Peter, just try the adapter plug..you probably have one laying around the house..I've got a quarter[25 cents], that says it will fix your problem..




[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 09-28-2005).]

You guys are to much.

Imagine, a little adapter like that eliminated the noise.
And Fran, I like your little picture...nice touch.
OK. Little by little, because of "you guys", my laptop is coming together.

There's one other thing that's happening. When I tab from Cakewalk to Windows Media player I get a hiccup or a hesitation. What's that all about? Has anyone experienced this?
Thank you,

Peter

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 09-28-2005).]

I don't know about the hiccup. But, if I eat cake before opening windows, I often burp.


Sorry Peter. The Devil made me do it.

Eddie

Peter,

I suspect that you have lots of items running in the background, small programs that you don't know about, but nevetheless, they slow down the computer and eat up lots of memory.

If you have windows ME or an earlier version, click start, click run and type msconfig in the box, then press enter. Now tab to the Startup tab and uncheck everything but your antivirus protection and CD burner programs. Then restart the computer and it should help eleviate the hicup problem. Don't believe it will do much for belches, though!

Good Luck,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Gary,

There were 6 programs running in the Startup.
I closed all six one by one one so there's nothing running at start up and I'm still getting the hiccup when I go from Cakewalk to Windows Media Player. Would I be better off using Winamp?

Peter

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 09-28-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 09-28-2005).]

Yes,

Winamp is a great program and I use it all the time now. Download the free one, which has lots of wonderful features, including an excellent graphic EQ.

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Hi Peter
If you see programs running under the start tab that you do not use then disable them from within the relevant programs, or uninstall them. Do NOT disable them under the start tab, as this is purely for troubleshooting and setup problems, also some programs in this menu are linked together, even though they seem completely separate, so re-nable them all and follow the instructions above.
HESITATION PROBLEM
This is caused by lack of enough Ram memory, and is the way Windows works to solve the problem.
When you open a program it is loaded from the hard disk into Ram, (Not all the Ram may be needed for the program) if you now load another program then this is also loaded into Ram, however if there is not enough Ram available, then Windows copies part of the first program to a temporary file on the hard drive, (Called a paging file) before loading the new program, when you switch back to the first program, Windows first copies part of the second program to the paging file, to clear enough space in Ram memory, to reload the part of the first program that had previously been copied to the paging file, this swapping between the hard disk and Ram is why you get the hesitation, this is usually worse in laptops as to save power they normally use slower hard disks then desktop and tower computers.
The more Ram memory you have then the less windows will have to swap files between hard disk and Ram.
Hope this helps.

Bill

Bill

Thanks for that information, very interesting.
I have 512 Ram in there now and I thought it was enough. My laptop has Windows XP Professional which includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and maybe another one.

The only programs I'll be using are: Word, (for my lyrics) Windows Media Player, (for my mp3's) and Cakewalk (for my midi sequences).
Do you suggest I put in more ram? And how much more?

Do you think it would help if I remove Powerpoint, Outlook, Excel? (if I can remove them)
I don't ever plan on using this laptop on the Internet. I want to try a keep it away from that at least for now.

I just noticed this.

It seems that Cakewalk (Version 3.0) is the problem.
When I close down Cakewalk and just leave open Windows Media Player and Word, which contain my lyrics, there is no hesitation going from WMP to Word or vice versa and no problem scrolling down the lyrics page. AS soon as I open Cakewalk and try to scroll down the lyrics page, it's really bad.

It's funny. I was previouly using an old Compaq 486 laptop. All it had in it was Cakewalk..nothing else except Windows 95.
I used Wordpad for my lyrics. I never had a problem with hesitation.

Thanks,

Peter

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 09-29-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 09-29-2005).]

Hi Peter
Its only running programs that cause the problem, virus checkers can also be resource hungry, Windows Media Player most definitely is.
I had similar problems to you with my Tower System, when I was running Cubase VST and Media Player, and which increasing my Ram from 512Mb to 1Gb cured.
As a test restart your computer, and when Windows has loaded, press Ctrl-ALT-Delete to bring up the Task Manager, Select the Performance Tab and it will show you the Physical Memory being used and Page File being used.
Start your programs up and use as normal and just keep an eye on how much the available memory is being used, as well as the page file, this will give you a good indication as to how much more memory you will need to run the programs. (The page file can be considered as additional Ram)
As an additional point, some programs are very poor in how they use memory, so while in 99% of cases extra Ram helps; it is not a 100% guarantee.
Hope this helps.

Bill

Peter,

Cakewalk eats up huge quantities of memory, and the 512 you have is more than sufficient to run most everything but cakewalk.

The best program for running your midis is Van Basco's Midi/Karaoke Player which is a free program that has lots of great features. Van Basco does not eat up lots of memory, does an excellent job with midi files, and most of us that do this stuff for a living use it exclusively for midi files. Win Amp is used primarily for MP3s, which again, is what most of us use it for.

Hope this helps solve your problem,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy