Your time and information is greatly appreciated.

I've reformatted my computer so many times and reinstalled all my software over and over, and it's beginning to tire me out and make me unmotivated to make music.

I built my pc about 2 solid years ago, give or take. Here is what I have.
A asus medium tower, asus p6t motherboard, corsair xms 12gb ram 1333 I think, core i7 intel cpu, 3tb hdd, 850 watt power supply, 2 27 inch samsung syncmaster monitors, and I think thats about it.

Looking to switch ram up to 32 gb corsair 12800 cause I heard thats faster. I run a ton of software and daws and I think stuff is just slowing down.

Any tips ideas, I'm not computer literate. [/b]

Why not just leave it as is?

Hm, you're doing something wrong. I've had my PC going for years with no issues and never a reason to reformat. You won't even be able to use all the ram you have unless you're running a 64 bit DAW and plug ins. Processors don't slow down over time. "I think stuff is just slowing down" sounds like you may have malware or virus issues. I keep those at bay using a good anti virus in conjunction with frequent OS updates and I don't surf the web at all on my music machine.

Everything is a major mess. Files missing, unorganized, 64 bit and 32 bit files feel out of place.....

Ahhh...

I have Norton 360 running, and do updates. I've been using machine 32 bit on a 64 bit operating system windows 7.

I dont know the difference. Should I be in 64 bit all the time? If so how do I use all my vsts and plugins?

I smell fish

You might want to look into making iso images of your hard drive, if you install/uninstall often.

My computers have always gotten slower after uninstalls, so I don't use installers, except for where I can successfully do it in Sandboxie. I only re-format when the hard drive dies completely.

Installing komplete and all my daws onto a external hdd and their sounds banks would keep my computer running fast right?

Can I do that?

Get rid of it. That definitely slows the computer down, even if it's just a bit.

If I were you I'd set all my software to manual update - even the operating system - and update everything once every 2 weeks or once a month.

Don't let too many software running in the background.

Get a cleaner software (ex. ccleaner + ccenhancer).

I wouldn't do it.

That could result in slower response time. External hard drives go to "sleep mode" if you don't use them for some time.

12gb 1333 is well sufficient..

if you want things to go faster - get an SSD for your OS/DAW drive..

+1 Stop using utils, they will mess up your system. Windows has all you need built in. Start using image software like GHOST

I double that - something from Acronis software maybe.
http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/workstation/

Ability to backup and restore full images of system disks etc.

If having a Seagate disk there is a free version of Acronis called Seagate DiskWizard. Can be downloaded from seagate site.

If you want a lite anti virus install Microsoft security essentials it takes up 5MB of RAM and gets updated each day. Its Free

Faster RAM will run at its default speed. So DDR3 1600 will run at 400Mhz only when you overclock your RAM and CPU does the Ram speed up. The RAMS speed is what it has been tested at on max overclock so DDR3 1600 max speed is 800Mhz.

If you put in DDR3 12800 it will run at 400Mhz till you overclock it.
Last edited by Kaboom75 on Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:43 am; edited 2 times in total

yes - i have used MSE for a couple years without a single virus infection - it detects, blocks and cleans with the best of them..