Never done it. Interested in hearing how it works.

I was just thinking if there was a way to do this. Please let us know how it works.I would love to do this.

Interesting approach calix, let us know how it goes :)

can windows still run dos? like safe mode with a C prompt. can you boot it from there? what about just safe mode. most non essential stuff isnt running there either.

Mates, what's the point of this approach? We use a computer because of it's endless possibilities: you can search for a music, buy and download it, play it and record your set, upload and blog about it immediately. That is the power.

So your suggestion remember me an ugly solution implemented in Stanton FS 1.0 It was based on stripped down version of BeOS. It was very uncomfortable to restart every time you wanted to play.

You always can choose a dedicated system if you want: CDJ, Denon's media players and so on. VCI is computer-based solution which is good for now.

As for glitches and issues - it's all about hands and brains. And yes, you could by a Mac )

sorry for double

looks like i have issues and glitches too )

yes it can. no you can't. "safe mode" means only basic controllers, basic drivers for assistance and support purposes, therefore you won't be able to load additional "custom" drivers, needed for example to work with VESTAX VCI-300.

Well as i explained earlier, there's a lot of CPU power wasted on resources from your OS that you won't need when performing audio apps. About endless OS possibilities i don't think you wanna used them when performing live, you'd be surprised !! no matter the laptop power you have (eg. What's the purpose of using an anti-virus, live messenger, windows update or task scheduler running background tasks while performing live? do you wan't to scan your laptop for virus while you play? or maybe defrag? search for a virus?), it's hard to find a machine that kills the pig and makes the sausages with perfection, probably one or another will have glitches too.
The goal of this approach is, like said before, is to have all the power rewired to what your doing at the present moment, and i'm assuming you are playing music, the task of buying music is supposed to be something you do when you're not playing, at least most of the guys i know think this way.
This approach is intended to help those like me who can't afford to have a Mac, who can't afford to have a solo musical workstation, and who aren't brainless, like said, you'll still be able to use your other vista installation with all the "full power" you need while you're not playing.

Hope to be clear now.

For case study purposes:

1st test scenario

Hardware:

HP Laptop dv6000
CPU: AMD Thurion 64 X 2
RAM: 3GB DDR2
Graphic Adapter: NVidia GeForce 7150M with 64MB dedicated
HD: 250 GB 5400 ROM

VESTAX VCI 300

Software:

Partition 1, DJ Deck (30 GB):
Window PE (Pre-instalation Environment)
NVidia GeForce Drivers
Generic USB 2.0 Drivers
Serato ITCH

Partition 2, Home Deck (60 GB):
Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1
HP dv6000 Driver Package
HP Addons
MS Works

Partition 3, Data (160 GB):
Mp3, Wav, Org, Aiff & whatever...

2nd test scenario

Hardware:

ASUS eeePC 901 XP Version (that tinny little thing!)

all the rest stays the same...

Definitely, you should get a mac.

Anyway, I think the power of modern computer is an overkill for a most usual DJ'ing task and in most cases performance issues are related with drivers/hardware/wrong software combination problems. Of course you can avoid this with another OS installation and so on. But what's the point to have one system with all trash and bloatware installed and a clean one as you could try to keep clean you main installation?

For the record i do own a G3 as a home setup, old but working, (perhaps you can loan me the money for a new MacBook ;-) ) i've been developing APPLE solutions since 91, from the times of the old Quadra 900, Supertalk from Supercard, Hypertalk from Hypercard, MPW (Motorola Programming Workshop) and of course C++. Nowadays i use Delphi for MS stuff and Kylix for Linux stuff which is perfectly runnable as you know in MAC OS X, i guess i've seen enough of both of the worlds don't you agree?

The point is stability. Even with a MAC running OS X with latest updates, if you multi-use the setup, you'll get fragmented files due to internet browsing, risk of trojans and worms due to still unknown threats to your anti-virus, temp files created by OS and background applications, latency problems because not everything is compatible with everything, and so ever, so this same principle of trusted deck stability by minimalistic setups can also be applied to other OSes platforms not only those from microsoft.
I also bound to principles of data organization, in this scenario, if you look inside a partition where you store everything, eventually in time you'll find it hard to optimize, on the other hand, having yourself in front of a partition where you singly store audio files will result in less fragmentation, better access, better recovery and of course easier optimization and this is OS independent, it's a fact.
The purpose of this setup is not to resolve issues by creating heavier ones, but to have better chances of always work with a stable solution no matter what happened to your Home setup.
Besides, MAC OS X is far from being the perfect DA (Digital Audio) station without a few tweaks and tricks like eg. multi-partitioning, specific application memory delegation, specific application CPU delegation, extension suppressing, and so ever, this practice was used (as you can read about it on goggle), on several well known audio studios running APPLE solutions, who used concepts close to this one.
On a productive environment like this one you can't afford the risk, in front of 3000 "happy" people, to have a nervous meltdown, a momentary lapse of reason, because something went wrong with your Home session last night, (which by the way you're using right now!), which caused the present failure.
So the point still relies in stability, if it worked last time i used it and i didn't used it again, it should work now, because is simple, dedicated, clean and untouched by other setups.
However i might agree with you if you say "some of these issues are highly visible on less dedicated Multi-Threaded environments like MS ones" that is why i firstly wrote this post.

OK, OK - but the truth is still the same. I had no issues performing live with SSL or Ableton (6 not 7) both on a crappy Acer laptop with XP and on macbook pro with tiger and leopard.

I'm a software developer too with both UNIX and Windows background (currently working as .NET developer of an enterprise apps) and i might say that a platform limitations are far less significant to a product stability than a developer mistakes or a silly end-user actions are. Now we can have an unoptimised code (what's the odds, we have many cores with many GHzs) or a little memory leek (a few more GBs are ok now), but in most cases if you will not make a really weird things, everything will be ok.

In the end we have rather smart piece of software (SSL and, I hope Itch), so if you are not diehard fan of antivirus, porn-search-toolbars etc. stuff, it will run just fine even in a critical situations (on the air, infront of a crowd and so on).

Try not to complicate things and everything will be running smoothly without concerns about OS architecture or thread pooling. Peace.

Finally we're getting somewhere here Anton ;-)..., nice

We know that for us it might be easy to optimize and reduce the risks of missbehaviours that will lead eventually to live failure performances, but for the average it doesn't. The purpose here it's to help stabilize things using a more secure approach which might work even on poor hardware scenarios, (like mine). So i guess it's just a matter of what we have on our front, do i have enough hardware resources to run serato itch natively and spend as much as i can, or cause they're limited, do i have to manage them carefully so that i wont be surprised. It's anyone's choice not mine, not yours, the path to take, i still think important to show this side of the barrier and the workaround.
Anyway no harm done, these are just opinions, and i do respect yours.

Just got me curious now, have you tried to perform with Ableton Live 6 and some VSTs (like eg. Orange Vocoder) on a XP setup?

I mean a real live DJ performance with a laptop taking advantage of both technologies, off course.