"Upgraded" to Windows 10, Cakewalk performance has suffered greatly

[Steev]

May very well be a hardware issue. Might want to manually check for latest drivers for your Firewire interface card directly from the vendor, and make sure it even supported by Windows 10 x64 systems. 

[Chilldanny]

When upgrading to Win10 it often resets some system settings that negatively impact on audio playback performance.

An example of this is the Indexing option being re-enabled on some HDDs.

Check that Indexing is turned off on your Audio drive (assuming you use a separate drive for audio, which you should).

[willard cottrell]

There are so many great tips offered here.  HOWEVER, I for one have a smattering of ignorance about many of the ideas presented.  for example, I read about disabling bkgrd programs.  How does one with a smattering of ignorance determine what is absolutely needed in the bkgrd?  Is there a guide somewhere that says you can disable program xyz w/o hurting normal performance of the computer when NOT using the DAW.

Is there a short system shutdown checklist that one needs to go thru in order to ensure that tomorrow it actually starts up?

Since I'm having a WIN 10 reinstall, I would want to make sure that I don't screw it up.

[chris.r]

13 minutes ago, willard cottrell said:

I read about disabling bkgrd programs.  How does one with a smattering of ignorance determine what is absolutely needed in the bkgrd?  Is there a guide somewhere that says you can disable program xyz w/o hurting normal performance of the computer when NOT using the DAW.

I suppose you're talking about services? I would like to know as well. I was searching for some guidances and haven't found any that would go into details.

I was experimenting with XP services years ago trying to disable them by trial and error and have encountered too many surprising issues so I dropped it. There's too much dependencies and some services I couldn't breakdown what are they for and no description.

[ien]

I think it's best to be your own guide if you want to disable services since one person's idea of what's unnecessary might be necessary for another. For example, i disable all Bluetooth services, printer, Xbox, geolocation, some Intel stuff and some others here an there because i don't require any of them. But that's not good advice for someone who uses Bluetooth, printers, Xbox, etc.

Open up the Services and read the description of each service. Disable what you want. Or make it manual or delayed start.

Disabling services isn't necessarily needed though and it's unlikely to be the magic bullet for a specific problem, although i guess it could be.

[mdiemer]

Sweetwater had a list of things to do to optimize your computer. I only used the one for W7. The consensus seems to be not to take the list too seriously, but as ien said, do some fiddling yourself. First, disable from startup anything like printers, CCleaner etc. You don't need those to run at startup, only on demand.

Here is a list of services I disabled on my W7 desktop (if you have a laptop, some of these you may need):

Tablet PC Input Services

Secondary logon

Fax

offline files

routing and remote access service

bluetooth

encrypting file system

certificate propagation

microsoft iSCSI initiator

netlogon

parental control

remote desktop config

remote desktop services

rds usermode port redirector

smart card windows defender

 

I have no idea how these relate to W10, but disabling them on W7 was fine. There is a bunch of other stuff on Sweetwater about various tweaks to your computer, which are too complicated to explain. Suffice it to say that I found a way to get my rig running very smoothly, which is the general idea.

If all this is irrelevant to W10, I apologize, just ignore it. I'm just trying to help.

[Starship Krupa]

This is great, I've learned some new tuning tricks for Windows 10 that I had no idea existed, like the Game Mode one, which seems pretty huge.

Good call on the list of spurious services. There used to be this guy who maintained a master list of nonessential Windows services that could be disabled and why; I must search for him again.

Since this has taken a nice turn for tuning suggestions, I'll offer up a couple of favorite tools I've been using for over 20 years, Process Explorer and Autoruns.

Process Explorer is many things, including What Task Manager Wants To Be When It Grows Up, in that it shows all kinds of details about every process that is currently running. It's also what I fire up when I've tried all of the more polite methods of getting a process to quit and it still won't budge. It has a very "what part of 'End Process' didn't you understand?" way of dealing with them.

Autoruns shows you everything that runs when your computer starts up, from services to browser hijacks, and lets you disable, enable, remove, whatever. It's as no-nonsense about making your decisions stick as its sister program. If you've been using CCleaner or something like it just to deal with this, that's way overkill.

Both of them are free and may be found here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

I am going to now sally forth and get rid of all of the XBox crap to start with....

[scottfa]

It kind of sounds like you are shooting in the dark. I would load up Reaper (can try it for free) and see if the problemm persistes. If it does, Cakewalk is not the issue. Then it is either the driver or something in Windows 10. at this point i would try to determine if it is the driver. So is there a Windows 10 driver(probably not)? There is a Firewire Legacy driver from Microsoft you can try. You might be able to run the driver in a compatibility mode for Windows 7. If this fails i would beg,borrow anorher interface and see if that solves it.

Anyway, my two cents.......

[scottfa]

Found this link about installing latest Firepod firmware(i think). Uses windows 7 compatibility mode to install.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/general-discussions/digital-recording-and-computers/presonus-firepod-fp10-windows-10-a-382517/?highlight=firepod+Windows+10

 

[Starship Krupa]

Thanks, scottfa, those are such good ideas that I already tried them.

My "Firepods" were firmware upgraded to FP-10's within 24 hours of arriving home, and Mixcraft Pro Studio 8 is having no issues with starting and stopping the transport with projects of similar complexity.

I call them Firepods in my sig because I like the name and people recognize it better than FP-10.

Only "shooting in the dark" inasmuch as Microsoft hides the underpinnings of the OS with each new iteration.

I have 25 years professional experience tuning and troubleshooting Windows systems starting with 3.1; I earned a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification as soon as Microsoft started offering it. I concur that it's something in Windows 10. :-)

So far, one great success that took hours of Resource Monitor work and deep Googling was rolling back the Intel network interface driver to the previous version so that it wouldn`t be chewing up CPU like crazy. Nothing to do with Cakewalk, just a bad driver I found that was bogging everything down.

And yeah, I before I did this, I researched and found several forum threads like that one where FP-10 users had had success using their interfaces under Windows 10. I found none where someone had tried to get theirs to work and given up. That`s why I was and am confident that this problem can be solved.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Starship Krupa

[scottfa]

I stand corrected......looking back, all the suggestions(including mine i suppose) are shots in the dark. I would still try another program like reaper or another interface to try to isolate the problem. Good luck!

[InstrEd]

Wish I had a suggestion for you. Offering my sympathy as I know when your software and computer don't get along it stinks.

[Lord Tim]

As a benchmark, why don't you image your drive, and then load a fresh version of Win10 on there (doesn't need to be activated for this test), drivers, etc. and CbB.

If you have performance issues with that, you can look at Win10 itself and the drivers. If this works fine, then something else is borked - I'd say the upgrade process has gone badly at some point.

Just restore the drive image and you're back to how you were before you did this test.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Lord Tim
clarity

[scottfa]

Went back and read your original post. Maybe yank out the graphics card and try using only the onboard graphics to see if that helps? 

Another shot in the dark.........

[William W. Saunders, Jr.]

One thing you don't appear to have tried or even addressed in any of your replies is the repeated advice from some of the CW heavyweights to do a clean install of Window 10.   You don't need anything but a Windows 10 install disk and you can download the *.iso install file from the Microsoft website and burn a CD .  Just use your Windows 7 product key to authorize or authorize by signing into your Microsoft account and linking your computer before you reinstall, per my earlier post on p. 1 of this topic.

If you have already tried that, here are a few more salvos into the dark:

Do you have any superfluous USB devices plugged in?

What firewire card are you using or is it on your MOBO?  TI chipset?  They are quite cheap if you need to get one.  This one works great for $24: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002S53IG8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Same problems if you just use on-board audio or another interface and unplug the Firepod?

Have you tried moving your PCI cards to different slots?  Sometimes certain ones they share resources while others don't.

Have you checked all your BIOS settings and disabled unused devices and resources like on-board video, sound and serial port?

Are your RAM sticks in the correct slots, per your MONO manual?

Have you tested your RAM?

Good luck.  Bill

 

 

 

 

[Michael Fogarty]

slightly off topic. Please bear with my ignorance. I live in Japan and in a Japanese language environment. Where is the best place to get a windows 10 upgrade? It's not free anymore I presume? I am

still running Windows 8.1 on my main DAW - I have Windows 10 on my laptop.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Michael Fogarty

[HIBI]

3 hours ago, Michael Fogarty said:

I live in Japan and in a Japanese language environment. Where is the best place to get a windows 10 upgrade? It's not free anymore I presume?

@Michael Fogarty Meaning installer for Japanese Windows?

• Japanese site: https://www.microsoft.com/ja-jp/software-download/windows10
• English site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

These download targets are same both.
If you try to upgrade, please do after full backup. After upgrade installing, If you success to get a digital license to Windows 10, you can reformat the disk and perform a clean installation of the same edition of Windows 10 anytime.

I don't know it works still this year, by the way.

[Starship Krupa]

5 hours ago, BRainbow said:

One thing you don't appear to have tried or even addressed in any of your replies is the repeated advice from some of the CW heavyweights to do a clean install of Window 10.   You don't need anything but a Windows 10 install disk and you can download the *.iso install file from the Microsoft website and burn a CD .  Just use your Windows 7 product key to authorize or authorize by signing into your Microsoft account and linking your computer before you reinstall, per my earlier post on p. 1 of this topic.

If you have already tried that, here are a few more salvos into the dark:

Do you have any superfluous USB devices plugged in?

What firewire card are you using or is it on your MOBO?  TI chipset?  They are quite cheap if you need to get one.  This one works great for $24: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002S53IG8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Same problems if you just use on-board audio or another interface and unplug the Firepod?

Have you tried moving your PCI cards to different slots?  Sometimes certain ones they share resources while others don't.

Have you checked all your BIOS settings and disabled unused devices and resources like on-board video, sound and serial port?

Are your RAM sticks in the correct slots, per your MONO manual?

Have you tested your RAM?

Good luck.  Bill

I am very much considering the scorched earth fresh Windows 10 install, and have addressed it by attaching my Microsoft ID to the system in question. I'm waiting for when the day comes I feel like de and re authorizing all of my PACE'd plug-ins, reinstalling everything else, etc.

As for the other (and, yes, those are all good things to check when a Windows system won't behave) things you list, it would be such a letdown to find out that Windows 7 was so blithely capable of handling a superfluous USB device, Nec Firewire card, Presonus FP-10, aftermarket RAM sticks or whatever, while new, improved Windows 10 makes Cakewalk pick its nose for 4 seconds before going into play mode with the exact same hardware configuration.

And yes, I have turned off everything on the MB that I don't use, and I'm down to using the onboard HD4000 GPU for simplicity. I had an NVidia Quadro but pulled it.

One thing I am noticing is that right before the transport starts moving, I sometimes get a really brief graphics palette flash, sometimes white, sometimes my desktop background image. I'm not that worried about it all for the moment. It still records. Once I find a solution I will report it.

[ien]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

One thing I am noticing is that right before the transport starts moving, I sometimes get a really brief graphics palette flash, sometimes white, sometimes my desktop background image.

Do you have Controlled Folder Access enabled? Turn it off for a test if so.

[Noel Borthwick]

@Starship KrupaSome more things to troubleshoot:

1. Do you see the same delay on starting playback on a new project with a single audio track?

2. Go into preferences | playback and recording, and ensure "always open all devices" is off.

3. Go into preferences | project record, and ensure "allow arm changes during playback and record" is off.

4. Go into audio device setup and disable all inputs and outputs except the ones you need. Start with one in and one out.

You can also try resetting the config file. Go to preferences config file and click "reset config to defaults".  this will back up your current settings and reset to defaults.

 

See if any of these improve the lag on playback start. You can also try a different audio device if you have one available to troubleshoot.

The only possibilities for delay on playback start are audio driver or disk related typically. You could also have some service that is slowing down file open operation on playback startup.