Hi
Another idea is to buy a new one and make the old one a stable slave for “older” plugins.
But how this works to use 2 pc is another story need to be told by an experienced guy and not me.
And i would also like to hear how to 
Greetz Bassbase
I entirely agree with previous posters that the system is past it’s sell by date, but OP made it clear that he can’t replace it yet.
I’d be suspicious of copying my settings, but FYI my paging is custom set to INITIAL1524, MAX 3048. If in any doubt, let windows handle it. You can split it across two drives, with a theoretical gain - I am not sure if it’s a useful benefit.
All the usual windows tweaks are good - reduce graphics prettiness etc. They are well documented on the net
I like Defraggler because a) you can selectively defrag files. b) you can check system health. c) you can move big files to the end of the drive. d) I believe it’s quicker. e) it has a quick defrag option.
I notice that you have 40 processes running. Have you checked out the Ccleaner options to set which programs start up? Latest version has three different tabs. I would guess that (if not on web) you could get that down some more. A fresh XP at start up runs around 22 processes only.
Your graphics card is clearly going to struggle. A card with more RAM takes bigger gulps of data from the CPU and relieves a bottleneck. It will be worst on screen/page changes or rapidly moving graphics. The simple trick of setting Cubase to main arrange page, with all arrangement in sight and minimal movement just might get you through.
Two more thoughts. a) increase buffers when mixing down - very useful. b) make very good use of freeze functions and bouncing fx intensive tracks (keeping unbounced available of course)
And finally! Just a thought that you should check the CPU. Those old P4s run quite hot and if the heatsink is dirty and/or the system is hot, it may be throttling back. I’ve rebuilt quite a lot of those machines. Physical dirt and software clutter is what slows them down more than anything.
I hope some of this helps and also that you can budget for a new system asap.
P.
As far as i see you got two options.
1.Upgrade your computer.
2.Downgrade to Cubase SX.2
Why buy expensive software when you dont have a computer to run it?
im sure your Carillon music computer was running fine when you got it 10 years ago.
So use the software it came with.If you want to use the latest software you should upgrade your computer first.
I am afraid I have to disagree with Gjermundsen
I am running 6.5.1 with massive libraries and biggish demands on my fairly modest system running unsupported XP Pro sp2.
C6.5.1 doesn’t seem to work my system much harder than C4 or SX2 both of which are still installed.
This isn’t guesswork I just ran a test: I created a project in SX. Added 40 x stereo audio tracks each with their own reverb inserted and 16bit audio files staggered to add to disc demand and saved it. Here are my results in Looped Play for each platform.
SX2 C4.5.2 C6.5.1
PC RAM 531 681 728
CPU in PLAY % 1-3 1-4 3-4
Dropouts no no no
Latest version Cubase DOES use more RAM and a little more CPU – but it’s not very significant.
I am not saying don’t upgrade, just don’t accept sweeping statements either and certainly don’t abandon the latest software which is fantastic and stable.
P
Well i never got a chance to try out Cubase 6 on my pentium 4 since i threw it away many years ago…
But i could play and record over 100 audio tracks using Cool Edit Pro in Windows 98…Its quite different loading up heavy demanding vsts…
Edit-
I dont mean that downgrading from Cubase 6 to sx will solve every problem.
But the threadstarter said in his first post that his computer was a “Carillon music computer” so i assume its a customized music computer.So,it should already been optimized when he got it.Of course over the years he would need to do some clean up here and there…But the performance of this machine should be the same now as it was back when he got it.
So,to the threadstarter…
How many vst instruments were you able to load up when you first got this machine?
How many audio tracks could you record and playback?
When did the problems occour?
Before or after getting Cubase 6 and jamstick?
I dont really know,but i would assume that this machine was running well when you got it.I mean,when you buy a music computer it should work well for music recording and production…and that if you got dropouts after 5 tracks you would return it to the store…
Agreed Gjermundsen that Vstis can be too demanding for old systems, but to go back to old Cubase software is definitely not the solution.
We all know that the fix is a new system, but OP is trying to optimise / repair and make music with what he has available, so let’s help him if we can.
P
Thank you, gentlemen, for your kindness in taking time out to help. Parrotspain is correct of course, I’m just trying to make music with what I have at this time, knowing it’s the Pinto in the Grand Prix.
To answer some of the questions:
- My previous Cubase was SX3. I could run Jamstix1 fine on that, but I never used other VSTis, so I only had one at the most. My projects were never more than 20 audio tracks or so then. That probably hasn’t changed, it’s the use of C6.5 and Halion Sonic SE, as well as moving up to Jamstix3 that has changed.
Things are actually looking up at this end. I’ve manually (not with CCleaner, yet) gone to my msconfig/boot, and gotten the processes on startup down to 23. Although the system was tweaked by Carillon well, I’ve dug up some that hadn’t been done (minor ones) and done those tweaks. I defragged using Windows Defragger. And now I am able to run the same project that was maxing out at 100% CPU before, with CPU peaking now about 85% - but no audio dropouts. I add a 3rd VSTi and I get the audio dropouts, but I am fine with that - I don’t foresee the need to run 3 VSTi’s simultaneously, I’m happy to bounce down or freeze if I have to.
I took Parrotspain’s advice, and I’m using defraggler now, so that I can put large files at the end of the drive. I looked at it’s diagnostics, and it said “healthy” on all 3 drives (really 2 drives, 1 with two sectors). The temps were 37 degrees (on the RAID drive), and 42 degrees (on the drive that has the OS). I don’t know how to determine if that is OK (BIOS?), but I guess if it’s good enough for Defraggler, it’s good enough for me for now.
Although RAM isn’t the issue as we’ve determined (at the moment it’s CPU), I did notice I have half a dozen or more SVCHOST.EXE instances running, including 2 for network services (I don’t have a network, or get on the internet with that computer), and they total up to almost 40 MB. I’ve looked hard but haven’t figured out how to tell which ones are OK to delete, and which ones aren’t, it would be nice to squeeze a few extra 10s MB of RAM out!
So, things are better than when I started, I know a lot more now than I used to about stuff, which can’t be bad, right? (“Well, it was a rough hiking trip, but on the bright side, I know a lot more about emergency self-amputation than I used to!”). 
Thanks for your help everyone -
With the ccleaner you can more quickly control your startup programs, btw.
Things are running SO much better now!
After:
- Backing up all drives (hello all day)
- Defragging all drives with Windows
- DefraggLing (“Put Large Files at the End of the Sector” checked) with Defraggler
- Manually cleaning up the msconfig boot options
- Using CCleaner to do it again, as well as some other things (only 243 register items, I don’t get on the internet)
- Moving my Page File to all 4 drives (including an external one), and toggling its size from the previous 2046/4092 MB to fixed at 2MB, and noticing performance didn’t change one bit …
my performance still sucked - CPU hitting 95-100% with just 5 audio tracks and two VSTi’s. It didn’t seem like RAM was a problem by task manager (1.3 GB Total Commit, 0.7 MB Physical Memory Remaining, 1.3 GB PF Usage) , but I’d be getting messages like “Cubase out of Memory”, “Jamstix did not save your song to the host, please blah blah blah …”. Also, a very repeatable and big time pain in the neck observation that I couldn’t change Style on JS3 without backing all the way out of Cubase.
Froze HSSE while I worked on JS3 - sometimes worked a lot better, sometimes just as bad as ever.
Opened an earlier project, with HSSE still frozen - CPU drops down to 40-50%. Well at least I can work, no problem freezing one track, right. I hit myself in the head for spending most of the day working on an old project that must have been corrupted or something, instead of a new clean one.
Just for grins I unfroze the track, and CPU never went above 55%!!
Checked a few other projects, same thing.
Finally - toggled Shift F with zoomed in - THAT WAS IT. Like Mutesolo and Parrot Spain said, when the project was moving, the CPU went way up. When it didn’t move, the CPU stayed down.
So, now what was giving me audio dropouts at 100% CPU isn’t even hitting 60% CPU. And, best of all, it doesn’t look like my 2GB of RAM is getting in the way of my little projects. If it does, I know what to do. And maybe I’ll look at getting another Video card or something.
So, I’m good - thanks to everyone (especially Parrot spain who made me feel very encouraged at a time it helped the most!).
Hi
Maybe these will help also:
I use DiskCleaner and BleachBit
in “other”
hilsener og farvel!
(1.3 GB Total Commit, 0.7 MB Physical Memory Remaining, 1.3 GB PF Usage) ,
so 0.7gb left from 2gb isn’t much perhaps maxing your ram to 4gb will give your system a bit more space to deal with.
If i here stress my system by runing as much progerams as i can Firefox skype office thunderbird aion wow and cubase with a bigger project i could “waste” like this 5.5gb from 6GB and my system slows down significant and cubase is going to protest same way " running out of memory", also windows always wants more than 20% free space on the OS driver to run smoothly.
If i where you i would look for same 2gb ram as installed and get them for a few bugs. so you can use 3.5gb of the 4gb ram. (or all with something called 3gb switch)
Greetz Bassbase
Yes, Bassbase, I am ready to pull that trigger (got the type of RAM all lined up, etc.), I am just going to try to see if downloading a better driver for the graphics card will help first.
Thanks much!
You want to make extrem pinto tweaking i understand
Greetz Bassbase
Yup, new tires and carburetor for the Pinto, budgeting for the Mustang, er, Lamberghini!