Which utilities have you installed in your music PC.

[jancivil]

I have Pacifist, which I almost never need, and The Unarchiver. In case someone got cute making a .rar or something, it's happened. It seems like recently I got another unarchiving application but I'd have to look.
This stuff is a blast from the past.

[chk071]

With W10 you really don't need antivirus - the built in one is perfectly adequate. Drop Ccleaner imo - registry cleaners are wholly unnecessary and just foster a paranoia that registries need 'cleaning'. They do more harm than good overall. I wouldn't bother with a 3rd party defrag either - the MS one is absolutely fine. I set my to automatically defrag in the background when I first got my W10 laptop almost 2 years ago and I've never even noticed it doing its thing (and I've no reason to check it as the laptop is working as fast as the day I bought it). You can read PDF's fine in Windows Edge (Foxit is full of ads these days - it's practically malware..). Absolutely no need for Revo either.

Totally agree with this one. I typically install as few programs as possible, and often first try what is pre-installed. I have absolutely zero need for system tuning utilities, or apps like Ccleaner which "clean" the registry, which is the most useless thing which exists, and, unfortunately that myth that it will make your computer faster will probably never die out.

Also, if you like a stable Windows, stay away from security suite software, and also from anti spy tools which can seriously mess up your system. The maxim to do as little to your system as possible should have high priority. That way you can still enjoy a stable and clean system after 10 years.

[BONES]

What's the difference between a "music Windows 10 PC" and an ordinary Windows 10 PC?
When I say Music PC I mean music creation PC.
In a music PC I am concerned about DPC latency. (whatever that means)

Why? I'm concerned about my bandmate being able to hit his Ocatapad and hear the drums come out of my PC in reasonable time. In 20 years that has never involved worrying about DPC latency.

I have several PC's and I treat my music PC more carefully.
Rarely online.
Turn off antivirus when working on music creation.
Optimize Windows for music creation.

I have one computer and it's not optimised for anything because it doesn't need to be. Everything runs fine without me having to do anything in particular to it. Those days are long gone. When I had a single core Pentium 800, I ran a very lean machine and spent a lot of time keeping it that way but these days I couldn't care less and I still don't have any problems.

[yellowmix]

Windows Defender is plenty good unless you're doing something nefarious and insist on it. For browser protection, a combination of uBlock Origin and NoScript and common sense is good enough. Don't run Java, Flash, and any other of that security nightmare vector; HTML5 has been here for a while now.

I do a lot more besides music but they all benefit from a clean machine. So Process Explorer and AutoRuns are good for that but I find I haven't used them in some time. Windows 10's built in process tools, startup control, and services panel is now sufficient to optimize if you know what you're doing. Come to think of it, I hardly touch the registry these days.

Windows Firewall is also sufficient in most cases. I run a lightweight frontend called Windows Firewall Control to alert me and let me more easily handle specific connections (many plugins like to dial home and some report metrics to third parties; you can dis/allow specific destinations). There are other frontends, but they all use Windows Firewall to do the dirty work.

I use a couple apps for file management. 7zip handles compression. QuickPar for parity/archive integrity/recovery. TeraCopy for file copy and movement with accounting. WizTree for local drive visualization (near instant), SpaceSniffer for networked drives. Advanced Renamer for organizing, but there are a lot of these, use whatever works best for you. Also, Link Shell Extension to easily create hard/symbolic links and junctions so I can place assets wherever I please.

Macrium Reflect backs up my system drive (catastrophic). I use Windows' built-in backup to handle my audio assets (oopsies). These are in turn backed up to another location.

There are a couple multimedia utilities you may or may not find useful. Exact Audio Copy for ripping CDs with online verification (using CueTools). foobar2000 to play any type of music file, also does conversions (render an Amiga tracker mod to wav to sample!). Handbrake is a much needed frontend for ffmpeg, which does everything video. VLC if you want to verify video. OBS Studio can capture your screen and audio and webcam.

NotePad++ for handling all sorts of text file duties. I use this to edit Reaper's config files.

[V0RT3X]

I have Pacifist, which I almost never need, and The Unarchiver. In case someone got cute making a .rar or something, it's happened. It seems like recently I got another unarchiving application but I'd have to look.
This stuff is a blast from the past.

This is a good app, especially if you need to look into a .pkg file.

[jancivil]

I used to need it, in order to balance compatibility between NI and OSX versions (and not run full installers).

I forgot, I still have OnyX installed but it's becoming obsolete for me as well. For OSX.13 it will do less because of system changes. I don't actually need to clean like I used to.

[elassi]

Bome's Midi Translator
Notepad++
IrfanView
Total Commander (best file manager on earth)
Resonic (audio tool)
ShareX (snapshot program)
Freeter (to do list manager)
OBS Studio (open source screen recorder)

[Kalamata Kid]

Bome's Midi Translator
Notepad++
IrfanView
Total Commander (best file manager on earth)
Resonic (audio tool)
ShareX (snapshot program)
Freeter (to do list manager)
OBS Studio (open source screen recorder)

I would get Total Commander if it can handle PSD thumbnails.
A bit expensive at $40 or so.
Do they have sales?

[Kalamata Kid]

Does anyone use Fences?
https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
$10 not bad.
A good alternative or whatever other method that
accomplishes to easily find the favorite apps and files.

[elassi]

A bit expensive at $40 or so.
Do they have sales?

Not that I'm aware of.

re.PSD: Using the "Imagine" plugin enables PSD preview: https://www.ghisler.com/plugins.htm

[Deep Purple]

Unarchiver

Same here - I think it's the only utility of any kind I have installed, and it's only because once in a while I find something in a format that a Mac can't natively expand.

Other than that I have never found a need to install any kind of utility.

[yellowmix]

Does anyone use Fences?
https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
$10 not bad.
A good alternative or whatever other method that
accomplishes to easily find the favorite apps and files.

Don't really need it. Windows 10 built-in search finds apps and files as fast as you can type the first couple letters. I used to use everything (https://www.voidtools.com/) but don't have to any more. I suppose if you don't know the name then yeah, it's a good visual index.

[mumpcake]

Other than browsers and music players

7Zip

Notepad ++

SyncToy to back up everything.

[BONES]

Does anyone use Fences?
https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
$10 not bad.
A good alternative or whatever other method that
accomplishes to easily find the favorite apps and files.

Why would you bother with Fences when Windows 10 Start does the same job, only better? I hate having krap all over my desktop and I haven't had to have anything there since Windows 8.

[Kalamata Kid]

Only the favorite links with thumbnail are grouped in each fence.
All favorite links are one click away, no scrolling required.
I find this very useful and fast way to find your links.

Some of my groups.
Forums
Music Art
utilities
tutorials.