Performance with Media Centre running

[TKETZ196]

Hi everyone! I am using my tower computer as both the media center and my primary computer. I noticed this in both Vista MC and Win7 MC, that it is difficult to surf the web, or type a document while Media Center is running. The cursor tends to jump to my secondary monitor and gets "trapped" there, unless if hit the window key on my keyboard so the cursor can go back to my primary monitor. With Windows XP MCE, I notice that yes it does do that from time to time, but it seemed to handle the two operations much better. At times, if at all, the mouse cursor would randomly jump to the media center monitor under XP MCE, but rarely; its more constant in Vista MC and Win7 MC. I was able to do my usual computer stuff while media center was running without interruptions in XP MCE. I understand the primary function is to just have your tv running, but i find it quite annoying that the media center seems to just take over completely and its made difficult to do both at the same time. i know it has nothing to do with the hardware of my computer, just the OS. Does anyone possibly have a solution to this, or is it just the way Microsoft built the OS?

 

[DarkXeno]

I cant remember what its called at the moment, but go into your setting in Media Center and see how much hard drive its using for time shifting. It maybe trying to store 20-30 minutes of video in a temp file causing the machine to slow down when it files then removes the old cache. this is so you can pause live tv or rewind it. You can also look at the video setting for recorded video from your turner card if its set to BEST then it will take more CPU cycles mine is on the Medium setting.

 

[TKETZ196]

Ok, i will take a look at it. I am sure that could partially be the problem, but the only thing is that like i said before, the mouse cursor keeps jumping to the other screen, and causing me to keep switching more often then not. XP MCE does a good job limiting that, but i noticed Vista and Win 7 both seem to do a terrible job.

Thanks for your advice. I will see if that will make a difference, i know that running Media Centre does take up a fair amount of system resources. I don't want to make these independent, since i will lose my DVR functionality.