#41 - @Billie: I've had good results using "DownloadHelper," an add-on for Firefox. Once installed, a new icon appears next to the address bar on FF that becomes animated when there is a downloadable video available on the current page. Clicking that animated icon will pop up a list of available video files, which you then have the option to not only download but also to download and convert to a different format.

I only use the download feature, since I have other converters (thanks again, GOTD!) that often work better than the one DownloadHelper uses.

I hope that this comment makes it thru moderation, and that you're also monitoring this comment thread (although I suspect you probably aren't).

Hope this helps, and that you have a fantastic day!

Would LOVE to see a program to get stuff off UTUBE that isn't loaded with spyware. I figure if anyone has it you guys do!

Don't mess with your hardware using software that does not give significant benefits (if any).

The danger is that after you messed and screwed up your processor's core; you do not know how to or cannot undo the damage.

I'm waiting for over an hour and a key to the full version you can not see, does not come?

Snake Oil
There's just no replacement for Ram & a High end processor
Remember SoftRam anyone??
It would double your amount of ram & end those "out of memory" messages from lack of ram??
In this case, this software will tell your computer what programs are allowed to run and for which one's get highest priorities.
Only one problem with this.....
It doesn't get to have that permission [at root level] to perform it's oiling. It has to operate at a software level

Bottoms Up!

Failed with "INVALID LICENSE KEY" after jumping through the hoops of signing up for an account and being assigned a license. It required the license key twice, once during install, and once again to run. It apparently thinks the License Key has been used before. It has, but only during its own installation.

So all I have seen so far is the Splash Screen and the screen stating it will not run without a valid key. But as some have said, its function seems to be a lot like Process Lasso, judging from the information on the Splash Screen.

Will uninstall, if I have no luck resolving the invalid license problem in a reasonable period of time.

-JC

#11 - Giovanni

Can you explain what you mean by this para?

” does the same and even more for FREE (besides award-winning WinPatrol, of course), since it can even detect malicious rootkit services hidden behind legitimate Windows services running Local System privileges:"

Which software or softwares are you referring to that can detect malicious rootkits?

Today's giveaway is a workload managing software dispatching CPU loads.
In this it differs from Process Lasso which also works on I/O priorities.

Some people here seem to think that such programs should speed up their computers. Only hardware can do that.

So why use such a program at all?

Sometimes you are running some huge downloads while playing a CPU and graphic intensive game and to top it you are burning a DVD at the same time.

So if you do not have such a program yet you might wish to give it a try.

Have fun.

btw. I am working on mainframe computers and thus am using such programs every day.

If this works you are either using such a program or have hardware that makes me turn green from jealousy because I cannot afford it.

Thank you for all the knowledgeable comments about such programs, processing cores and what makes a difference. Most interesting, but I'll have to agree that, no magical program is going to increase the basic horsepower of a computer.

In my long history of owning computes, there's only two ways to speed things up; (1.) Use fewer (opened) programs at the same time, and (2.) Get rid of all the bloat-ware commonly found on the average computer. (eg Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Adobe viewer). There are many lightweight programs that can accomplish the same results, and faster due to their straightforward and uncluttered architecture.

Footnote: When it comes to the hard core gamer, nothing will ever satisfy. For them, the only thing they can look forward to hearing is; "Will that be cash or credit?"

Come on people! It's not spam if you give permission to a company to send you emails! If you don't want Ashampoo to send you any emails, DON'T DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL THEIR SOFTWARE! Ashampoo complies with EVERY requirement for commercial emails, with an "opt-out" link in EVERY email they send, so if you don't want any emails from them you should simply click on that link!

The way Ashampoo is set up, you must create an account with them in order to receive a registration key for their software. If you don't receive the "promised" email, it's probably because it was filtered out by your email provider. (Some companies don't even BOTHER trying to send emails to Yahoo and Hotmail accounts because so many REAL spammers use "throw-away" accounts via those services to send out their non-compliant garbage.) If you log in to your Ashampoo account, you'll find the registration key for this (and any other Ashampoo software you've received, whether via GOTD or direct purchase).

Personally, I like Ashampoo's style, with the ability to RE-DOWNLOAD an item if it's accidentally deleted, and RE-ACTIVATE it using the registration key that's archived in my Ashampoo account. I daresay that few - if any - other companies provide their customers with this kind of service. I know I'll probably receive a negative feedback number for posting this, but I'm tired of people bashing a good company simply because they're too lazy to even TRY to protect themselves from REAL spam except by sticking their heads in the sand and bashing everyone who offers something for sale online.

I'll stand down and wait for the flying tomatoes now...

Every time I download and register any software from Ashampoo (it has never harmed my system, though I have never noticed any improvement after testing lots of optimization software, Process Lasso included) they automatically activate subscriptions to their "special offers" or "upgrades" (@6 M - you're 100% right) and it is impossible for me to unsubscribe from them after logging into my account, as it is supposed to work (regardless of the browser I use - though they clearly dislike FF and favor IE). Instead, I have to email their support dept and ask them to cancel the automated subscriptions. They always do, but how bizarre does it look, when I cannot actually manage my account at a company that claims to be able to automatically optimize your CPU usage, but can't (or doesn't want to, hmm, hmm) create a working system of automatic subscriptions.

I use this freeware:

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

It works, my cores are never parked anymore on my new UEFI desktop computer. Give far better responsiveness in Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

It is built in in Process Lasso nowdays to. But this mentioned above is enough for me.

Except this i use some shell tweaks to speed it up further.

I love writing programs, I write in Delphi one of the few languages I actually enjoy writing in, C and C++ are for masochists and the superbright!
One I spent a lot of time on is a search programme; firstly it searches the drive for a word in a file and lists these, it then searches the files in the list for a second word and can do this numerous times to reduce the number of documents it returns.
If I could make these run in parallel on different cores the program would run much faster but, like all the other regular languages parallel processing is not really an option.
I have thought of trying to control this through normal processing procedures but the level of complexity makes it not worth the effort.

The rather long explanation above is why I cannot understand why such emphasis is put on multicore processors other than for large data sets such as video, so often they are not usable to their maximum advantage.
Bearing this in mind I suggest those interested read through the following link as it is full of useful information:-
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/multi-core-and-multi-threading/

Does not work get error message and then closes

If it helps, Ashampoo's Core Tuner Details page gives a fair description of just what Core Tuner does -- https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pde/0161/System_Utilities/Ashampoo-Core-Tuner-2

In a nutshell I guess you could think of it as sort of an accountant, helping you budget your PC's resources rather than your finances... you've got a certain amount of money coming in, & you've got to divide it up among your expenses -- your PC or laptop has a set amount of resources, & those have to be divided up among all the tasks it's performing at any given time. Windows does an all right job of this on its own, but if you're running 3 apps for example, it can't know which of the 3 are most & least important -- that's where Core Tuner comes in, letting you prioritize so that the most important job gets the most resources & the least important task the fewest.

Whether or how much it'll help depends on the amount of resources your PC or laptop has, how many apps are competing for those resources, & if one or more of those apps is running sluggishly because there's just not enough horsepower to go around. If you've got this GOTD page open in your web browser while Notepad & your e-mail app are also running you're not stressing your system, & Core Tuner itself would most likely be an irrelevant resource drain. OTOH if you've got 2 or 3 or more apps running that are doing calculations while you're trying to create a doc with graphics in your word processor it might well help.

I'm not sure that I'd consider Core Tuner a Game Booster, though if you manually set it up that way it should work... There are several processes (services & apps) that you don't want to shut down or suspend while you're using your PC/laptop normally, but they're also of little or no use when you're playing a game that uses every bit of resources you can throw at it, so it can be handy to sort of flick a switch & have those extra resources available, flick it again & return to normal. On that detail page I linked to it says: "A basic gaming profile has already been integrated as an example. This profile stops all Windows services that are not necessarily needed while playing." In all fairness to Ashampoo, individual systems have different software installed, have different services & such that they can do without, so it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all setup -- that may be why AMD's Fusion optimization software quietly went away -- so while setting up your individual game profile might take a bit of work & experimentation, & is a bit of a pain, it might also give better results.

When it comes to processor cores life can get confusing. Splitting an app's CPU usage across more than 1 core may be useful or not, & indeed I think sometimes developers just do it knowing some people will check in Task Mgr., thinking that the more cores used, the better the app. That's not necessarily so. If you think using Core Tuner to limit or allow more CPU cores to an app will help, try it & measure performance to see what the actual results are. One thing to bear in mind, particularly with a laptop running on the battery, is that CPUs can have different power states, & raising the CPU use of one core may increase power usage [& temps] a lot more compared to the same app spread across all cores.

I have tried these apps before, and just for fun, thought I would to a scientific test of this app. I set a short clip to render in my video editing app (Sony Vegas) in uncompressed AVI. The elapsed time was 40 minutes and 30 seconds.

With Core Tuner 2 installed, I chose the Vegas process, selected all cores (I have a quad core) and chose "real time" for processing. The utilization still showed to be about 26%. Render time was 40 minutes and 26 seconds. Not enough difference to count.

To be fair, I have never seen noticeable results from several other similar software apps either. I think these may be of more benefit to older versions of Windows, or perhaps software that is less than well written.

Never noticed any performance difference with this program. Tried Giovanni's process lasso and didn't see any difference either.

oh yeah ... here should be remembered
installing software
click link for key
give email
possibly password if you already have an account
key in new window, copy and paste
finish installation
back to the browser, click my ashampoo
choose settings
set email notifications off
ready

There are times I run multiple video processes at once and it's possible to max out the processors. These sorts of tools can be used to restrict the demanding processes from one or more processors so that the demanding processes don't stall the computer.

They can also be used to find processes which don't work right and freeze up the machine.

All windows programs run on a single stack, first in last out. On multiple cores, the main stacks sends the applications to another core(s) to be processed and the result is send back to the main processes again to be further processed or displayed and finished.
The only way to speed it up is to create multiple processes in multiple cores.
No such software has been developed yet. This offer is a gimmick.

I had tested the original beta then had both commercial versions. It can be useful for speeding up a long process that you need to get done faster than letting nature take its course, such as massive updates after a reinstall or a complete defrag of a hard drive. I ran into problems when I left it running all the time though, with freezes in my PC for periods up to two minutes. So, I would recommend it, but not leave it on all the time. Use it as a tool.

i found programmes like these actually made the computer slower so i will never ever install another one, my laptop runs faster and boots quicker when i set it back to factory default and just installed programmes i used and none of these so call reg cleaners and system performance apps

Anyone know if this works on Windows 8x64

Use a throw away email or you'll get bombarded with spam.
10minutemail.com is good.

Frankly, it scares me to go messing with my processor settings when I know absolutely nothing about it. Processor tweakers should be used with great care, and only by those who know what they are doing.

#'s 12 and 13 came up as I was composing the above. I shall NEVER AGAIN post before Giovanni!

Thanks, guys.

BTW send the promised email Ashampoo.

Thank you Svend for the helpful link. Peter, thank you also for your question. I acquired Process Lasso also, but have not yet used it.

My question was to be whether this program is compatible with Anvir Task Manager, which I like very much, and which it also seems to resemble.

Questions, questions, on this offering today. We shall be most grateful to any dear philanthropic souls who can give us answers!

Key that you have to go through all the steps on their website says "invalid".

Over and over.

I will pass on this as I too have Process Lasso. If you do install this and activate your account, you may want to log in. Click the "settings" link and deselect the emails if you don't wish to receive them. By default "Software News" and "Update and upgrade service" will be selected.

This GAOTD does the job quite well, but if you had installed "Process Lasso" when it was offered here for FREE a few weeks ago, you don't need this tool because "Process Lasso" is far superior in my view.
It comes with a nice auto-start and services module, which helps you get rid of unneeded services, but the freeware and portable app " " does the same and even more for FREE (besides award-winning WinPatrol, of course), since it can even detect malicious rootkit services hidden behind legitimate Windows services running Local System privileges:

http://securityxploded.com/winservicemanager.php

Overall today's giveaway is a good product, but in my opinion this kind of programs are very effective only for old machines with old and slow CPU, so if you have a DUAL CORE or a QUADCORE PC/LAPTOP just skip it!!

BEST FREE ALTERNATIVES

* (Portable) Actual Booster
As the award winning "Process Lasso" and this GAOTD this magic tiny cool FREE tool can dramatically optimize your PC performance, making your system faster and more stable, by automatically allocating the majority of your system resources (CPU power, RAM etc...) to the currently active applications or games.
Works like magic in my Windows 7 Ultimate second machine!!

http://www.loonies.narod.ru/actlbstr.htm

* Process Tamer
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/index.html

* Mz CPU Accelerator 4.1
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Tweak/Mz-Cpu-Accelerator.shtml

And to play PC GAMES without any hassle:

http://www.wisecleaner.com/wisegameboosterfree.html
http://www.smartpcutilities.com/gamefire.html

Enjoy!!

Do programs such as this improve screen capture responsiveness? I've noticed that most games use only one or two cores, so I'm trying to get a way to automatically hive off core 3 to all the system processes and core 4 to a video capture process. Will this program help?

At the moment, everything seems to want to use the first core so I end up with a laggy game, choppy video and three underutilised cores...

Just use Trasmail in Firefox to avoid this spam problem.

I thought it WAS a "core tuner" not a run of the mill, ten a penny process start up manager. HUGE disappointment. Thought I'd be able to attempt to upgrade my i% a bit - my Asus mobo promised it, and DIDN'T deliver

Still no e-mail? 1 hour wait so far.

Warning, this program requires your working email for registration.
Then expect multiple "personal upgrade offers" from Ashampoo every week.

Don't expect too much of this program; most programs cannot run across all cores as the compilers have no idea the sequence of events, where they really come into their own is when the program handles large amounts of data such as video.
In this type of scenario the data can be split into chunks and the operations performed on the data.

Personally I'm having trouble getting this program to run, possibly because I blocked certain aspects of it with Winpatrol.

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 registration problum ??????

How to GOTD registration in Ashampoo Core Tuner 2
go to this-------------> link
http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/registration/php/trial_step1.php?session_langid=2&edition_id=vbdgihbpasta2reseqdat1lopwn6ue8m&ref=linktarget

Win XP SP3

I already have Process Lasso Pro v6502 which appears to do the same thing.

Does anyone have a comparison of the two which is best, and can you install Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Ver.2.01 and Process Lasso without any conflict ?

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Review And Giveaway

By Martin Brinkmann on August 27, 2011 - Tags:Giveaways, Windows software

As you see, some years old, but usefull!

http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/27/ashampoo-core-tuner-2-review-and-giveaway/

Is there any review on the net that analyses the usefulness of this tool?