System Idle

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Sometimes when my computer is churning away I will do task manager (control+alt+delete). There are an awful lot of stuff that shows up.

Can I Google the individual things and see if they are necessary. If not, how do I get rid of them?

A lot of times what shows is System Idle. Is that a necessary program. When it cranks, it really affects performance.

[JessicaH (imported)]

I have googled the filenames on many occasions and it is very helpful. I would suggest going to download.com and search for the latest version of "hijack this". It will let you shut down files as they run so you can delete any bad processes. Just make sure what they are before deleting so you can avoid deleting critical files.

Also, click the START button then click on RUN. type in MSCONFIG and you will have options to change any programs that launch when you turn on your computer. It's absolutely amazing how much it can speed your system up, especially at startup.

[Paolo]

System Idle or System Idle Process is essentially Windows. When it is 99% or so, that means that nothing else is going on. It's sort of a reverse indicator, you could say.

If you Google the names of processes, you'll usually find pages with good info, but a lot of ads wanting to sell you stuff

This is a good info site:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/win ... ary/lsass/

I had it check "lsass" just to make it come up for an example. They do have software for sale, though, but you're under no obligation and the info is free.

[artisticlicense (imported)]

Sometimes when my computer is churning away I will do task manager (control+alt+delete). There are an awful lot of stuff that shows up.

Can I Google the individual things and see if they are necessary. If not, how do I get rid of them?

A lot of times what shows is System Idle. Is that a necessary program. When it cranks, it really affects performance.

Unless you know what a component is, and what it does, don't fool with it. What you are seeing in that open pane is your Registry at work. Making changes to the registry can cause damage to your system. Be careful and be certain of what you are doing.

The registry records the relationship between hardware, memory space, and addressing. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the computer. Whenever you make a change to the Control Panel settings, file associations, system policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry. The operating system continually references this information during its operation.

When the registry becomes very large, the computer's performance can decrease and cause it to be unstable.

If you want to see what is currently running in your system, open the Control Panel, and choose Administrative Tools. You'll see all the services and components of your system. Open 'Services' and you can see what all that "awful lot of stuff" is, line-by-line. System Idle is simply a 'Current State', don't fool with it.

You can Google each component, but Google-ing and other searches cause a lot of junk in your system. Better have a good cleaner, virus protection, or set time limits on cookies. Personally, I avoid Google because of the ad-ware you can get. They are an Open-end site. They do not protect their users, or monitor their advertisers.

If you are like me, and hate to do the tedious things necessary for optimal PC performance, check out MalwareBytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) for a good maintenance utility. MalewreBytes is free to download, but pay to get a year's subscription. It's worth it ($26?, if I remember). The free download will tell you a lot about your system, but will only "fix" one problem. This is a utility that one of my employers swears by (I'm a field rep for Underwriters). I have been pleased with it so far, too.

Another really good tool I use is Reg Cure, a registry editor/fixer utility, by ParetoLogic (http://www.paretologic.com/index.aspx). They have several good products.

Blue Penguin has SpyZooka (http://bluepenguinsoftware.com/spyzooka/), a very good and economical virus patrol. I bought this because of a crash last year. They are the only utility able to stop the Zombie-virus that was going around. They have a good registry tool, too, called RegZooka, but it's a lot like Reg Cure. They'll scan your system for free, too. SpyZooka is not an automatic, behind the scenes tool. You have to manually scan your machine. It does not tie up your PC performance like other virus suport tools.

Hope this helps.

[houndstooth (imported)]

Ahhh...if you want to have real control over your PC or lappy, install Slackware and get out of the kiddie pool pretending to be a master of your domain.

Slack happy since 2002!

[fhunter]

Ahhh...if you want to have real control over your PC or lappy, install Slackware and get out of the kiddie pool pretending to be a master of your domain.

Slack happy since 2002!

<offtopic>

Ah, that reminds me of one story few years ago...

Place: state university of telecommunications.

I met a girlfriend of one of my friends. Then,after greetings and some small talk, was the following dialog (truncated):

(gf) -how do you break the linux system?

(me) -that depends on what you want. What happened?

(gf) -I understand and accept that his car is his official lover. But now he installed linux on on of the computers and I can not get him from the computer.

</offtopic>