Where my mind was 1999-12-26...
Đ 2000 Per Johansson All rights reserved
1999-12-26
Chistmas is over !
I hope all of you had a good one. At least I had. I even got to bed early
on Christmas eve. Thatīs really good, cause sleep is something thereīs
always shortage of around here. I hope everyone awaits my upcoming "Millennium
Anthem", if I eventually decide to make one that is. Anyway, in case I
decide to do just that: I have prepared my computer with some awesome
software to aid me in my artistic ongoings. This is what I have installed
at the moment:
Sequencers:
Cubase Score VST 3.5 (full version)
Cakewalk Pro Audio 7.02 (full version)
Cakewalk Express 8.0 (full version)
Emagic Logic Audio 3.0 (full version)
MS Direct Music Producer 7 (full)
Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.0 (demo)
Audio Editors:
Cool Edit 2000 (full version)
SEKD Samplitude 2496 5.03 (full)
Sound Forge 4.0 (full version)
Extras:
Creative Live! ware 3.0 (full version)
DSPFX Virtual Pack (full version)
Real Procucer G2 (full version)
Real Producer 7 (beta)
EMU sound font banks CD
Well, you might know nothing about music software
but you can take my word for that this is a virtual firework of music
creating power and muscles. I have a lot of other software in my possesion,
but this is what I will use for some time now. The reason is that
thereīs nothing much of better software out there at the moment.
Talking about other stuff, my computer is running
better under Windows 98 than ever ,at the moment. One reason
is some registry tweaking methods I developed recently. The Windows
registry might be known to most of you, as something nerd-gurus use
to edit to do impossible tasks on PC:s. That might be it, but there is
help out there.
Basically, the Windows registry keeps
all your software and data in order, after some time using your computer
the registry is slowly being corrupted. Resulting in seriously
slowing down your computers performance, contrary to just malfunctioning.
There is plenty of commercial software on the net
claiming their ability to clean out the registry. Not so, most
of those just plainly makes your computer crash after a cleaning
session. Iīve found one that works really well though, and itīs free:
Easy Cleaner 1.7f , it can be downloaded from
the young authors homepage at:http://www.saunalahti.fi/tonihele
Now, thatīs not all, because after you
have used the software above (follow instructions rigorously),
the registry is still full of empty spaces and plain disorder.
Easy Cleaner just cleans out old registry keys, which
have been left over, to shrink the registrys size. It can be much better.
Windows 98 comes with a very good (but
undocumented) tool called "registry scanner". It can be started
from real DOS-mode (not a DOS window). Make your computer
restart into DOS. Now you will see the good old C:\-prompt.
Type exactly like this at the C:\-prompt:
"C:\scanreg /opt" and press "return"
(this will clean out the spaces in your registry, like all MS software
does at the end of their installation process and is calling "optimizing
system"). If it worked O.K., you will see nothing but a new C:\-prompt.
If you did something wrong, there will be an error message.
Now you can proceed to the next step. It can take
some time, so see to it you have some. Now you will make the "registry
scanner" rebuild the registry, to make it truly optimized,
and this takes time. Type exactly like this at your C:\-prompt:
"C:\scanreg /fix" and press "return".
Now you get a blue screen reminding you of "scandisk", only that
it is the registry being rebuilt this time. Just wait
until the process is finished, then reboot into Windows and you
have a much faster and responsive system than you would get any other
way.
If Microsoft had built these procedures
into their OS as an automated task from the beginning, they would have
had much less of complaints on Windows but also much less of
support calls. I donīt think they have forgotten their own tool
they have built into Windows, so business strategy is probably
lurking around the corner.
Not that they have had any pressure on perfecting
their OS:s, as the competition is still lightyears beyond in user
friendliness. In short, Microsoft is in the position of
keeping their advances to themselves and slowly portioning them out as
the market gradually gets ready for them. No competition worth mentioning
out there driving the progress in the consumer OS market. The US government
do have my symphaty; just because I use MS software I donīt have
to love why I use it.
Have fun/Per.
