I recently had to move to Windows 7 64-bit so I could upgrade to a quad core and 8GB RAM since my customers, and my own projects, are exceeding XP’s 3GB RAM limitation. This whole process has been less than enjoyable as far as getting all my TT products working. SD was a pain to install, but that isn’t what this post is about. Fast forward to all products finally working minus Drumtracker. I too was getting the freezing and in general horrible performance that all have described thus far. After much fiddling I have gotten it to run enough so that I don’t want to scream anymore.

Here is what I did.
(Note: Compatibility mode doesn’t work at all, so if you have it on turn it off.)

1) Get task manager running (ctrl+alt+del) and open the processes tab.
2) Launch drumtracker (don’t load a session yet) and look for drumtracker.exe *32 in the processes list of Task Manager.
3) Right click on the process and select “Set Priority” and set it to “Below Normal”
4) Right click on the process and select “Set Affinity” and turn off processor 3 and 4 if you are using a Quad core. You only want 2 CPU’s running (CPU 0 and CPU 1)

Now you can use Drumtracker and it should respond better, it will still freeze momentarily here and there but it recovers decently quick. I tested with a 6 layer session that had a ton of editing and custom filters. Hopefully this helps until TT gets the new 64 bit version out. *HINT HINT ToonTrack*

Unfortunately you have to do this every time you launch it but it’s pretty easy and doesn’t take long once you get the hang of it.