processing menu? what should be running?

[jaggede]

my mom has an emachine that i gave her..it worked fine and now it is slow as molasses..when i clicked on end task (ctrl-alt-dlt) there is a window that says processes...there are 38 processes running...one said 201,202k mem usage...i ended it and it said that it might do harm but i did it anyways now the machine is atleast running fast enough to get online but i still have 37 processes running...can anyone tell me what the bare bones ones are that i should have running and how to get to the start up programs and which one should be running at start up... a friend once told me that after while a computer will have a bunch of programs starting up in the beginning from downloading programs and that they dont need to be running right from the start...im a novice at playing with the computer so any help would be great...thanks....oh my physical memory says 260080 total 52724 available 71940 system cache i have deleted most of the extra files and program but i do have a bunch of pics

[Tarq57]

37 processes sounds within the norm. Mine is XP home, and it's running 36.
201,202K is an excessive amount, virtually all of your memory; the process name is important, as it indicates a problem with that process.

There are two types of memory; the capacity of your disk (hard drive) to store what you want or need to put on it, such as files, photos, operating system etc, and the RAM, which basically runs active processes..programs that are running. How full the disk is (until it's near max) will have virtually no impact on how fast the computer works. So deleting files won't make a difference, there.
You have enough RAM; what you need to find out is what is using it all. It is likely to be something that runs at startup, and, with the amount of usage you're mentioning, it's fairly likely to be a malicious process.

So, restart the computer, look in taskmanager again, find the process that you originally stopped that is using the most RAM, (not a good or permanent fix, by the way) and report the name of it, please.

[taxydual]

The fewer processes running, the better. I've got my XP Pro tweaked down to 27 from 36. This guy's site Black Viper's Web Site (http://www.blackviper.com/) is full of tips and tweaks. Well worth a browse.

Regards

[jaggede]

hi thanks for the reply....in the task manager it is not showing up again after reboot...if it was i probably wouldnt be able to get online as it would take to long and log out...in the task bar under performance i see spikes going up alomost to 100 percent thats when it freezes up...i also donot know how to select what need to start during start up or how to get there the most process now is ieplore.exe with 43624k and then i have eplorer.exe with 10644k mcproxy.exe 11688k i have 5 svhost.exe running a total of 5000k when i drag the task manager around it leaves trails and also last time it froze it said something a rundle something or other wouldnt close

[Gertrude the Wombat]

This box currently has 62 active processes and is running fine. (I even know what some of them are!) Statements like:

The fewer processes running, the better.

are simply nonsense.

If something eats vast quantities of memory and actually uses it, so as to cause paging, then that can result in dramatic slowness, characterised by continuous disk noises and the disk light permanently flashing. Culprits can be anything, but common ones I've seen include antivirus software and anything written in Java, particularly if it has a Swing GUI and includes memory leaks (don't let anyone tell you that you don't get memory leaks in Java "because it's garbage collected" - this too is simply nonsense).

On the other hand if something has vast quantities of memory allocated but isn't actually using it then that isn't slowing the machine down.

[Jofm5]

I would say dont make comments like :-


This box currently has 62 active processes and is running fine



Or

if something eats vast quantities of memory and actually uses it, so as to cause paging, then that can result in dramatic slowness, characterised by continuous disk noises and the disk light permanently flashing.


Unless you really know what goes on at the lower level.

Between each version of windows, windows update etc, along with your hardware setup there will be many different things installed that may need either a driver or assistance. Dont let people here fool you into thinking they are not required.


What was it you eneded - was it the process dwm.exe? If it was then there is a simple explanation why - if not please describe the process you killed. - cheers

[Loose rivets]

In the old days, which I'm sad to say, for me, is what I exist in, we would be bite accountants. Everything...the last line of code would have to be put to best advantage. I mean, I'd paid over 60 quid for upgrading from 512k to 640k, so I wanted my money's worth. Now, even with Sysinternal's Process Explorer and disc monitor, I'm still confused as to what a lot of processes are doing.

i have 5 svhost.exe running

I too would be interested to know just what these do. How many should be running? Can I kill some of 'em just for fun? Right now there are 3 - seemingly taking no resources.

AT this stage of my existence, I need a machine to run fairly near optimum, but just do not have the time to RTFM. Every day, more jobs to do and less money to do them with. Nobody told me retirement was going to be like this - technology accelerating away from One at warp speed, but allowing one to drown in technocomplexity if I don't keep up. I just want to press a button and every bit of stuff I don't need, comes shredded out of a slot in the front of me PC.

(Neither did anyone tell me that retirement was going to be more demanding than a full time job, but that's an issue for JB) :(

I for one will be looking at Black Viper's site, investing a little more time on this darn machine...the machine that's supposed to be saving me time.

[Bushfiva]

From a command prompt, type "tasklist /svc" to see a list of services running. Peruse the list, and the items shown against "svchost.exe" will indicate what each instance of svchost is responsible for. In my case, the items include the dns cache service, dhcp, secure logon and the crypto service for my drive. So I'm not inclined to stop svchost. Your mileage may vary. (XP Home doesn't support the command. XP Pro and others do.)

If anything in the list particularly interests you, note the PID number and enter Tasklist /FI "PID eq xxxx", where xxxx is that number.

There are a few other commands you can play with.

In general, I don't remove random parts of my auto because I don't perceive a use for them or understand their function, and I apply the same logic to my computer.

[Parapunter]

I mentioned once a friend, whose lappy I setup for wireless. I couldn't for the life of me get the thing to connect or even show an ip address. It took an afternoon's messing about before I discovered he had randomly killed all kinds of services & processes as a method of speeding up the machine, hobbling it in the process.

Unless you know exactly what you're playing with, leave well alone.

[Jofm5]

FYI - SVHost.exe describes exactly what it is - "A Service Host"

Writing a true windows service is not trivial as the interaction with SCM can be quite complex - I have written a few and it takes a long time to sort out the interaction with the operating system before you even get around to sorting out what the service is meant to be doing.

Microsoft in their ultimate wisdom wrote what us programmers term as a wrapper named svchost.exe - this does all the interaction with the operating system and then calls your library based code (a Dynamic Linked Library - DLL)

Whilst this has effectively made service writing a possibility for even the numpties of the world it has left people on some operating systems with little exposure to what is actually running - hence on vista you can see the actual command line required to start.

A similar issue exists with RunDLL.exe although this does not run as a service it is very cryptic to find out what is running and why.

Killing off services and programs when running is not a sensible thing to do unless you truly know what your doing - if you do then go to service control manager (SCM) and prevent it running in the first place. If you dont then be cautious -most services sit idle waiting for the moment you need them - you can kill them off and not know you need them until you actually do and then experience problems.

Whilst it is true that some services may never be required killing them off will give you little as a properly written service will remain idle until required and will take very little memory.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I would say dont make comments like :-
<snip>
Unless you really know what goes on at the lower level.
That's fine then, I have your permisssion to make those comments! (FWIW.) (My 62 processes include one for MySQL, a handful for SQL Server, several for stuff that it's helpful to have running on a server operating system but which most people won't have on a workstation version, an inordinate number to drive my HP printer but they never were any good at software, a copy of squid and maybe one or two other things I installed a year or two ago for a specific project and haven't used since. But as all these things sit there consuming no CPU cycles and no real memory until such time as a request is made to them they make no contribution to the machine being slow, do they. And it isn't.)
Writing a true windows service is not trivial as the interaction with SCM can be quite complex - I have written a few and it takes a long time to sort out the interaction with the operating system before you even get around to sorting out what the service is meant to be doing.

It's essentially boilerplate code though, it doesn't really matter that much whether you cut-and-paste it into your own application or use the pre-packaged version in svchost. Except that writing a "proper" service and giving it a recognisably useful name might reduce the chance of some numpty killing it via task manager and then wondering why their computer doesn't work any more!