CPU Usage

As I am typing this my System Idle Process registers as 99 and all others register as 0. *shrug*

How many processes do you have running? Less than 15, I would hope. =)

Is there any other way to reduce the number of processes that start up by themselves without reformatting? I don't really have that option on this computer. If I did, before this thing even got a chance to warm up it would have been reformatted.

I have 56 processes running after I killed a few a bit ago. I know those don't all have to be running.

An easy way is to google for each process name you see. The top hits will be almost certainly be sites describing what the process is, and if you can/want to disable it.

Use msconfig (type that command into the run prompt to launch) to see what all is being launched at startup... prune as necessary.

56 running processes?!?! Damn... your army of processes would kill my lil group of 11 processes. =(

Please post back with the following info:

Using wired or wireless networking?
Do you have Network Attached Storage?
Do you have a Network Attached Printer?
Any network attached items other than computers?
Do you have a Printer on this machine?
Do you connect an iPod to this machine?
Do you run Themes or Windows Classic view?
Do you care if Windows Update is removed?
Do you care if MSN/Windows Messenger is removed?
Do you care if Windows Firewall is removed?
Does your network hardware require you to use DHCP?
Do you have Internet Connection Sharing being used?
If you have MCE2005, do you use the eHome (Media Center) program?

Then give a list of any programs (other than email, web, and games) that use the internet.

After answering that we can give you a list of things to do to lower your process count considerably and free up that ram to make your computer more responsive.

go to start - run - type msconfig and hit enter and u can select what u want to startup

I have rebooted my computer since the last post and have the 56 processes like before. I'll answer the questions both how I usually run my computer and how it's currently running as i am out of town right now.
Also I do have my printspool process switched to manual as recomended in another post on these forums.

Wired whenever possible... wireless occasionally. (as I type these posts i am wireless)
I have network attached storage normally but not at this moment.
The printer is network attached through my desktop
no other networked items
I have two print drivers currently installed one of which will be removed when I'm done replying here. the other is necessary for school.
No ipod
I currently have a theme going along with desktop sidebar both of which I can part with if necessary but I enjoy having them
Windows update can't be removed due to the terms of the college I'm attending. (Same reason I don't just reformat)
MSN messenger I do use regularly... what about programs like meebo? any better?
Windows firewall is currently on and I'm not sure if the Nazis at school would like that removed or not but I do know I have to keep my norton internet security in tact and updating regularly.


I use TeamSpeak fairly often, Microsoft office Visio has updates that run while I'm using it but only then, Winamp occasionally connects but I don't have winamp agent running, and other than that it's all Games and browsers (IE and FF)

Thanks a lot for the help

I also went through my start up programs and other things in MSCONFIG, googled all of them and eliminated what I felt was safe to eliminate. All the other "important" ones that I am not 100% on will hopefully be cleared up here soon. Thanks again everyone.

knocked my memory usage down 6% on average

Never use MSCONFIG. It creates a lil mess in your registry and for some reason unexperienced people think it's safe and easy and end up disabling required Windows processes and the dang thing can sometimes fail to boot.

Please restore defaults before we continue. Keep in touch with this thread... I'll get more into it the next time I'm on.

You realize that killing all of these "extra" processes doesn't buy you much, right? Most of them are sleeping, and they don't take any CPU resources. And if your running processes require the memory these extra processes are using, those sleeping processes get swapped out.

I'd be interested in seeing a before and after benchmark as somebody goes from 56 to 11 processes.

I killed things like MSN messenger and other obviously not needed items but for the sake of clarity I restored to default.

I think everyone knows in the back of their mind that a benchmark is going to prove they don't change performance that drastically at all, but I'm not looking to do that. I'm just looking to kill those processes that Dell throws in that really don't HAVE to be there as my situation does not permit a reformat. Every little bit helps when it comes to start up time and other basic functions and with my luck in the past with prebuilt machines that aren't reformatted post purchase, that's 56 things that can lead to headaches down the road.

However to really help clear this up for other people and because it would be interesting, I'm willing to run before and after benchmarks using benchmarks of people's choosing. This stuff interests me as much as the next person so hard numbers are always great to look at.

Yeah, you're right -- the big improvement will be in startup and shutdown times.

If you want to see if there's any runtime improvement, then PCMark04 or PCMark05 should be a pretty good test.

http://web.archive.org/web/200504010...servicecfg.htm

this page is all you need.

i am currently under the safe configuration, with avg, i'm running 32 processes.

will gardually try the power user confuguration.

cheers.

Just a quick question- I get big spikes in my cpu usage when playing media files- mp3s, wavs, etc- as I look at all of the processes running on the pc, none of the numbers show which program is causing the spike- I can't listen to a single song wo it skipping for a second or more.... Any ideas? Any help would be great- Thnx again.

The benefit is elimination of the processes that occasionally go from 0 CPU usage to 9 while sitting idle. And the biggest performance benefit is the elimination of a ton of processes sucking up physical RAM. This makes your real applications require more virtual memory which is slower. This includes benchmark applications.

When you first open your Dell it is using an exorbenant amount of physical memory. But you can eliminate that down to where after full boot the entire commit charge of Win XP is only 56-70megs. That means with AIM and IE/FF running (most of your time spent browsing and idle or chatting) you are still under 120megs total commit charge. Commit charge is total physical RAM and virtual memory being used at that time. And most system processes and casual applications (chat and browsers) use a mix of 40% physical and 60% virtual memory. So at 70megs commit charge you are losing 30-35megs of physical RAM, and at 120meg commit charge you are losing 40-50megs of physical RAM.

This makes a 512meg system respond with the speed of a 1gig bloated system.

I tested this plenty when I would strip my friends systems down for them.

I'll do a fresh restart to clear Explorer's memory leak and show you what I mean. Then someone with an uncleaned default system can take a similar screenshot to show the differences.

Ok, well I had the 60/40 split backwards... sorry it's been awhile since I've discussed this issue. Here are pics of my processes and commit charges.

In the second pic I included NBF in the background to show that the webbrowser had actually grabbed a page and wasn't sitting at "about:blank".




You'll notice that I'm sitting at 70meg commit after boot. This is because I have some additional items turned on in the system that aren't "required". But you'll see that with AIM connected and IE browsing I'm only at 95megs commit charge. This means that a person could operate WinXP and other programs on only 128megs of RAM with virtual memory turned off... as long as you're not a gamer or some type of designer.

And you could remove 4.5megs from those commit charges as TaskMgr isn't running when you don't have it open. =)

alright well I got home and double checked my processes to find 64 processes running I might just start asking for believable stories as to why my computers hard drive got erased...

Very soon I might just look for a computer that is adequate that I can then mod the hell out of to make a respectable machine. That's one other thing I can't do too much of is modding for obvious reasons.