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The Source of the Difficulty

Spyware, trojans, and hackers are today's headline grabbers,  and so a computer user may naturally assume these are the likely source of any computer difficulty. But if there is one unforgiving fact about computers it is this...you have to find the correct source of the difficulty and fix that, find the wrong source and your troubles will continue - an even more common cause of PC difficulties, often completely overlooked is simply this...processes, processes new and old alike, that are running on your PC, and using up system resources.

The problem starts right from the get-go; a Personal Computer typically comes pre-loaded from the factory with a lot of extra software, a great deal of which the user may not understand, want, or ever even use. Your computer is likely pre-set from the factory with applications that obtain updates not only from from Microsoft (which makes sense to leave active) but from various other sources - a number of these may be running. If there are multiple users, software may be installed by someone which is then forgotten or simply unknown to other users.

So there they all are, all those processes, running...running constantly in the background. What are they? Are they all needed? Are they helping performance and security? or just hogging resources? Do they need to run at start-up? or would they be best started manually by the user when needed? What should be done with all these processes? And, additionally, are there unidentified processes running? With so many processes running it's hard to tell, but certainly it seems logical to find out what they are and then what to do about them.

The bottom line is this - a significant quantity of background processes is a likely source of slows, conflicts and general difficulty. The fact is a whole parade of processes will slow any computer, no matter how powerful. It's just a matter of how much parade before you see a significant performance degrade.

OK. So much for the problem, let's talk about solutions. A Process Manager. As the name implies, a Process Manager helps you manage processes. It can do so by helping you to understand what a particular process is, what it does, and provide instruction or suggestion as to what to do with the process if anything - this might include information such as should a process be allowed to run at start-up, or if a process need not be running at all, then how to prevent it from running.  Keep in mind a Process Manager is not a one-button-fix-it utility, rather it is a tool to facilitate your decision on handling each of the processes running on your computer.

Unfortunately, the problem with most Process Managers is they display for you the "running processes" but don't provide enough information about the process so that the average user can understand the process, and further, what to do with the process. Process Managers also often fail by providing less than authoritative information.  For example, silly as this sounds, some process managers poll users, to see what they think of the process, then turn the poll results into recommendations. This may be fine for lemmings, but personally I prefer advice I can fully rely on.

A process manager called The Ultimate Troubleshooter does a quality job. It has a clean and well organized interface, a quality processes database and provides clear-cut instructions/suggestions on how to handle running processes and startup items. You can look to see what processes are running on your PC, you can learn what they are and if you need them or not. Processes are color coded for ease in identification, for example red means "Not OK" and needs your attention, simple. This is also a great way to learn about the processes running on your PC.

Keep in mind that any uneccessary processes handled is a direct performance boost for your PC, if you have ten unnecessary proccesses constantly running on your PC, getting rid of those ten may provide a significance performance boost.

Security Task Manager provides insight into a running process but also provides user "opinion" on processes. And while this is sometimes interesting, uninformed opinion can be dangerous to act upon. Security Task Manager provides a quick and handy Google search of the process and the option to Quarantine processes - a nice feature. A Google or MSN search, by the way, is always a good idea regardless of what process manager you are using. Overall, Security Task Manager is a helpful product.

You can also make good use of process databases to research running processes - Win Tasks Library, and Startup Application Knowledge Base  are handy.

For advanced exploration of running processes take a look at Browser Sentinel - addresses LSP's, ActiveX, BHO's, Toolbars, Context Menu Items, Hosts File, Shell Extensions, Drivers, Modules and more. For example, you can quickly view all installed toolbars and then select to remove the toolbar; Browser Sentinel then removes the Registry Entry, the File, and unregisters the DLL Module for a nice clean toolbar removal. You can also select to disable an item instead of removing it.

Midst all the possible complexity, don't forget the simplest of solutions when you identify an unnecessary running application, uninstall it - in Windows XP go to 'Control Panel', 'Add or Remove Programs', for Windows Vista see here.

Using the above resources, you should be well along in sorting out difficulties caused by running processes, and learning a great deal more about your computer as you go. Remember, any difficulty you are having with your computer has a source; and it's possible your computer has more than one difficulty. But there are a finite number of difficulties affecting your system and the source of each can be located and corrected.

You may also like Sysinternal's Process Explorer, a substitute for the Windows Task Manager.

Lastly don't forget these:

Windows Task Manager - press alt/control/delete, then in Vista select 'Start Task Manager'

Services - go to 'Control Panel', 'Administrative Tools', then 'Services'

msconfig - type msconfig into the run box in XP, or the start search in Vista

Internet Explorer 7 - go to tools, 'Manage Add-ons'

Windows Defender - go to 'Tools', 'Software Explorer' and access areas by 'Category'

Handy troubleshooting site - PC Pitstop

More Diagnostic Help

Driver Help

DLL File Help

Good luck and good computing.