millsmobile
So I ripped my laptop apart over the weekend, first time doing it. The thing sounded like a hovercraft and was running vdj WAY worse than I eve remember. The system was stripped down for only photos and music, no extra crap running. I got the whole thing apart, and cleaned the heatsink and fans out. I also removed the cheesy factory heat pad and replaced it with high quality thermal paste. Here is what the crazy heatsink looked like in this thing, after I cleaned the black off the pad.
And the chip, which was also black before I cleaned it.
Starting the thing back up and messing around the lappy seemed to run cooler, and the fans did not come on as soon.
That seemed easy, so tonight I upgraded my old ass 4200rpm drive with a new 7200rpm hard drive. I installed fresh XP and vdj on one partition, a page file on a second partition, and then 80gb partition for my music. After getting all of this running, the computer seems to be just as loud as before, and sends quite a bit of heat out the exhaust. The difference is that track load times are 3-5 seconds (vs oh my long after it got going) and cpu usage is about half (avg. 33% vs 60-70%) of what it was before.
My only concern is the amount of heat coming out of this thing, but I suppose that was the whole point of redoing the cooling?
It is a 2.66ghz P4 - 1gb ram, 7200rpm pata HD, nothing but XP VDJ and music.
And the chip, which was also black before I cleaned it.
Starting the thing back up and messing around the lappy seemed to run cooler, and the fans did not come on as soon.
That seemed easy, so tonight I upgraded my old ass 4200rpm drive with a new 7200rpm hard drive. I installed fresh XP and vdj on one partition, a page file on a second partition, and then 80gb partition for my music. After getting all of this running, the computer seems to be just as loud as before, and sends quite a bit of heat out the exhaust. The difference is that track load times are 3-5 seconds (vs oh my long after it got going) and cpu usage is about half (avg. 33% vs 60-70%) of what it was before.
My only concern is the amount of heat coming out of this thing, but I suppose that was the whole point of redoing the cooling?
It is a 2.66ghz P4 - 1gb ram, 7200rpm pata HD, nothing but XP VDJ and music.
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 9:57 am
millsmobile
Nope... not so fast. I wish I had made this more scientific. After plugging the laptop back into the rest of the setup, XP10s and goodies, the load time slowed back down significantly. Why would XP10s plugged in cause a slow down, where VDJ alone loads very quickly? Also the sound quality is now crap, something that I have been able to solve in the past. I tried every variation of unticking and latency speed. What am I missing. What did I mess up?
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 10:38 am
JeremK
Disabled safemode and overclock?
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 11:03 am
DJ-ALF
No, use overclock as it is solving crackles on laptops and disable Safemode. Set it to 11ms, should work that way.
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 11:29 am
millsmobile
I will double check, but I think I used all combinations. The number of beer cans may also have something to do with it. I am sure I will fix the sound quality issue.
Any ideas why the XP10s slow the system down like 3x?
Any ideas why the XP10s slow the system down like 3x?
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 5:04 pm
millsmobile
Yep, beer cans. I got the quality going, sounds like angels : ) Unfortunately I downloaded an updated usb driver from microsoft hoping that would help, and I get 100% cpu usage right away with VDJ. XP is installing again now. : (
That still brings me back to the XP10s. Without them plugged in load times are very fast, with them, slow. Wav files load faster than MP3s. Any ideas what causes this? Do they really consume that many resources as usb1.1?
That still brings me back to the XP10s. Without them plugged in load times are very fast, with them, slow. Wav files load faster than MP3s. Any ideas what causes this? Do they really consume that many resources as usb1.1?
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 6:46 pm
DJ-ALF
You might have some IRQ conflicts on your USB ports, did you checked that? I saw 5 devices sharing the same IRQ today (for the first time in my life) on one machine in my Pc Shop/service!
You can see that in System info.
You can see that in System info.
发表时间 Tue 03 Jul 07 @ 8:33 pm
Homeboy
Another thing I would look into if you havent already got one is usb powered hub. All the juice required to run the usb devices can cause system stabillity issues.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 12:50 am
millsmobile
Thanks guys I will check that out when I get home. I do have the hub, so the IRQs will be first look.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 1:04 am
millsmobile
Man I hate these stupid things. After registering the clean install of Windows again, the whole system ran like ass with NOTHING on it! Turns out genius XP decided to rename my page file partition from E to D. On a new install will it just name the partitions in alphabetical order? New to this aspect.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 4:21 am
millsmobile
Well ALF, make that twice in one day, here is what I have. 5 devices listed on one IRQ and two of them are my USB drives.
I REALLY hate computers.
I REALLY hate computers.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 4:40 am
Andrew87
To be honest, you'll be very lucky to not get any IRQ sharing. Here's a picture of my system which runs VDJ fine even when using TCV (although I don't do video mixing and I've never really used the program for an extended period of time where some people report white noise, i.e. over four hours).
Is your XP installation upto date? Does your CD which you installed from have SP2 slipstreamed on it? May be worthwhile to check the VIA website and download the latest motherboard chipset drivers and try installing those; may fix any USB communication issues.
Also there's no real benefit with Windows to have your pagefile on a seperate partition unless it's a different actual physical disc. Setting a static pagefile can help with performance sometimes, a general guideline is set the page file to be 1.5x your ram.
Is your XP installation upto date? Does your CD which you installed from have SP2 slipstreamed on it? May be worthwhile to check the VIA website and download the latest motherboard chipset drivers and try installing those; may fix any USB communication issues.
Also there's no real benefit with Windows to have your pagefile on a seperate partition unless it's a different actual physical disc. Setting a static pagefile can help with performance sometimes, a general guideline is set the page file to be 1.5x your ram.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 5:25 am
millsmobile
Wasn't really expecting anything from the page file, it is useful for photoshop when I load files off my memory cards though. No service packs are installed currently, it is the bare bones XP that came with the computer.
I checked Microsoft and it doesn't appear that anything in SP2 benefits me except maybe direct x, but I can get that separately. I don't need any of the security updates as the laptop is never connected to the internet.
Is there an easy way to change the IRQ settings? I seem to remember doing this a while ago, but never with XP.
I checked Microsoft and it doesn't appear that anything in SP2 benefits me except maybe direct x, but I can get that separately. I don't need any of the security updates as the laptop is never connected to the internet.
Is there an easy way to change the IRQ settings? I seem to remember doing this a while ago, but never with XP.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 5:57 am
Andrew87
The pagefile is useful, I'm not saying turn it off, unless perhaps you have 4GB of ram and are running XP 64-bit. I was stating that there's no benefit in a pagefile on a different partition if you only have one physical disk. Setting a static pagefile however can have some benefits. You may view the service packs as security fixes only, but before SP1 I thought XP was quite unusable. I don't know how people put up without it. (Same reason why I got rid of Vista for the moment). Slipstreaming SP2 is not a lengthy or difficult process and you'll have USB2 support out of the box. Unfrortunately there is not an easy way to change IRQ, but from my personal experience, IRQ sharing is normal.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 6:02 am
millsmobile
Didnt' look to difficult. I did find the full list of fixes, holy crap! I think I will do that over my next beer. Not sure if I had that on my previously working system or not.
发表时间 Wed 04 Jul 07 @ 6:17 am
DJ-ALF
@Andrew87
So not true, I have only 1Gb ram and disabled page file and it is working just fine. Windows is SP2 tuned up just for VDJ. With 2 maxi house tracks loaded (around 15MB each) I still have more than 500MB of ram available ;) I use audio only.
@millsmobile
I didn't had to check for IRQ's often, although 5 on the same is not that bad, but your problem is in chipset. In the future laptops, try to avoid VIA, SIS chipsets cause they are the worst on the market. Intel and Nvidia are the best, so choose one of them.
So not true, I have only 1Gb ram and disabled page file and it is working just fine. Windows is SP2 tuned up just for VDJ. With 2 maxi house tracks loaded (around 15MB each) I still have more than 500MB of ram available ;) I use audio only.
@millsmobile
I didn't had to check for IRQ's often, although 5 on the same is not that bad, but your problem is in chipset. In the future laptops, try to avoid VIA, SIS chipsets cause they are the worst on the market. Intel and Nvidia are the best, so choose one of them.
发表时间 Thu 05 Jul 07 @ 1:17 am
Andrew87
DJ-ALF if you have a machine dedicated for VirtualDJ only then you may be able to get away without a pagefile with only 1GB of ram. If you tried loading photoshop without your pagefile have fun with that. I use my system for everything, uni work, hobbies (be it vdj, gaming), web design etc. Nice advice on the Intel and nVidia chipsets though, I've found them to be reliable too.
发表时间 Thu 05 Jul 07 @ 8:29 am
millsmobile
Quote :
@millsmobile
I didn't had to check for IRQ's often, although 5 on the same is not that bad, but your problem is in chipset. In the future laptops, try to avoid VIA, SIS chipsets cause they are the worst on the market. Intel and Nvidia are the best, so choose one of them.
I didn't had to check for IRQ's often, although 5 on the same is not that bad, but your problem is in chipset. In the future laptops, try to avoid VIA, SIS chipsets cause they are the worst on the market. Intel and Nvidia are the best, so choose one of them.
I kind of figured. Just trying to make the most of what I have, it is 5 years old. I got SP2 going on it and it runs like a champ. It seems different that so much heat is coming out the vents, but I guess before it was just stuck in the machine.
I am still curious about the difference loading MP3s and loading Wav files. The larger Wavs take only 2-3 seconds, the MP3 3-4 times as long.
发表时间 Thu 05 Jul 07 @ 5:34 pm
Andrew87
I suppose VDJ doesn't have to decode the wav, just read it into memory. A way to test if mp3 decoding is being slow in VDJ is to compare how long it takes to load the same mp3 files into an editor like Audacity. It takes about 2-3 seconds to load a 5minute vbr track on my system, so on one about 5 years old I would expect it to be longer. wma takes less than a second.
发表时间 Thu 05 Jul 07 @ 5:58 pm