The Steel Guitar Forum

This is a dumb question from someone too lazy to dig.
My system is running Windows XP.
When I do a "ctrl-alt-delete" it shows that I have some 38 or 39 processes running. Some of them I recognize, but there are a lot I have no clue what they are doing. Short of turning them off, one or two at a time, and seeing what quit working, is there a way I can ID them and get info on what they are doing?

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Allen Harry
Zum SD10
Nashville 1000

Type the name of the process you're interested in into a Google search. From the several hits you'll get, you will find out what it is, and if it's legitimate or a potential virus.

WinXP comes with a utility called 'msconfig' that you may find useful. Do start->Run 'msconfig', and the look at the services and startup tabs.

Also this cool website which identifies a number of tasks and makes recommendations on usefulness and/or removal.

HowardP



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Howard Parker
poobah@resoguit.com
www.resoguit.com
ListOwner RESOGUIT-L
77' MSA Classic D-10

That's about normal for XP. I see a lot of posts about that, especially from those that have migrated to XP from an older Operating System.

Older Operating systems, such as Win98, Me, etc had an issue with "system resources" and the number of running applications. Windows XP handles resources (and memory) much differently and the resources are not an issue. However, XP is a memory hog and needs lots of memory - 256 MB is "real world" minimum and 512 Mb is a better amount.

There are some start up programs that may be removed, such as a lot of the "quick start" that are in the Sys Tray (e.g. media programs, instant messengers,etc) but other than that there's not much that REALLY needs tweaked. Contrary to many that believe they are XP experts, Microsoft really does know best and just go with the defaults.

Just leave that process labeled "LSASS" alone. Don't even think of screwing around with it. It's the security system. One mistake with it and you may never see your disk contents again.

About 6 months ago I bought the program associated with the website Howard Parker refers to in his above post(The Ultimate Troubleshooter - $20). It's a pretty nifty little program. It tells you every application that is running on your computer and gives a description of what it does. It then tells you if you need it, or if you can delete it, disable it or start it manually or leave it alone, and how to do it. It also has a couple of nice clean-up utilities. I was simply amazed at some of the junk running on mine. I have XP by the way.


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Les Green