Killing excess processes

Hi, I have something like 100 processes in the background when i'm idling... many of these are like windows media centre tray applet, windows media player networking service etc... is there any way to stop these not needed background processes other than uninstalling programs etc? I know there are programs which help you terminate these processes after start up manuallybut is there some program which can terminate these processes at start up automatically?

 

Why do you want to? Seriously? Because they are running? I'm sure there will be someone along in a minute who will brag about how his computer is running with X processes and it screams faster than any computer on the planet.

Truth is, most processes use little of your computer's memory and CPU time when they are not doing something--and when they are doing something, it is a good thing.

With today's modern computers and modern OSs, it is a fools errand killing all your "excess" processes. Unused memory is wasted memory. Unused CPU time is wasted CPU time.

Unless a particular process is misbehaving, leave it be.

 

Have you been into msconfig and disabled all unnecessary startup programs?

Because I'm pretty sure that would help.

And to the person above, it may be that OP wants as little processes as possible, to leave more resources dedicated to the tasks he wants to perform at the time. All the little processes add up to a lot. When I went from 93 processes in Vista to something like 42 in Windows 7, the difference in gaming performance was amazing.

And yes, I have to say to everyone that I only have 46 processes in Windows 7 at the moment.

 

No, they do not. And therein lies the problem. You are incorrectly assuming that these processes are somehow consuming resources. That is NOT how Vista and Win7 architecture works. Just because a process is loaded does not mean it is consuming ANY resources. It may be paged out and totally dormant until some event occurs that it needs to service.

Gary

 

Windows 7 have lesser Background Processes compared to Windows Vista.
Basically, it is lighter.
In addition, some same background processes which can be found in both Vista and 7 used different amount of resources. Windows 7's lower of course.

Now, I am on Windows Vista again. I am thinking I should disable which Processes. I already disable plenty of them. Still, there are a lot.|
For my machines, I got this:
Have 52 start-ups for Vista after Windows Boot-up.
Have 47 start-ups for 7 after Windows Boot-up.

The main killing point of 7 = lower resources and faster boot-up for me.
While Vista booting is slow and higher resources(acceptable after tweaking).
XP booting is super slow(after bootvis is fast!) and low resources but with a lot of disadvantages too.

 

could you ppl give some solutions instead of arguing? The problem is that i'm not getting windows 7 until its drivers come out so for the time being is there anything i can do to disable all these processes? I've already disabled as many as i could for startup but what about after startup? I don't want these excess processes like windows media player network... eating up resources... i still got something like 91 processes...

 

You can try ending many processes by disabling their start up and/or services.

I use cCleaner to list out the start-ups and disabling the ones that I deemed unnecessary.

cheers ...

 

I've already disabled unecessary start up processes using windows defender... however how do you disable all these processes which start up after start up?

 

Go to msconfig? I don't know, there should be stuff in the options of a lot of programs.

 

That is what I use cCleaner for. There is an option to disable (not deleted) start-up processes. I would leave Defenders alone.

cheers ...

 

Right click on computer, choose MANAGE, go to services and applications, choose services, look in the status row for RUNNING statuses, double click any services you don't want, set the start state to disable.

Please research each service before disabling, or we'll be waiting for your next post, entitled, "Hey, my computer was working fine, but now something isn't right."

 

In other words, "Don't tell me the INFORMATION about what is going on under the surface, so I can understand what the REALITY of resource usage is. Just tell me how to disable things."

Well, I think gerryf19, just gave you that info with the proper caveat that if you aren't careful with that, you can really screw up certain aspects of your machine. And even though you don't seem to want the real information, I am going to give you one piece that just might prevent the sort of catastrophe gerryf19 is eluding to. This site has the best list of information about what each process/service does: http://www.blackviper.com/

Do your self a BIG favor and read through that before you start disabling things. It gives a LOT of detail. Look up a service you are thinking about disabling and make sure you understand the ramifications. It is not obvious what a lot of the processes/services do, just by looking at the name.

BTW Do not expect much change in actual resource usage when you are done. The dormant processes/services are not using the CPU anyway (if you want proof of that, open task manager and look at the column labeled "CPU Time") and Vista will still pre-fill all available memory it finds to maximize the performance of the apps you use. The cumulative effects of those two facts is that the resource usage will be almost exactly the same after you finish tweaking.

Don't get me wrong there are definitely some things you might want to disable. For example why would I want Apples ipod services running when I don't have an iPod but do use iTunes? Why would I want the Adobe updater running in the background ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME checking for updates, when other apps know to check for updates when they run? (Hello Adobe, are you folks BRAIN DEAD?) And there are other similar examples. But the point is, the goal of just reducing the number of processes to some minimum number is really pointless.

Gary

 

Thanks for everything. I'm doing that now.

 

Amen about Adobe. they suck. Except for Dreamweaver and Photoshop

 

To change your Services, Start > Run and type Services.msc

This site is good at explaining what each Service does.
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.php

Blackviper was good at giving recommendations and explanations with XP, but no so much with Vista.

If I am absolutely sure I don't need a Service I will Disable it. If I am confident a Service does not need to be set to Automatic, I will change it to Manual. Even though Blackviper and Speedyvista will say it is OK to Disable a Service, I rarely do. I will set them to Manual in case the Service is later needed.

 

I'd forgotten about that site and I even have it in my Favorites, but I only realized that when I went to add it tonight.

Nice find. Good stuff there even beyond the services list. I like their tweaks section. They all are good safe, solid tweaks.

Gary

 

I usually just go to 'msconfig' 'services', 'hide all Microsoft services' and go on from there. Some of the most common programs are updaters and multimedia programs that doesn't need to be started on boot ups and this also goes for 'Startup' ie updaters, apple softwares including quicktime, burning and multimedia programs.