No it doesn't you may have 10-15 Microsoft Process running that are needed, for the pc to run correctly you need a lot more running then just the browser, protection software, & Skype... However I am sure you have Items running that do not have to be, to assist you on what to turn off we need to know what is running, to see what is running- Right click the Task bar now click Task Manager in the window, choose process we would need to know every process there, you can also google them and get an Idea of what some of them stand for like (Svchost) or lass or smass, explorer. You may have up to 5 Svchost running that is ok too.

If thats all internet and network connections thats alot. Netstat shows about 40 ports open, only two of those are active wan-internet.

How many processes does taskmgr show on its lower info bar ?

Vista here in task manager right now is showing 62 processes. Most of which are normal windows, winDefender, win firewall - don't have much start up otherwise except Virus, msn messenger, temp, and speed_meter thingamajiggers.

I had this very experience last week with a friend's computer. She had 71 items listed, OUCH! But she is the social gadabout of the internet world and has Myspace, Facebook, MSN chat, Yahoo chat, Skype and others. Plus she had 3 different toolbars that wanted to be important and have processes running, Google had 4 for goodness sake.

As she was away I only removed 12 items, on her return we will go through and determine with each item whether more speed or her social life takes precedence, LOL.

For an XP machine I do not think 43 items is excessive although you may well have a few that could be stopped. My XP has 43 but 4 of those are to do with distributed computing

HP Media Center WINXPSP2

In Windows Task Manager I have 56 processes running.

When I had WIN98 I used Windby, or something like that, to see if what I was running was needed or not. Is there a similar site to use with XP?

Googling each item listed and then reading all the info on each one is mind boggling.

TIA

Sue

A neat little utility is ProcessScanner
I have 34 processes on a fairly new install of XP, mostly Microsoft Operating System stuff.

W/XP Home: With no Applications running I have managed to reduce the number of what I consider necessary processes to 19 with the task manager window open. Presumably 18 with it closed.

I make regular trips to the services window to shut stuff off which, since I am retired, livens up an otherwise dull existence. :-)

Thank you everybody for your assistance, I think you have given me all the tools I should need for reducing possibly a number of running applications on my computer.
Cheers to all
Jim

I have 28 running and noticed Tea Timer was pulling the most weight - 32,752K. That was the highest on the list. I'm wondering if that should be stopped. Anyone use Spybots Tea Timer?

Jane

Tea Timer is a good program and will alert you when a registry change is taking place, I would leave that on.. I use it and a lot of others do also....

Teatimer
aka: Resident
aka: System Settings Protector

Teatimer works much the same as the average Anti-Virus resident in that it monitors the processes called/initiated.
If a process tries to initiate and is found in the SSD definitions, it is terminated and an alert pops up to give you choices.
Just as with all malware protection, this function is also subject to false positives (incorrect detections).
But that is why you are given choices. You can allow the process to load or you can deny it. Although it should be noted that the process is terminated...we don't really want to load malware...do we?

I never have liked Tea Timer because of the load it adds. On older slower processors you can instantaly feel the load it adds.
Windows Defender will do the same basic thing and much more for a showing of 2,024kb in task manager.

Jim,

You might try blackviper website. It has a good explanation of all the background running programs and how they can be configured. They have lists for Windows XP, Windows 2K, and Vista. HTH.

Terry

Here is a link that might be useful: Blackviper

Thanks for the heads up on Black Viper Terry. The site had not been updated in a long time. There was an announcement about moving on way back. Good to see the site updated again

owbist,

Glad to help. His site was down from Oct 2005 till Mar 2007. I think the reason was mostly personal, he lost his job, moved closer to his parents, and various other things going on in his life that precluded him from updating his site for so long.

Terry

Just looked -
Tea Timer - 33,016K
Windows Search.exe - 13,132K
Searchindexer.exe - 18,716K
Firefox - 102,152K

That seems like a lot of usage. What are all these 'search' things?
Can I shut some down?

Jane

Office has a file and folder and even word indexing option geared to file extensions that many people turn off. Supposedly it can really slow you down at times.

XP also has a Service called indexing, that you can easily disable it & see if it bothers you when you use the windows Search feature, which may or may_not seem slower when disabled.

Thanks Mikie, I shut off indexing to see if that speeds things up. I find internet really slows down at night and takes a long time for pages to load. I don't know if that would affect anything anyway but its worth a try.

I don't use either of those search options.

Jane

Lots of people complain with cable Internet that their connections slow down during the evening hours. Cable is sort of a shared neighborhood loop - everybody comes home from work at about the same time, and then get on the Internet about the same time... all of them tapped into that shared neighborhood cable which only has just so much capacity.

My nephew works in the DSL field, manufactures and supplies the telco's the DSL equipment for them to sell us fast Internet.... and his neighborhood only had cable internet available for years,,, he absolutely hated his cable connection because it slows down right when he wants to use it.
Just recently verizons came down his street with FIOS to his house and bought into their fastest deal. Probably something like 30mb/s Hopefully flying by now, haven't seen him since the hook up. Little mikie - flies all over the world selling or designing DSL systems.

I thought the same thing, except I can be on the computer at 2am and it's even slower. It doesn't make sense except during the morning hours it works fast. I can't believe there are too many people like myself who start going on the internet at 2am.

I work on the computer all day, offline. By the time I can sit down with a cup of tea and read my emails and enjoy the internet, it is so slow. I think its something running on the machine which is slowing it down.

Hey Mikie, I read on another computer forum about 'setting affinity' on a dual core processor. I don't really understand it, but I stuck Firefox on #1 core to see if it helped. I also shut down both indexing.

So far, so good. I'll have to check it at 2am.

Jane

Slow at 2am would mean the computer is tired and needs rest... or you've had too much coffee maybe and your mind is speeding & that makes the computer seem slow. (kidding wiff ya ;)

You might want to look at a program to defrag your registry called PageDefrag ... just type sysinternals into your browser, hold down the Control key and hit enter. Simple tiny program. There are other registry defrag programs for xp but a bit less effective.

Do you manually defrag your hard drive occasionally ? A Fragged up hard drive slows things down, especially after a long day.

Windows auto updates and virus scans seem to default to the wee hours of the morning to auto run ... that always worries me when I cant sleep. 'Whats that running my hard drive light' Those things running can make you slow down.

~~
I haven't personally messed with core selection. Really haven't read much about it but do understand how somebody at Microsoft says it works.
In my mindset, I think you may be able to set programs CPU priority level probably more efficiently than trying to outsmart the way windows handles the core selection.

Affinity on Xp, to change it permanently you will need a program to handle the settings. Windows will allow you to change core choice, but as soon as that program shuts down or at reboot, windows will revert to its default scheme of auto handling the cores... which from what I've read, windows does very well unless you have a program that for some reason gives you a hassle hogging both cores,,, or I guess if your computing habits are really stressing things making you think you can speed it up by slowing down a certain program, thus allowing one you want to do something 'right now' faster, yet at half speed, when that core is needed and shared elsewhere.

Here is a link that might be useful: Toms Hdwe... old stuff but ,,, affinity.

Jane,,, wugnet, is in your neighborhood and has an excellent internet connection speed test. I use them 1st choice when I think my connection is out of wack.
You might try that test in the morning and also at 2am -- to see if your internet connection is actually your slowness problem.

You could also do a traceRt from a cmd window to www.wugnet.com ... to see how routing times are changing during wee hours maybe because of lots of late night batch proccessing from NYC donut & coffee shop wifi business.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.wugnet.com/myspeed/speedtest.asp

Thanks Mikie. I ran the speed test- 1 AM. Wanted to put a screen shot and can't remember where Paint is. Anyway, tell me what this means:

Quality of Source 86%
45 MS
Max Pause 32 MS
Download 7.80 Mbps
Upload 1.75 Mbps

Where's Paint? It disappeared on me.

Jane

Forgot to say, I defrag on a fairly regular basis. I'll try the registry defrag (never heard that one).

You are right, too much coffee, tea...

Jane

Try paint in the run line,, maybe mspaint

think thats qos,, quality of service 86%,,,
mine's not perfect but usually 95% plus or minus one.

45 ms is the average packet time to reach it.
32 ms pause is just that,, your longest pause when it should be sending stuff was 32 ms... fast, but because your QOS is 85% , there must be a lot of pauses going on. Which could affect QOS on games or inet telephone connections.

Nah, no games, no telephone.

Guess I'm just impatient. Just seems so slow at night. Thought these new machines were suppose to be fast.

Thanks for the explanation Mikie.

Jane

Jane I assume you use more than one tab while surfing the net? I usually have 4 or 5 open, if I am here and an interesting link is offered I right click on it and elect to open that in a new tab. Then I continue reading the original post till I am ready to see the other link. No time wasted waiting for slow links.

Yes Owbist, I do the same thing. Many tabs.

I use Firefox, but I don't think that is causing the slow-down. I tried IE and it was even slower.

What is annoying is the computer I use at work is over a year old, and I have so many programs running, windows stacked up and if I go on-line for something, its quick. I don't have to watch that 'loading message' which seems to remind you how long it takes to open a page.

Work computer has less memory, Pentium D processor and a smaller hard drive. This computer is Dual Core, 3 gigs of ram and 260 hard drive and seems so slow. Maybe my connection.

I don't have a lot of processes running, just AV, firewall and Tea Timer. I'm thinking Tea Timer, but doubt it. Both machines are XP Pro.

Jane