VirtualDJ - Increase your Virtual DJ performance

PRO InfinityMember since 2005

This batch file has been customised for my PC so you may need to alter it slightly for yourselves. I made it mainly for TCV use which requires more system resources than normal and since using it I never get any 'hiccups' with Virtual DJ. It's function is simple, it closes some processes which may be running but are unnecessary, thus freeing up 100mb or so in ram and reducing the load on the CPU. It also has a modified database backup script (originally created by dj-Los, hope you don't mind) which will backup your database when Virtual DJ is run. It only keeps backups for the last 7 days and automatically deletes anything older than that.

Firstly, before you touch the script you need to know which processes you can close. Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to bring up the Windows Task Manager, make sure you are in the Processes section. Look at all the processes which are running, they're probably occupying quite a lot of ram and most of them don't even need to be run. You'll have to experiment by terminating various processes and then testing that Virtual DJ is still stable (i.e. your sound works, no crashes etc). Write down which processes that you can safely close, however do not touch these:

alg.exe, csrss.exe, explorer.exe, lsass.exe, services.exe, smss.exe, spoolsv.exe, svchost.exe, System, System Idle Process and winlogon.exe

Similarly, do not terminate your firewall program if your network is enabled (it's acceptable to close your antivirus program if you're confident you have a clean PC). Make sure not to terminate your graphics card drivers too, this is very important. For ATI users this is ati2evxx.exe hopefully someone else can post up nvidia and other card manufacturers equivalent.

Now that you know which processes you don't need running (I had around 15 occupying about 100mb of ram) you can create a batch file to automatically close these processes before you run Virtual DJ.

taskkill /f /im msnmsgr.exe
taskkill /f /im wmplayer.exe

The above two lines (enter them into a plain text document and save the file with extension .bat) would close MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player, you do not need to worry about removing applications which aren't running from your script.

Here's the script I made, remember that it has been customised for my system, your processes may be different so you need to edit the file accordingly.

=======================================================

@echo off

For /F "tokens=1-3 delims=/" %%A in ('Date /T') do (
Set Day=%%A
Set Month=%%B
Set Year=%%C
)

cd %programfiles%/virtualdj/
IF NOT EXIST BACKUP/ md BACKUP/

copy "VirtualDJ Database.xml" "BACKUP/%Day%.%Month%.VirtualDJ Database.xml"

echo Dim fso, f, f1, fc>DelBackup.vbs
echo Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")>>DelBackup.vbs
echo Set f = fso.GetFolder("c:/program files/virtualdj/BACKUP")>>DelBackup.vbs
echo Set fc = f.Files>>DelBackup.vbs
echo For Each f1 in fc>>DelBackup.vbs
echo If DateDiff("d", f1.DateLastModified, Now) > 7 Then f1.Delete>>DelBackup.vbs
echo Next>>DelBackup.vbs
DelBackup.vbs
del DelBackup.vbs

net stop wmconnectcds
taskkill /f /im AsusProb.exe
taskkill /f /im eEBSvc.exe
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
taskkill /f /im firefox.exe
taskkill /f /im gearsec.exe
taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe
taskkill /f /im imapi.exe
taskkill /f /im iPodService.exe
taskkill /f /im iTunesHelper.exe
taskkill /f /im jusched.exe
taskkill /f /im mdm.exe
taskkill /f /im msimn.exe
taskkill /f /im msmsgs.exe
taskkill /f /im msnmsgr.exe
taskkill /f /im NetLimiter.exe
taskkill /f /im notepad.exe
taskkill /f /im NvMixerTray.exe
taskkill /f /im pg2.exe
taskkill /f /im QuickTimePlayer.exe
taskkill /f /im qttask.exe
taskkill /f /im realplay.exe
taskkill /f /im realsched.exe
taskkill /f /im SAgent2.exe
taskkill /f /im StarWindService.exe
taskkill /f /im vmnat.exe
taskkill /f /im vmnetdhcp.exe
taskkill /f /im vmount2.exe
taskkill /f /im vmware-authd.exe
taskkill /f /im wdfmgr.exe
taskkill /f /im WMCCFG.exe
taskkill /f /im wmplayer.exe
cls
virtualdj.exe
start explorer

=======================================================

Do realise that this script closes explorer.exe (the Windows interface) to free up memory. It will automatically relaunch itself once you close Virtual DJ as long as you leave the script running in the background. The script itself only occupies a few mb of ram, probably 1/5 that of explorer.exe so I think the tradeoff is acceptable. If you know how to launch explorer.exe manually, you can free even more memory by modifying the last two lines of the script to just 'start virtualdj.exe' without the's.

You can also remove the line 'net stop wmconnectcds' unless you're running Windows Media Connect. You most likely will not be running all the processes from my script but you can safely leave them in there or remove them as you wish.

Mensajes Thu 27 Apr 06 @ 2:40 am

low-fat-al Country: US

PRO InfinityMember since 2005

wow... very cool.

I have been afriad to experiement with what does and doesn't need to be on with my services.

So is it possible to make this .BAT file your shortcut for Virtual DJ then? It starts Virtual DJ after closes all the useless process's.... just a thought. Don't know if that is what you have set up with the it.

I totally like the idea and may look into customizing one of my own.

THUMBS UP!!!

Mensajes Thu 27 Apr 06 @ 3:57 am

Andrew87

PRO InfinityMember since 2005

You can make it your default shortcut to Virtual DJ by right clicking on your created bat, choose create shortcut and then drag it into your start menu. You can also assign hotkeys to items in your start menu, so for example you could press the Windows key and V which could launch the batch file.

There's one small error which I can't fix because you're only allowed 15 minutes to edit posts.
'IF NOT EXIST BACKUP/ md BACKUP/' should read
'IF NOT EXIST BACKUP md BACKUP' if a mod could edit this for me please into the original post, cheers.

These boards don't allow back slashes for some reason which is why this happened in the first place.

Mensajes Thu 27 Apr 06 @ 4:02 am