what not.. and takes up no memory... it's footprint is tiny.

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/

Liteshell + lotsa of tweaking allowed me to get XP loaded in 34M of ram with totally functional networking. XP in 34M is a miricle.

I bought a new computer since then, and never went thru the process of tweaking it out again, along with swaping the shell... but will give this a try as it sounds interesting. LiteShell was great in my experience tho... so I might have to reinstall it...

Love shell tweaks... can't wait to give it a go...

*edit* your shell works great! got suckered in to trying bblean tho, and I think it's exactly what I've been looking for.... thanks for your hard work tho!

[forge]

I have the utility working on my system now. i was confused with the labelling of the program buttons. I thought that when the button said 'on' the programs was turned on, but actually the program is turned on when the button is labelled 'off'. Looking forward to the final release!

I was going to post about that because the same thing happened for me. I guess because you have to reboot to test it the desire for trial and error is diminished

[forge]

BTW...

since embarking on this mission I got sidetracked into doing the Black viper tweaks and now it seems every time I come to this forum I have to log in and it frequently wont log me in - I actually think I flicked past something on BV saying about passwords but I wouldnt have a clue which one it was

does anyone know..?

[Nod]

BTW...

since embarking on this mission I got sidetracked into doing the Black viper tweaks and now it seems every time I come to this forum I have to log in and it frequently wont log me in - I actually think I flicked past something on BV saying about passwords but I wouldnt have a clue which one it was

does anyone know..?

Forge - I ain't sure since it's a while since I set mine up on another boot away from the net but IIRC it might be the Security Accounts Manager. Best practice when altering services is to merely set them to manual first - that way if the machine needs it it's still available.

[clipperer]

hey man, how did you make that program, did you use something like hex edirot ?