Absolutely agree with John.

Additionally, i'll ask, do you need to do this? Are you having trouble with dropped frames while you capture? I would think the only potential problem you have is Norton/Symantec. Get rid of that and you'll be amazed at how much better your computer runs.

Personally i don't shut down anything while i'm capturing. Usually i have a dozen or two high-power programs all running at the same time. I do use the task manager to set the priority on VidCap to above normal, but even when i forget to do this i still never have any capturing problems.

Today, viruses and worms don't come just from porn sites and warez downloads.

They are also in what appears to be web sites of major financial institutions, and all kinds of legit-looking search results.

An expert can nearly always see what's skanky and what is not. Are you an expert on this? If not, it is no shame to install Trend Micro or one of the other few non-intrusive but competent AV programs (Norton not included here, amazing there hasn't been a class-action lawsuit...).

The exception to needing AV software is Mac OS X, where the products that are available even tend to screw things up instead of helping.

I ran into capture problems using NEO HDV/Cineform. It did a variety of tricks including putting the first clip where I designated (G:) but then no more... only to find the rest had been sent to C: and filled up my whole drive and made a mess of itself. I also got erratic scene splits for no reason and then it went off the deep end and spit out a clip for every frame. Uninstall and reinstall didn't fix it, it just created new problems.
Tech support said: "try the 'register components' tool in the cineform folder in the windows start menu" which I eventually found and I think that may have fixed my problems, so far....last 2 capture sessions have gone well.

I'm also getting an error opening V8 about half the time. It self closes and upon reopening it will load and work fine.

Reading Spots' book suggested the reasons for turning off lots of background applications is to streamline the system and suggested the EndItAll solution....

Unanimous....you all hate Norton's !

Thanks,
Eileen

Coursedesign:
Back in March I got a call on Easter Sunday from PayPal asking if I was making a bunch of online purchases? NO !!!! I was not and hadn't used PayPal in about a year. Someone had gotten my password or some other type of breach and got into my checking account and was busy cleaning it out while I had Easter lunch with my family here.
No other website except my bank has my checking account info so I'm not trusting PayPal's security at all. I've gotten phony emails from PayPal and ignored those requests for more info....
But for us average users how do we protect from phishing, spamming, viruses, and all that evil stuff? I don't download much, just an occassional software related to our video editing. I don't visit or download porn or lots of freebie web stuff, so how do we do our best to keep our stuff private and unmolested?
Convenience does have a hefty price if someone gets into your personal banking information.....Another friend had the same thing happen with PayPal and had $11k taken out of his bank account before it got flagged and he put a stop to it. And of course it takes forever to get your funds returned.

I've been running Norton AV without issue for years. It's not their AV program that's the problem, it's their other malware that they now ship with it. That has caused major grief and is a nightmare to get rid of as it modifies the MBR. Based on that as I don't want to give money to such a stupid company we now use Kapersky. I've left it running while capturing on one of my secondary video machine with no issues.

Aside from that though, the best solution is to use dedicated PCs for video work. For web and email you hardly need anything cutting edge, suitable PCs are free or next to free. Save some landfill and pickup a suitable machine from the side of the road.

Bob.

Today, viruses and worms don't come just from porn sites and warez downloads.Cours, what you and Eileen are pointing to is "spoofing," and that is a MAJOR problem. However, AFIK, Norton won't keep you from getting suckered in by these legit-looking emails and links. Nor will Trend or any other AV (although I agree that if you want to use an AV, Trend is a good one to get). Actually, Trend DOES have a feature that lets you block certain classes of sites (porn, violence, etc.) but I don't think they attempt to block phishing sites, ad sites, spyware sites, etc.

However, there is an excellent solution that has virtually zero performance penalty and can keep you from all sorts of problems: a HOST file.

The host file is in the Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc folder. Normally it contains just some dummy code. However, you can download a hosts file from a number of legit sites and copy that in place of the one the dummy file. What this file does is map URL names to actual URLs. The original reason for this feature was to let you bypass the DNS process and instead go directly to the site. Thus, instead of entering http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com in your browser, you could simply type the actual URL of 64.37.182.40. Using the HOSTS file, you create pairs of domain names and numeric URLs and thus provide a quick lookup on your local machine.

However, this doesn't save much time in practice, so no one uses it. But, there is a really neat "trick" you can use to turn the HOSTS file into a way of blocking those nasty sites that try to trick you into entering personal information or utilize vulnerabilities in your computer or Internet configuration to send bad stuff to you. All you do is enter the "bad" URL (like www.porn_virus.com) and then for the URL you type 127.0.0.1. This numeric code is your local machine. Thus, any attempt to access the "bad" site ends up executing a NOP (no operation).

But how do you know what sites to block? Well, as usual, there are people who have made it their life's pursuit to stop these turkeys and they provide HOST files that include thousands and thousands of sites. You download this file, copy it over the dummy file that is in the folder I mentioned, and you will now be far less likely to get suckered into a phishing trap.

Here's a short sample of my HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1  www.spyferret.com

127.0.0.1  spy-kill.com

127.0.0.1  deluxe.spy-kill.com

127.0.0.1  www.spy-kill.com

127.0.0.1  spyshield.org

127.0.0.1  www.spyshield.org

127.0.0.1  www.spyvest.com

127.0.0.1  spycrush.com

127.0.0.1  www.spycrush.com #[Symantec.SpyCrush]

127.0.0.1  spywarecrusher.com

Also, this is the header from that file which tells you more about it, and where you can find it:

# This MVPS HOSTS file is a free download from:            #

# http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/                         #

#                                                          #

# Notes: the browser does not read this "#" symbol         #

# You can create your own notes, after the # symbol        #

# This *must* be the first line: 127.0.0.1     localhost   #

# *********************************************************#

# ----------------- Updated: April-22-2008 ----------------#

# *********************************************************#

#                                                          #

# Entries with comments are all searchable via Google.     #

#                                                          #

# Disclaimer: this file is free to use for personal use    #

# only. Furthermore it is NOT permitted to copy any of the #

# contents or host on any other site without permission or #

# meeting the full criteria of the below license terms.    #

#                                                          #

# This work is licensed under the Creative Commons         #

# Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.            #

# http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/        #

But for us average users how do we protect from phishing?

1. Never click on a link in an e-mail from "your financial institution." Instead go to the login page you normally use in your browser, and check your account from there if you are concerned that the message about your "urgent problem" could be real.

2. For every suspect e-mail you get, please forward it to spoof@paypal.com, etc. More and more financial institutions now have 24/7 staff to check up on e-mailed contributions from the public, and they work to quickly shut down the source domains they find.

They will respond within minutes, telling you if the e-mail was legit (ha!) or not.

Trend and several others have URL checking built-in, as does Firefox 3 and IE 7 (which gets a "blech!" for its user interface).

They have [post-digestive content]-lists that are updated continuously.

My Trend Micro seems to be the quickest to tell me when there is a one-pixel link to skanky.com, or whatever it might be, on a seemingly legit web site.

The hosts file trick isn't bad, but I think it has been superseded by the equivalent functionality in the FF3 and IE7 browsers.

For maximum security, you really need to run as a lowly "User" rather than "Administrator," so that badware can't modify the hosts.com file, as has been very popular in spyware recently. The latter makes you think you're logging in to "citibank.com" when it shows you an identical-looking site somewhere else (through a Hosts redirect).

The only problem is that most Windows software today can only run as Administrator. A few programs let you run as "Power User" which unfortunately is about the same.

Some day Windows will be even more like OS X, and nobody will need to work with Administrator permissions all the time...

Perhaps in Windows 7.

Pinnacle used to recommend using End-It-All when working with their products (and probably still does), but I haven't used either in while. To answer your question,

Try the site BlackViper.com which lists for each os (XP, Vista, etc), which windows processes start up by default, and which ones are essential. You can tweak your system without resorting to EndItAll.

Keep in mind that BlackViper lists default Windows processes. You may have a lot more processes running on your system. My system for example runs background processes that monitor printers, iPod, cel phone, bluettooth port, SQL servers, etc. When running Vegas (especially capture) you probably want to turn off any non-essential services that you can if you are having trouble keeping the capture error-free.

What you may want to do (in addition to the BlackViper info) is look at all your start up processes, and decide which ones you don't need when you are working with Vegas. Get AutoRuns from Microsoft which will tell you which processes start up by default. Make a list of the ones you don't want to start up, and see if you can configure the settings for those apps to start only on demand.

Although I haven't done it yet, I really want to write a Windows Powershell script that turns off a bunch of services before I start my Vegas session, and run the script again to turn them on. One of these days I'll get around to doing that...

I grabbed the following from the Sony Knowledgebase some time ago.

Mike


Close all background applications. This is not limited to the
programs that show in the system tray. Do a ctrl+alt+del and end
task or process on as many applications as you can, leaving only
Explorer and Systray for 98 or ME. For Windows 2000 and XP
move over to the Processes Tab and click the "Image Name"
heading at the top of this window twice, you would be able to view
these items by alphabetical order. For Windows 2000, you should
only have:

explorer.exe
lsass.exe
mapisp32.exe
mstask.exe
services.exe
smss.exe
spoolsv.exe
stisvc.exe
svchost.exe
system
system idle process
taskmgr.exe
winlogon.exe
winmgmt.exe

For Windows XP, you will only need next to your user name:

explorer.exe
taskmgr.exe

Next to "system":
csrss.exe
lsass.exe
mspmspv.exe
services.exe
smss.exe
spoolsv.exe
svchost.exe
system
system idle process
winlogon.exe

Wow ! some complicated ideas for someone who isn't a techie...

I like the idea of the "Windows Powershell" if someone could write a script of something we could all just click on and close down all those extraneous processes prior to open Vegas for an editing session.
Could this be somewhat like the different workspace layouts we can have for V8? A couple of key strokes and all is preset for editing?

i have used end it all for a few years. It really works, hit the skulls and it kills all non essentials and shuts down some other stuff it’s a bit like putting your pc on a heart and lung machine