The Linear Canvas
This journal is about the wrongs and rights of the world, as I see them.

The Linear Canvas

Maximizing PC Computing Resources While Operating High Usage Applications and Processes’

September 2nd, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

Commodore_128There has always been a struggle for system resources while using some applications on my PC’s. I run Cakewalk Sonar X1 and Sony Vegas multimedia applications currently. These programs are big users of CPU and memory resources. At times these applications are just hobbled by low resource availability. But others times they do as little as use an identical communications channel or allocated resource that some other program demands to take over. The result is often a crash by the whole computer or just the applications involved.

The biggest resource offenders can be categorized in two groups: 1) Anti-Virus programs and 2) Everything Else. Anti-Virus (A/V) programs tend to be very system heavy and do a lot of probing that takes resources best used by the programs you may be trying to run. Unfortunately, ending the probing and listening by the A/V program sometimes takes some investigation.

Anti-Virus Programs

Most A/V programs have two modes; Real Time Monitoring and Media Scanning. The Media Scanning mode is usually initiated by the user or a timer. It may also be set to do the scan on startup or even shutdown. In any case it depends on the user making choices to even have it operate. Opening the A/V program’s schedule and deactivating it, then only starting the media scanning when needed, is recommended. If you must use the scheduler to run an A/V scan, set it up for a time when you won’t be using the computer. Like at 3 o’clock AM or something. Disabling the A/V scheduler requires the user to manually scan the computer on occasion to prevent virus’ and malware. You should get more involved in your computer’s health maintenance anyway.

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