running Proceses

[Jimmy]

I am a little concerned about all the processes I see running in taskmanger (nows the paranoid time, one week after a major upgrade and everything is wanting to kill my butiful new system ).



Anything there I should be wroied about? "svchost" looks odd, looking at taskmanger now I see 5 "svchost"s some are LOCAL SEVICE and some NETWORK and some SYSTEM..

So anything on that list that I should be concerned about or is wasteing my computer power?

Also, when you open taskmanger when there are no other programs running does the cpu useage jump to 100% (or 50 in the case of dual core)? That seems an awful lot of power being used just to open one window, I noticed it with my old set up too..

Thanks
James

[Charl]

You can Google any of these process names and spend a happy evening deciding whether your computer is under attack.
Generally not, if you have clean surfing habits and have paid for most of your installed software.

[HardCorePawn]

svchost is part of the OS... basically used to run various windows services.

and yeah... the task manager will usually cause the CPU usage to spike... its doing a little more than just opening a window!

As Charl mentioned, you can lookup the various processes online... try this site...

Just don't go and randomly kill processes tho... some of them are running important windows services and will make the system unstable

Its actually quite a learning experience to see exactly what is running, sometimes you find some real cr@p... like useless adobe acrobat 'quick start' utilities etc... stuff that just sits there sucking up resources but not really doing a lot...

leads you to other things, like the startup folder, Run at startup registry entries etc.

regards,
Jared

[Jimmy]

Thanks guys, I will do some research on some of them then.

I miht try and clean up the start up list but proably wont start the habit of ending all the unessacery process like I did with my first system, would spend quite sometime going threw the list everytime I started up. I don't think the perforamce impact is so much to be going threw and ending them all the time, just good to know theres nothing there useing up to much power to be concerned about

mm whatll it be next

Thanks again
James

[HardCorePawn]

I miht try and clean up the start up list but proably wont start the habit of ending all the unessacery process like I did with my first system, would spend quite sometime going threw the list everytime I started up.

I believe there is a program called something like 'End it all', which does this for you... you run it and it will automatically go through and end everything that you have not marked as protected etc.

I have never actually tried it, but from reading various FS forums, it appears to be fairly useful.

[Zöltuger]

something like 'End it all'

oh, that's a bit sad

just sticking the process name into google will tell you what it is, useful when trying to identify spyware that slips into your system. It is frustrating when you install something like an HP printer and it adds 6 new processes to the list and programs which you only end up using once a month in the task bar.

[Kahu]

I use a program called FSAuto Start which is really useful to stop all the unwanted programs before you run any sim.

[Stanel]

My recommendations:
1. First check your system with Spybot Search&Destroy - freeware . You may download HERE
2. Check your system with nentenst.exe - freeware. You may download HERE
3. Clean your register - the best is Uniblue Register Booster (payware). For free I suggest trial (40 days) version of Ashampoo WinOptimizer HERE
4. If you have firewall installed (I am sure you have) check if Windows firewall is disabled. Sometimes two firewalls make problems.
5. But start from cleaning Cache if you have never performed that action before !

[ooOO00OOoo]

My recommendations:
1. First check your system with Spybot Search&Destroy - freeware . You may download HERE
2. Check your system with nentenst.exe - freeware. You may download HERE
3. Clean your register - the best is Uniblue Register Booster (payware). For free I suggest trial (40 days) version of Ashampoo WinOptimizer HERE
4. If you have firewall installed (I am sure you have) check if Windows firewall is disabled. Sometimes two firewalls make problems.
5. But start from cleaning Cache if you have never performed that action before !

Don't forget ad awarehere is also freeware

[HardCorePawn]

Another good one is WinXP + SP2 install disk

I usually do it every 3 or 4 months, just to keep the system running nice and fresh... one of these days I'll actually go and create a Ghost image of a fresh install... so I can get it back up in about 15 minutes