is 60+ processes too many?

I did a reformat and reinstalled everything I want but it seems I still have a lot of stuff running. how many processes should I have running at a given time?

 

a fresh install of XP with nothing at all installed on top of it should have about 25 processes; give or take a few.

60 is quite a lot.

what does "reinstalled everything" mean?

 

Judt the apps that I use instead of the Dell bloatware. I haven't yet disabled any nonessential items from startup yet though it's hard to tell what's what in the startup menu(in msconfig).

 

On my desktop, im only running 32 process

What programs are you running?

 

I have 37 on my E1505.

 

I got 30 (when Windows boot up) on my 1150.

JC

 

Laptops tend to average roughly 35 processes at startup, when the unneeded stuff is removed. So yeah, 60 is mighty excessive.

 

Ok so I have 64 when I'm only running Firefox.

 

If you have 64 processes running then your not "only running firefox" you dink. Your running fiefox and 63 other processes in the background.

I posted this link before, but no fault of your own for missing it since info drops so quickly around here in pages long past and no one ever wants to use the search engine. Information on running processes is non existant at the Microsoft web site and it really should be there in detail.

I've also posted here before, to truly control your system and its resources you need to know how to manage your system processes in Windows XP and unfortuneatly there isn't a whole lot of easy to decifer information out there on this. I got my systems under control using it from old fashioned trial and error by stopping processes and just seeing what happend long before anyone else provided any useful information on the subject. The school of hard knocks like that is a tough way to learn, trust me.

Fortuneatly for you some of this information has finally begun to get documented and about the best website I've found so far that documents the info can be found here...

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/

I'm not one that's big on supporting these programs that fix all your problems, most cause more than they fix, but I have to hand it to that web site for doing an awesome job of documenting some great information and making it just available without the need of installing some fix it all software to find the info. poke around on their web site and there's a wealth of information you'll find there.

There's some trivial and useless information up at the top of the threads here as "sticky threads", this one link has information well worth and far more informative than any of the sticky threads here.

 

On my part, a freshly installed XP PRO runs at 20 processes. After installing all of the drivers, programming softwares and SQL server database... it's running at 40 processes. it takes about 230 MB in the virtual memory.

 

I got about 40 as well to on my Insprion 6000.

 

I have 2 million running processes on my computer, who cares if none of you know what any of these processes are and why they are running?

 

Hey eso, I haven't been here long, but from reading your posts you seem like a knowledgable person, but you really need to cool it on your approach. There's no need to insult anyone. It's a message board, people are posting their thoughts.

 

I have 2 gigs of RAM so it's not like system resources are an issue. it's just that some of the things I installed (the Sound Blaster upgrade in particular) installed about five other apps that I don't like or likely use. Note I haven't disabled anything yet from startup. Do you all do do that to get your process count down? Or am I just clueless about what should and shouldn't install. I went through all the trouble of reformatting and starting from scratch but now I'm starting to wonder if I actually got anywhere.

 

When you open a program, it creates a process untill you close that program

 

my strategy is to only install things that i actually use on my computer. i don't use msconfig to turn anything off.

 

60 is way too many, while using iTunes + FF l've got 25 processes running.

 

Yea. There are ALOT of guides to "XP Services" you need and dont need.. I wish Black Vipers page was still up.. was very detailed..

Alot of things you can turn off etc.. for the most part.. alot of it you will like to have on and so.. 60 however sounds way too much..

 

On a modern system I agree with what drumfu had to say, just don't install a bunch of extra garbage your not using on your system is a great approach and place most people need to start at understanding.

You would be suprised at just how little you actually need to have installed. The base windows OS anymore will just about deal perfectly with anything anyone needs.

The majority of memory leak intensive and process robbing apps I see so many people having problems with or loosing resources to they aren't even aware of come from many of the most common and uneeded stupid programs people purposely install.

It's really a decision of choice with the anti virus stuff available out there, but you can have the most powerfull system built out there and anti virus software running in the background is just a huge killer of your system resources.

There's not a single thing out there that bogs a system down more than anti virus software.

I don't want to go as far as saying you shouldn't protect yourself from a virus, but it drives me nuts to read all the media hype associated with it.These clueless morons who get paid mto write about all this stuff drive me nuts.

The fact of the mater is most viruses are so poorly written you'd have to go out of your way to get infected by one anymore. I mean you'd have to purposely try or just be so stupid to get actuaslly infected that its just rediculous.

Any anti virus software out there right now is going to slow you down and in most cases do more damage than any viturus out there your trying not to get infected by and people purposely install anti virus software to prevent something from happening to their computer that would otherwise have less of an effect on their system than the anti virus software they install to prevent it.

Again, like Drumfu said, people say they use MSCONFIG to turn things off and people tell you to stop things from starting there. MSCONFIG is like an old school adivce thing that only applied to Windows 98. When you read someone telling you this it's up to you to know better and write this off as old, outdated bad advice.

Most people are running XP this day in age, some will literally go directly into the registry and hand edit, some will say use MSCONFIG, you may hear speak of ini files, you'll here talk of editing files in your root directory or even changing things in your BIOS, with XP though, it'll over write all these attempts if it wants to, thats why it's so important that you forget about all the old school approaches people are trying to teach you and instead learn about system proceses running and how to controll them.

 

Ignore all those typos too, I'm not going to rewrite that just to mke the typo sensitive AOLers happy.

 

You know about the edit button, eh

 

Hey I am trying to find that link to where you could optimize the bootup processes.. the I/O ones or something.. read something I thought I saw from here..

Also had linked to a larger database of items.. which I cant find.. had links to blkviper too on it etc for processes and services... which I cant find that link sigh..

INFO database site that I found as a backup tho is
http://www.sysinfo.org/

Type in your process and get info.

But still wonder where the other link is.. sigh!

Oh wait.. scratch that, just hit me what post it was on!

The Dummy section of these forums. ^_^v
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787

Had a NICE writeup on how to optimize things MANUALLY! =)

Also.. my PC I checked after I had my Norton and so.. 71 processes... so yea. .Im kinda fixing it up now. =)