Another Question For The Exalted Tecchies

[Fierce Critter]

I did a factory roll-back of my eMachine very early this year or late last year in an attempt to clear it if unecessary crappola and speed things up. It did the trick.

But once again, there are things floating around on this thing slowing it down.

I think there are waaaaaaaay too many processes running, but I haven't a single clue how to judge what is and is not necessary. If I provide a screenshot of the list, can someone look it over and let me know what I might be able to disable?

[Draco1958]

I know a little about Win98 so I can usually say what is and is not needed on bootup. Still learning XP tho.

[Fierce Critter]

Yeah, maybe I should have mentioned I'm running XP Pro.

[Draco1958]

I know a guy who knows how to tweak the bootup list. He's been working on my laptop with XP Pro. I will see him tonight and can get an idea of what is and is not needed. If you could provide a list of what is starting up on bootup, he could say what can be turned off.

[Head Wreck]

googling the process names usually will give you a good answer on whats needed or not.

[Fierce Critter]

Here's that screenshot.

At the time I did that, I had AOL, Photoshop CS2, Antivir virus guard, and WUSB** (runs my wireless connection) running. There shouldn't be anything else necessary far as I know.

[Draco1958]

Printed out the pic, will show it to Tim tonight and will post it with black areas for what can be turned off later tonight.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Ok... would be better if you had closed all your apps first. Photoshop is running and thaqt might explain all the Adobe stuff I see.

KHALMNPR.exe is the hardware abscrtaction layer of your mouse driver... Setpoint.exe

WJSB54gSv2 is your wireless cards utils.

AOL crap all over the place...

Realsched.exe is an updater for Real player... that can go away

StarWindService... not sure what that is....

Get this

It's called Startup Control Panel.

It puts an icon in your control panel that give you almost complete control of everthing that autostarts. You can add/delelte... just turn off...

[SuZQZ]

Gaf's suggestion is the best route. You have a lot of stuff running on start up that don't need to be. The Adobe stuff, AOL, etc., don't need to run on start-up. The programs load that way so when you launch them it takes less time for them to load, but the trade off is a longer startup time and it slows down your system. There is a command line you can run to get to the window to do the same thing, but the utility he's pointing to you is more user friendly. I personally have only the essential services/programs set to run on start up. Cuts down boot up and processing time tremendously.

[Fierce Critter]

AWESOME.

I wish these answers came so easily to myself. I know it's years of training, learning, experience. But you do have to have some kind of talent for this kind of thing. And I ain't got it.

I'll download and run that and let ya'll know how things go. Probably won't be until tomorrow.

[Fierce Critter]

This is AWESOME.

Thanks so much.

BTW - Starwindservice has to do with Alcohol120%. It's fine & harmless.

[SuZQZ]

I wish these answers came so easily to myself. I know it's years of training, learning, experience. But you do have to have some kind of talent for this kind of thing. And I ain't got it.

I love it because it's logic. Programming is logic, network admin is logic, IT support (helpdesk tech) is logic, etc. The only downside is that my geekiness gets in the way of my nerdiness sometimes!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Exactly. Branched logical thought is the talent. At least for me. Look at the problem as a puzzle. What is it supposed to do? What steps are involved to achieve that? it helps that I read a lot of highly technical stuff. Like ATA specifications and Sideband addressing technical briefs.

[Fierce Critter]

I do like to follow directions given by a good tecchie. I'm not an imbecile, and know well enough to know when I shouldn't touch another key and should seek help. And I follow direction very well and very quickly. I'm not a tecchie's "worst nightmare". I learned early that what techs fear most is someone who "knows a little about computers."

I do see the logic in a lot of it - even in a horribly half-ass system like Windows. I took a little programming in high school and college and excelled at it. But beyond that, it was too linear for me and my brain just wanted to wander too much. yet, on the other hand, I see the value in someone who can think outside the box when these problems get really "out-there".

I actually think ya'll who are good at this ride a line of left brain/right brain more than some of us who veer more strongly to one or the other.

[Draco1958]

Items marked with an X are removeable.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

um..

avgaurd is your anti virus program... leave that alone.

sched.exe is your anti virus scheduling module.. leave that alone.

lssrvc.exe is the light scribe module for your dvd-burner... depends on how much you use it.

nvmixertray is the tray mixer for your sound card.. optional, depending how much you muck about with your music

qdfmgr.exe is part of Windows Media Player.. it solves compatibility issues... leave it alone.

Leave setpoint.exec and KHALMNPR.EXE alone.. they are what give you the precision and extra features on that fancy logitech mouse.

WLservice is for a Belkin USB wireless adaptor... leave it alone unless you have gotten rid of the USB wireless nic.

[Scary Guy]

WUSB.... is eating a lot of memory, you can probably safely kill that off.

rundll32 isn't necessary even though it is part of the system, you can safely kill that off as well.

explorer.exe is a memory hog. You may want to consider replacing your shell. I recommend bblean but there is a list over here you might want to look at. http://shellcity.net/cgi-bin/DB_Search/db_...yes&topic=A

Really the amount of programs doesn't matter. It's how much memory and how many CPU cycles they're using up that is the problem. Even a saturated ethernet connection can slow your computer to a crawl with disk read/writes.