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I use my PC quite successfully as a hard drive recorder, later transferring to dvd. I also like to use it for surfing and email etc.
Because I've got AVG, PC Doctor and Zonelalarm running they hog some memory and cpu cycles which can cause problems.
What I'd like to do is have two separate XP user accounts, one for video and games with no net connection, no av or firewall running, and another with full on security for surfing.
Can I set up tow different accounts with such different settings? Any time I load AVG it wants to run for every account, which in the normal run of things would be fine but not in my optimised for video account.
Any help you can offer will be very welcome.
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Hi
I now understand the best route would be going for a dual boot. Does anybody have any experience of setting up an xp/xp or xp/nt dual boot sysatem?
Thanks
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Dual boot is not hard to do, just install the older OS first. Could you not just run a batch program to kill the processes on start up for the user i.e set up an account called tv capture and on start up run these in a .bat or a vbscript file see http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips446.html and http://techtasks.com/code/viewbookcode/570 for how to.
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Thanks Herbs - I tried taskkill before with limited success, IIRC zonealarm and avg put up lots of "are you sure?" dialog boxes.
The other advantage to dual boot I can see is I can really strip XP down so there are as few services loaded at start up as possible and remove other items that aren't of any use on a video pc
Last edited by danrus (Mon 8th Jan 07 17:39)
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first of all don't use AVG it's not very good in my experience, get Kaspersky. If you get Kaspersky then you can eliminate those other mem hogs including zone alarm if you use a router since they come with a hardware firewall much better and tons less annoying than any software firewall. Also you should check to see that Windows firewall isn't running as well. The best way to accomplish your goal is to eliminate those three programs which in my opinion are all worthless, use a hardware encoding tv card that will allow you to surf while recording. Transferring to DVD should be done without anything else running to ensure a quality recording. It won't matter if you create a second user account, that account still relies on the common resources of the computer plus I'm not certain but I believe once you log off one account the activity for that account stops, so I don't think you can log onto one account start a dvd transfer then log off that one and onto another to surf and expect your dvd to be burnt. Your optimum choice would be to use an older computer with a hardware encoding card and dvd drive as a dedicated machine for this or HTPC. You'd be on a network so sharing the recordings wouldn't be an issue nor would resorces. The same computer could act as a file server as well storing music and videos that can be made available over the network.
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yes..dual boot will do the trick..and its really simple to do it.. or try also eset-nod32,it's much lighter to run in your gaming pc..
Last edited by homestdtesting (Thu 3rd Dec 09 17:30)
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I have a little suggestion regarding this issue about pc hardware/software you need to
back up your software then next you install first the cc-leaner and the other one is the spywaredoc.. try this its very helpful to your PC!... "don't regret it" 
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