? For Wiz About Trend Micro

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Hello Wiz,

When I finally get to my desktop (which takes 'forever' with Vista) it also takes 'forever' for Trend Micro to finish loading.
You really can't so much at all until TM has completely finished.

Is TM slow in loading because Vista is pokey? Or is TM just pokey too?

I doubt if there will be any remedy for this, but will Windows7 improve on this BIG WAIT? I hope it does. Oh Well

_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

I look after our office's HP laptop with Vista Home Premium on it. That laptop takes about three minutes to finish loading after you login from the Welcome screen.

My belief is that Vista has a lot more going on under the hood than any previous release and was cursed from RTM onward. Windows 7, on the other hand, loads completely and is ready to rumble in mere seconds of logging in. I expect that this will increase as new startup processes are added, like TM, or Sym, et. al. Perhaps the cause is that the security application modules need permission to check the status of various parts of the computer, while Windows is loading. The boot delays could be security awaiting go-aheads from the Windows kernel.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I noticed that anti-malware seems to be one of the last items to appear in the Vista/7 Systray.

If you use ZoneAlarm it is also a slowpoke to load and could be blocking all Internet access until it has loaded in the Systray.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

No, Wiz...

I'm basically just using TM now, and Secunia, now and then.

Registry Mechanic is due to expire next month, and I doubt I'll be re-upping for it.

I run Belarc once and awhile.

All in all, TM seeems to be going a fine job as the system is purring right along (once it wakes up).

Like you told me in the past, if I were to consider using the full TM version, that I could get rid of all the other single-use 'mal' & 'anti' software programs, and just have one to think about.

Seems like it was right-on advice.

Thanks again, Wiz.
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

Vista introduced a feature where a service can be loaded after a delay? Maybe Trend Micro does that.

For those of you having problems with the computer being unresponsive right after you log in, maybe if you get creative with the delays you can improve things somewhat.

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/delay-the-startup-of-a-service/

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Hiya John,

I went and followed those instructions in the link you presented.

For Trend Micro, nothing changed as far as boot up time. And then TM took forever to load once at the desktop.

There were 4 TM categories in Services:
1.TM Central Control Component.
2.TM Personal Firewall.
3.TM Priority Service.
4.TM Unauthorized Change Prevention Service.

The first 3 I was able to switch to Auto (delayed).
The 4th one had a pop-up flag: The delayed auto-start flag could not be set. Error 87. The parameter is incorrect.

I first tried just changing number 1, and when that showed no results, changed 2 and 3. Number 4 I left as is.

All to no avail.

There's a huge bunch of things listed in my Services file. I'm sure I could eliminate some others, or auto-delay them rather. How can you be sure not to mess with something that is CRITICAL to startup? Probably any item with Windows starting it off, right?

Thanks for your input.
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

You might want to look here, but proceed at your own risk, as I am:

http://www.optimizingpc.com/vista/optimizing_windows_services.html

I have been fiddling around trying to improve responsiveness, particularly after a boot.

I ran msconfig and set my PC to do a "diagnostic startup". After a boot, only these 7 services were running, which are apparently the bare minimum Vista will let you get away with:

Application information, DCOM server process launcher, group policy client, plug and play, remote procedure call, software licensing, and user profile service.

A normal boot shows over 50 services running.

Some services are set to automatic delay start by default. I switched maybe 15 services from automatic to automatic delay and didn't notice any difference in response.

As I understand it, services can be set to manual and will still run as needed. I would like to know exactly what services should NEVER be disabled, stopped, or set to manual. The help files don't give much of an explanation.

I ran msconfig and now have only 4 items checked in startup: antivirus, my backup program in the system tray, Intel Desktop Utilities, and a set of audio controls.

Java, I-tunes, Acrobat, and several Microsoft choices are unchecked.

None of this yet stops the drive churning following a boot. I can't look at my email for maybe 3 minutes following the appearance of my desktop--this compares to near instantaneous with XP/Outlook Express. Other apps are similarly very slow to load if you don't wait several minutes after desktop appearance.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks Mitch,

You're absolutely correct - there's about 50 items in Services; and many of them, I haven't a clue.

I may follow your lead with those 7 items. I'm sure you would have mentioned if something got screwed-up.

The same with msconfig, too.

I'm gonna do a time test.

I've got a stop-watch, and I'm going to time this whole deal from pushing the PC 'on' button - to desktop - until TM stops 'loading'.

I'll get back with results.

This will be a PRE-reconfigure services/msconfig test.

Then I'll do a reconfigure services/msconfig.

And then compare the difference. Surprised

_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

Understand that those 7 appear to be the bare minimum Vista will allow you to start up with, using "diagnostic start" in msconfig. Those 7 exclude antivirus, etc and are clearly not what you should operate with on a day to day basis. I just did it for experimentation.

I fiddled around with services for probably 3 hours yesterday, turning some off completely and turning a few to automatic delayed start.

I followed the more conservative recommendations I found on the web and I currently have 47 services running after a boot. Of those running, 7 are set to manual and another 2 are set to automatic delay, but have not started for whatever reason. Of those not running, 61 are set to manual and 22 are outright disabled.

I have a total of 132 services shown when I run services.msc, but now only the 47 run after a boot.

My first impression is that it did not help responsiveness, but I would like to see your results with a stopwatch--from the time you poke a power button to the time you can actually use email, open and look at a word doc, etc--particularly the lag between the appearance of your desktop icons and when you can actually do anything useful without delay, without the background drive churning.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

I hope you guys keep this thread going until you figure out which startup services are delaying the loading of your Windows Vista desktops (and how to resolve the slow start).
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Wiz:

There is a lot on the net about drive thrashing following a boot and general unhappiness with Vista's responsiveness. I am beginning to think it is unrelated to any particular service.

Supposedly, Vista is "smart" enough to learn the user's patterns and the thrashing will quiet down over time. Well, I have been using Vista for 8 months, and have seen no "learning" behaviour.

I had none of this under XP.

Windows Mail is particularly slow to load and is laughable in general, but the fact is I can't load a random web site or open a random Word doc nearly as soon after desktop appearance as I could under XP. Vista is busy doing whatever it considers to be a priority.

How about an antivirus program insisting on doing a bunch of stuff rather than waiting a few minutes?

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Mitch & Wiz,

Within 5-10 minutes after my "time" post, I did time it; and promptly sent it off; way back this morning. It looked like it went through. Guess not. Sooooooo....

(I actually, this time around , got smart, and wrote down my results. I would have etched the results in stone, but I didn't have stones around. Or rocks).

Here it is:

PRE-Configure Time: 2 minutes/8 seconds.

PC "On" - Desktop = 1 minute (exactly).
TM Loading = 1 minute/8seconds.

Mitch - Thanks for additional info. I'm now gonna back-off, and watch for more input.

I hate to say it, but TWO minutes doesn't seem that bad.

But why, at "5 o'clock" in the morn, does 2 minutes seem like 2 hours? Confused

_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

What is DRIVE THRASHING?

Mitch - I've been using FF's "Thunderbird" email. I think it's pretty good. No complaints, yet.

Thunderbird is almost identical to my old email, Eudora - which went Ti#s-up.

T-Bird is free and very functional. What more do you want with email, or mail, or any other bad news? You hafta hear it/see it, and that's it.
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

Chip, this is somewhat unrelated to the background services, but you should look into the following things regarding Trend Micro:

a. If it keeps a firewall log
b. If so, is the logging on
c. How large is the log file
d. If you clear the log file, does anything improve.

Sometimes personal firewalls will get really slow if the log file gets too large. However I don't know if that's the case with TM, just a general suggestion.

From what I am seeing online, it may just be that Trend Micro takes a while to load. More RAM could help, but only up to a certain point.

Vista has a feature called ReadyBoost. It requires that you buy a USB flash drive (the larger the better) but the drive has to be fast enough. Usually if the drive works with ReadyBoost the manufacturer will advertise that.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2160&page=5

The chart on the bottom is kind of misleading in that it starts with a system with 512 MB of memory. But it looks like if you're low on RAM then a ReadyBoost drive could shave a few seconds off the boot.

At one point I had a PC that booted in maybe 10 seconds...the biggest factor was that I had RAID striping going. But it was a buggy software RAID (actually an onboard solution that's called 'fake RAID') and it trashed my drives *twice*. You can make of that what you will Smile

I could see where 2 minutes to boot is annoying, but honestly it's not *too* bad, especially if you use standby rather than doing a cold boot all the time.

If you're always up at the same time every day, many motherboards have a feature where it can turn the computer on (from off, not just standby) and you could set that to a couple of minutes before you're up. It's also useful for making sure a weekly virus/whatever scan gets done.

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

As to whether or a particular service is safe to turn off...it's really up to the individual. If you turn a service off, you will lose the feature it provides. I used to be heavy-handed with disabling them but now I leave everything on unless there's a problem with it. It's more satisfying, though not as cheap, to add RAM Very Happy

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks Wiz for that thrash crash course.
I think, now, I'm not gonna mess with Services. Leave well enough alone.
I don't hear any unusal thrashing when booting up (I think). Sounds just like any other PC I've owned.

John,
I have 3.00GB of RAM. HDDs = 560GB.

I did find the LOG section in TM. There were many different categories to 'view' - probably 15 or so.

Most didn't have any log listings. A couple had maybe 10-12 entries.
I found a section that said all logs will be deleted after 30 days (and the 'days' can be changed).
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

OK,

I just got done reviewing Mitch's link to 'disabling services in Vista'.

I'm starting to re-think this issue.

Mitch, there are 4 options to choose from in Services:
1.Automatic
2.Auto (delayed)
3.Manual
4.Disable

I'm assuming 'disabling' will have the biggest impact on performance, but causing big problems, obviously cuz things are now disabled.

How about 'manual'? If almost everything were manualized, would this have, like, the 2nd best performance impact.

It seems to me that the least effect to the most effect in 'performance' is in the very order listed above (1-4). Is this true?

Manual settings seem like they wouldn't hurt anything. When the program calls for what it needs, that stuff is then loaded up, right?

That link you sent gives some good tips and warnings about meddling with Services, but doesn't come right out and say what the benefits would or wouldn't be.

Confused

_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Chip;
If you are going to hack your startup services please do not alter any belong to your security program or firewall. Changing those entries to manual may cause them to not start when Windows loads, but only when you click on the icon or link to them. This would leave your PC unprotected during the interval.Also, don't disable automatic checking for virus/spyware definition updates, altho you could delay them safely.

Usually, startup processes belonging to System should not be messed with, unless you really know what they do. Networking refers to the LAN and Internet processes, while anything with your logged in user name is running under your credentials and can be played with.

Note, that rootkits and any visible processes they spawn will also run at startup and it is up to your security programs to disable them prior to killing them. This usually requires a restarting of Windows to set the startup type to disabled, then kill the non-launched executables, after rebooting.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks Wizardo,

I get most of what you recommended just now, but I don't know much about rootkits. Sounds like they're a bad thing as you said they have to be killed.

Actually, now I'm thinking about the time, again.

Even if I were to shave, say, 30 seconds off the 1 minute to desktop, I stlill have to wait for TM to finish loading (68 seconds). There's no way to shave TM, I guess.

One thing that would really help with this time dilemma is if you could eliminate the 'welcome' screen showing my 2 user accounts.

Once I hit the 'on' switch, I have to make 2 more 'hits' to get to the desktop. One is to get rid of the round Windows logo, taking you to the 'welcome' screen; then I have to hit 'enter' or click on one of the account names to get to the desktop.

It would be a lot nicer if I could just hit the 'on' switch and go right to the desktop.

That way I could walk away from the PC and get breakfast (or whatever) going, and by the time I get back, TM is all set to go, as well the PC itself.

A straight unobstructed path to the desktop would be a good improvement. Very Happy

Don't know how or if you could pull this off.
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks again, Wiz...

I followed your instructions on User Accounts.

When I went to test my efforts and closed/rebooted
I still wound up at the 'welcome' screen; but now showing 3 accounts and a notice that the password was incorrect.

The 2 accounts are 'monsonman' and 'nitram'.
Monsonman is configured to be the administrator account. Now there are 2 monsonman accounts showing.

So I went into Windows Security Center and noticed that 'user account control' is turned OFF.

Should changing monsonman password go fairly easy?

You know, I just use the administrator account all the time. I know you and I went through all the pros & cons of using a standard account vs administrator.

I'd just as soon remove the 'nitram' account, too.
I just don't use it.

Anyway, do you think UAC being OFF may have been the reason my password showed up as incorrect?
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Chip;
I'm sorry, but your reply is beyond my comprehension. I cannot understand how you managed to add another account, when all you had to do was choose one account of the existing ones to log right into Windows. It must have been a mistyped command or a missed option that caused this to happen. My instructions should not have created any new accounts, altho that can be done via userpasswords2.

As for User Account Control being turned off, how and why did that happen? That is not standard behavior. Did you perform these task from an Administrator level account? If so, you had full permission to make these changes.

You also said that UAC is turned off on your computer. Why is that?
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Wiz,

I simply followed your instructions to the letter.
I'm fairly sure I didn't make any mistakes - there weren't many commands.

I have no idea why UAC was/is turned off. Now I can't seem to locate where that option is.

Compounding things, too, is the fact that the MonsonMan (User Name) listing in User Accounts under the 'GROUP' column shows: Administrators; Users {the newly created account}

I don't know how this happened. Haven't a clue.

Now, what I'd really like to do is remove my two (three, actually) created accounts; and re-create a new Administrator account. Just 1 account with a new user name. Start all over.

I got and use Acronis now, so along with Trend Micro, too, I'm not all that worried about using the Administrator account all the time. When I was using the Admn/User accounts back when, I found I kept going back and forth between the two, all the time. It was kind of a nuisance.

Confused

_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Chip;
You can add or remove users via any admin level account on the PC, including "The Administrator" account. If you were to delete all of your user accounts and reboot, the only account on the Welcome screen would be "Administrator." You cou8ld use it to create a new user account, with limited or full privileges, as you see fit.

If you choose to delete an account you have the option of saving its files and settings.

You could also use System Restore to go back to before you messed up the Welcome screen logins.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Wiz,

I'm just now getting back to the PC.

When I got to the 'welcome' screen, that third account icon disappeared.

In User Accounts via Control Panel, the 3rd account is not listed.

When I get User Accounts through 'RUN'(Passwords2) the 3rd account is listed.

Go figure.

I think I'll do a restore.

Should I have UAC 'on' or 'off'? Where can I find that setting? I came upon it yesterday, but I'll be hosered if I can remember where that was.

When I get back from 'restore', can I simply remove the NITRAM and Guests accounts; and then keep MonsonMan as the administrator, but create a new password. Is the GUESTS account one of those Windows built-in, will-bounce-back after removing items?
_________________
Chip
Williams U-12 8X5; Keyless; Natural Blonde Laquer.

Forum Index > Computers	Goto page 1, 2 Next	Next oldest topic :: Next newest topic