Optimising a laptop for imaging.

[Andrew*]

I've just obtained use of a laptop which I can use solely for imaging. How fantastic!

I wish to make it work best at this, and do pretty much nothing else. I want minimum background programs in operation, and all I need on the laptop are capture, planetarium and guiding programs. Anything else??

How would you do it? I don't really know how you "turn off" all those unneccesary processes and how to clean up the RAM.

It's a Toshiba Sat 2100 running XP with,

processor: X86 Family 15 model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel 1794Mhz (a what?)

RAM: 512mb (says available only 183mb :?)

Graphics GeForce 420 Go

Hard disk: only 25 GB (possibly)

3 x USB 1.1 and 4 x USB 2.0 (via PCMCIA - unfortunately can't power my ext hard drive, which will just have to run via USB 1.1)

parallel and serial.

Any advice how to make the most of it greatly appreciated!

Andrew

[blinky]

First think Andrew make sure Windows is in ENGLISH not GERMAN :whip2:

TBH I would not bother to switch things off. In the old days PC's were a lot less powerfull and you really needed to scrape together every bit of processing power. Modern(ish) PC's/Laptops will cope with all you can throw at them asto imaging wise.

I just think it is more hastle than it's worth, the laptop I was using at Kielder is a P4Mobile (Basically a jazzed up P3) and it copes with Capturing from the DSI at the same time as using DSLR Focus to trigger the long exposure via serial AS WELL as capturing again from USB the images from the 350D.

I would work on getting everything looking nice, shortcuts for applications in the correct places. I would switch off the desktop background as that consumes memory and also maybe disable virus scanning of the directory you save captured images to or switching it off altogether whilst imaging.

[Viking]

Check to see if it has a section of the hard disk as virtual memory. Go to help and it will give you instructions.

25 gig is a bit small. Maplins often have portable hard drives on sale. I have a 60 gig and a 120 gig bought a few years ago.

Good luck.

John

[Viking]

Forgot, check out ccleaner.com. Its a freebie and checks you hard disk for "rubbish". On my computer I cleared out 750 megs of unnecessary temporary files etc.

It worked for me but I am only the "messenger".

John

[Starflyer]

Hi Andrew,

Startup.cpl is a handy little control panel applet that lets you control your startup items;

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Cheers,

Ian

[Whippy]

Funnily enough Andrew, I've just been given Toshiba satellite 1410 which I'm planing to to use for the exact same thing .

All I'm planning on doing is running a clean install of XP, adding the required programs (PHD, Artemis capture, CduC and Stellarium) and that's it. The only thing for me that I'm a little worried about is my QHY5 runs on USB2 and if it doesn't play ball on USB1, I'll get a powered PCMCIA USB2 port card (less than a tenner) and I should be up and running. Perhaps you could get one for your external drive? All it is is a normal card and a lead that takes power from one of your USB ports and connects into the card . As yours has a little more performance, I can't see you having any problems.

Tony..

[Andrew*]

Thanks for your comments everyone. I'll give them all a whizz. I was expecting you to suggest a windows re-install, but obviously there's not much point.

Tony,

I'll get a powered PCMCIA USB2 port card (less than a tenner) and I should be up and running. Perhaps you could get one for your external drive? All it is is a normal card and a lead that takes power from one of your USB ports and connects into the card . As yours has a little more performance, I can't see you having any problems.

So this is basically the same as what I've got - a card that slides into my PCMCIA slot and has a lead running from it that goes into a spare USB 1.1 port? Sounds good! Is there any way of doing the same with the card I have already?

First think Andrew make sure Windows is in ENGLISH not GERMAN :whip2:

25 gig is a bit small. Maplins often have portable hard drives on sale. I have a 60 gig and a 120 gig bought a few years ago.

I have an external one, 160GB, which is what I will be using. I am wondering though - will I sacrifice download speed or lose any data if I download frames from the camera directly to the hard drive? I remember when I took 9 GB of data once - it took 3 hours to download onto the hard drive :shock:

Andrew

[peeceeTal2M]

If you type in the run box msconfig you'll be able to stop a lot of unwanted programs that start when windows boots up

[Whippy]

Andrew, what card have you got?

[daz]

Andrew

I have a little script I run (as a batch file) which contains:

sc stop S24EventMonitor

sc stop ALG

sc stop Avg7Alrt

sc stop Avg7UpdSvc

sc stop AVGEMS

sc stop CFSvcs

sc stop Dhcp

sc stop Dnscache

sc stop EvtEng

sc stop helpsvc

sc stop PolicyAgent

sc stop PlugPlay

sc stop RasMan

sc stop RegSrvc

sc stop Schedule

sc stop Spooler

sc stop srservice

sc stop TapiSrv

sc stop TermService

sc stop Themes

sc stop W32Time

sc stop WSearch

sc stop wuauserv

sc stop WZCSVC

Stops all unnecessary services. I then have another script that starts them all again.

Some won't apply to you but food for thought for you....

[Andrew*]

Andrew, what card have you got?

Ahah! I've just seen that it has a DC input - 5v centre positive. That's how to do it! It's a CardBus pcmcia card with 4xUSB 2.0 ports

I've just realised this laptop hasn't had a proper clean for years and years. It's proper clogged up with carp and I'm just going to wipe it clean. Much simpler. I spent 2 hours yesterday trawling the hard drive getting rid of loads of rubbish (e.g. drwatson32.TXT (!) - 4GB! - what's that about?!?) but it's still no faster and that way I'm sure I can free up another 5 GB or so.

Andrew

[Whippy]

Same as mine then Andrew, just connect the USB lead to the card and voila . Got my card yesterday, installed it and works a treat! Installed the drivers for cameras and the only problem I have is that I can't have both the Atik and QHY5 running from the USB card as the QHY picture has bands running through it, I assume there's some kind of interference. No matter though as I can run the Atik from the Laptop's USB ports as it's quite happy on USB1 :hello1: . Fingers crossed that it'll run fine for a few hours out in the garden without dying on me and there's no problems with PHD (might be some kind of latency issue going through the PCMCIA card). So I'm ready to go, just need the Moon to go and some clear skies now....

BTW, get a copy of CCleaner, it'll make a good job of cleaning up the hard drive for you.

Tony..