I have so many processes! Whats Good and Whats bad?

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Couple of things

by Yew May 12, 2005 11:46PM PDT

First off, rather than posting a list of processes, why not just type them into Google and see what pops up? The first couple of links should give you an idea what the process is and does. Then you can make a determination whether or not you want it running.

Second, comparing two completely different computer architectures for performance is never a good idea. The PowerPC chip is basically an enterprise level chip being used for consumer level applications. Also, I'm guessing you have an early generation Pentium4, in which case the very design of the CPU will work against you. Intel designed the P4 for high clock speeds NOT high performance. The two are not nearly as related as most people think, which is exactly what Intel was counting on.

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You dont know what its like, its not your problem

by throstur May 13, 2005 5:40AM PDT

Well I posted it here because I had a direct link to it and because if i search it in google ill have to load alot of stuff, and that takes AGES on my computer. For example, when I load an online game, I have to wait 10 minutes before it is available to play. Why? Because my computer takes AGES to do anything, and even though my gfx card supports more than a screen refresh rate of 60, which i set it at, it only runs at around 30.

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re

by chipmarker May 13, 2005 8:17PM PDT

I have no idea how to help you sense Black Vipers web site is no longer around.

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You have to do the hard work

by MarkFlax Former Forum moderator May 13, 2005 8:22PM PDT

but this site will help you;

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Click on the alpha button for each process you want to check, then scroll down until you see the process in the list. You will see what it is, and what it does, and whether it is useful/useless/dangerous/infection.

Mark

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Your problem is not your processes!

by snharden May 13, 2005 11:01PM PDT

At least I doubt it anyway. If your PC is as slow as you say there is obviously some problems. The number of processes you have running looks pretty average to me.

Instead find out how many programs are loading at start up. If you have lots of icons down by your clock close all the ones you don't need. Then prevent them from starting up with Windows. Look in each programs ''options'' or ''preferences'' menu for a reference to start with windows and unckeck it or as some programs do check to not start with windows.

Next is Spyware, adware and viruses. Since you seem to like your games I'll bet bottom dollar theres a ton of crap on your PC from game downloads and gaming sites. Get a copy of Adaware, Spybot S&D and Microsoft Anti-spy and start scanning and lose all the junk.

How about anti-virus? Are you using it and if not why not? Most of the major anti-virus companies will let you do a free online scan and even remove what they find. http://www.pandasoftware.com has a very good online scan.

Next run check disk or scan disk and defragment your HD.

Also how full is your HD? Start freeing up space. Get rid of all the programs you never use. Trust me everyone has at least a few they never use.

Now move to the registry. Try the free Easy cleaner by Toni Helenius or the free Tweaknow reg cleaner which is excellent by the way and clean up all the crap from your registry. Most of these programs are available from CNET's download.com site.

After you do all that and your computer is still slow I'd say you have some corrupted OS files and may have to just do a complete reinstall of your OS from scratch and just start over. Computers require frequent maintenance and if you don't do it you end up right where you are now. A PC that crawls at a snail's pace.

One more thing you can check is your DLL file. If you go to http://www.analogx.com and download a program called DLL Archive it will scan you system and report all the abandoned DLL's it finds. Look for the ones with ''zero hits'' and archive them. And later when you feel everything is running and all your programs are working ok you can delete them. If your system is full of orphaned DLL's it will slow your PC down as well.

With the little info I have about your system I'd say your problems are a little of all the above. Since your PC is a few years old I'd bet you have alot of junk you can get rid of....

Last but not least is update. Update windows, your anti-virus and all your other programs that need updating.

Isn't that a nice way to spend a saturday afternoon...

After all that you should be back up and smoking again. Hope this helps.

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How full eh...

by throstur May 14, 2005 1:01AM PDT

Well I have a 40 gB hard disk, and its completely full, I have around 400 megabytes free, and I have loads of programs that I want to install, but I cant, so the only programs I have are the important ones, like Zipping, internet stuff, game editing, games, and MSN-like things. I have ad-aware, ad-watch, AVG and spybot, even after i run these checks there is NO improvement whatsoever to speed. I have tried tweakxp, I have tried registry mechanic, and even TuneUp XP, but none of these are of any help, I think personally that I may have to restart my whole system, or something, because No matter what I do, my PC is slow.

Also All the programs That start up at start up are the following:

Steam (i want this)
Ad-Watch (i want this)
MSN (i want this)
AVG (i want this)
Norton (i dont want this - its 2002 version)
N-Gage connection manager (tried everything but cant remove)
Quicktime (dont want this)
picozip (dont want this)

and i think thats bout it.

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(NT) (NT) A full hard drive will slowdown your computer

by glb613 May 14, 2005 1:21AM PDT

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:(

by throstur May 15, 2005 4:13AM PDT

But what can I do? I need everything I have so I cant free any space!!

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No way..........

by PlatinumPPC May 15, 2005 4:55AM PDT

There is absolutely no way on earth the programs you listed are taking up nearly 40 GB. There's a mountain of data somewhere taking up that space, now, I dunno if it's mp3's or whatever I don't care what you do, but what you need to do first and foremost is back up anything ''non O/S'' and by that I mean files that are not installed by the O/S/ or programs. Stuff for example that resides in your my documents folder. You need to find a way to backup whatever non system files you want to keep and get your hard drive down to about 20 GB. I can guarantee you with 99% certainty that your system slowdown problem resides in your full hard drive. You have to understand the co relation between you memory and something called your pagefile. Simplified, when your computer effectively ''runs out'' of physical memory, it uses a section of your hard drive as if it was physical ram, hence the alternate term ''virutal memory'' Depending on your memory configuration, the recommended size of your paging file or vitual memory should be roughly twice the size of your installed physical ram. In your case I'm guestimating that your pagefile is roughly one quarter the size it should be. Your system speed is essentially being bottlenecked by the O/S's inability to read and write effectively from the pagefile. It's actually more complicated than that in that your O/S will use the pagefile even if there is unused addresses on your physical ram. It'd take far too long to explain this corelation but in essence, regardless of how much ram you have, you need an appropriately sized pagefile. The infomation ''swaps'' from the pagefile to the ram and vice versa, earning the pagefile the nickname ''swap file'' There are other considerations as well, like because you're pagefile is grossly undersized and overworked, it's going to become extremely fragmented. This will not defrag during a routine hard drive defrag, because the O/S has exclusive access to that area of the hard drive. One you figure out a way to solve you space woes, (as I suggested, or buy a bigger hard drive) you'll need to degrag the pagefile and master file table. http://www.executive.com/defrag/defrag.asp Diskeeper from Executive software is in my opinion, one of the best tools to accomplish this. It also provides and excellent hard drive defrag utility. You can download the trial version at the afore mentioned link. Good luck, if you have any questiuons feel free.

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page file too large?

by throstur May 18, 2005 2:40AM PDT

Well i have 256 RAM and I play ALOT of counter-strike source, and when I am playing it, I need ALL the memory I have, so I set my page file to 768, which is the maximum indicated by the drive even though 381 is recommended.

Im sorry I didnt quite read your whole post, i lost my place, I shall try again after posting this.

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Do you make copies or backup of your data?

by glb613 May 15, 2005 5:17AM PDT

If not, you are making a terrible mistake. Hard drives fail and everything will be lost. You need to free up some hard drive space, save your data away from the hard drive. Do you have a CD burner installed? If so, start making copies. After you make the copies, remove the stuff off your hard drive and free up some space.

If you don't have a burner, try using a USB flash or portable drive. They come in a variety of sizes for a reasonable price. There's also the option of an external hard drive, which is only good for temporary storage, or an external CD burner.

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I deleted some files...

by throstur May 18, 2005 2:48AM PDT

Everything I have on my computer, well, most of it, is just programs that I downloaded for free and/or installed from a CD. The only things I would be losing are my images and my text documents, and perhaps my CS scripts, but I dont really need those do I? I say, no need, things I need, such as CSS maps, have already been uploaded to a website that I can trust (banana.nu) and I feel absolutely no need for anything, only it would be a pity having to install them again (which I would have to do if I installed from a backup CD anyways)

I Freed up 6GB worth of space, and I still feel its quite slow - not as slow as before, but its not as fast as I would expect it to be.

All my music is gone, many program installers are out of the story, and I deleted some movies, that I had on CD's anyways.

If you guys have any tips on tweaking my XP the appropriate way, please do share them, even though I am planning on setting up XP again.

PS, does this have ANYTHING to do with SP2?

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Try PC Pitstop

by Adi May 15, 2005 6:03AM PDT

This will, among other things, list the processes that your computer is running and identify what they are, so you can decide what you need or don't. The address is http://www.pcpitstop.com/

This site will also give you other recommendations for how to improve PC performance. Since you say you only have 400MB left on a 40GB hard disk, this is a major cause for concern. It is usually recommended that you have 15% free, and although this is not always possible, at least 1GB is highly recommended. Otherwise your page file has nowhere to go. Less space will also result in more frequent writing to the page file, as your computer has to keep writing new data, which will undoubtedly degrade hard disk performance, and make hard disk failure more likely.

Other ideas: adware scan, disk cleanup utility, disk defragmenter (you will need to clear 15% free space on your hard disk to be able to use the Windows defragmenter effectively though). Also, it may be a good idea to delete all but the most recent system restore points - this can be done through Disk Cleanup. It is surprising how much free space this can clear up. Make sure you back up important files first though. You could try deleting temp files as well, and make sure your internet cache is a reasonable size - I'd say you don't really need more than 200MB max.

Also, try and work out where all your space has gone. You say it is all taken up with programs, but I can't really believe that, unless the programs are all huge. To help you work out where hard disk space is being taken up, Folder Size Shell Extension can be a great help. You can get it here - http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,15304,00.asp If you have music on your PC, that can take up a large portion of hard disk space. If you have Steam, I presume that means you have the Half Life game(s) as well, which take up a large space. If you have mods as well, you might want to consider if they are all necessary.

Hope this helps

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Steam it is, and almost ALL its mods!

by throstur May 18, 2005 3:03AM PDT

I have steam, yes, and I have ALL the games except HL:S and DOD:S

I play all the games, not all at the same time, I do leave a few weeks or months between them, but I do play them all, thats pretty much for sure.

I guess I COULD delete some of the games, although the ones i play less take way less space, and I think its not worth the 1GB that it will free, especially now that I have those new 6GB freed, but Ill try that pitstop, it can do me lots of good.

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