Which processes can i shut-down to improve my performance?

[Xanikk999]

My game is really sluggish and i think i found why. I only have 992 Megs of ram available when i run my game when the recommended is 1028.

So which processes can i shutdown to improve performance?

("Tqit" is not an option! Thats the game)

I dont want to shutdown anything integral to the operating system.

 

[GenMarshall]

If you dont want your real name to be revealed, please blank them out.

Just simply select the Mem usage and if it has your name on it, then end it's process. Thats how I did it when I came across to some program that is becomming a memory hog.

Oh and do save your pennies for a new RAM chipset.

 

[Xanikk999]

If you dont want your real name to be revealed, please blank them out.

Just simply select the Mem usage and if it has your name on it, then end it's process. Thats how I did it when I came across to some program that is becomming a memory hog.

Oh and do save your pennies for a new RAM chipset.

2 Gigs should be plenty for now.. For ANY game on the market.

 

[marioh]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796/

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Please allow me to chuckle because of the thread title.

Ok, after that: i see i only have 22 processes running now - you have 39.
But to answer your question (at least theoretically) - if you want to shut down processes only shut down from those that are *your name here*. (not System/Local Service/...)
From what i see, massive ammounts of Mem gets used for a certain Tqit.exe - Titan Quest ? Other than that i really don't see what could be eating up resources. The other processes seem to be using normal ammounts of resources.

 

[Bamspeedy]

http://www.processlibrary.com/

You can shut down anything with your name except three of them:

explorer.exe
sstray.exe
taskmgr.exe (this is the task manager, so will end when you close the window).

Edit: I found that sstray.exe has to deal with Nvidia, which is a graphics card, so you'll have to find which process your graphics card is using if you don't have Nvidia.

Other ones I know are:
ccApp.exe is used by Norton's antivirus
iexplore.exe is your internet windows

I take it that the few processes that are not shown to us aren't using very much? (your list isn't scrolled all the way down)
Was Norton's doing a full-system scan at the time? I see that ccApp.exe is running at 16,000 while right now mine is running at 2,000 or less. It sometimes does run that high for short periods of times (like when you first turn your computer on or if it was downloading a security patch), but it shouldn't run that high all the time.
You can google ccApp.exe for many topics dealing with that process using large amounts of computer usage.

While the 10,000+ processes aren't as big as what your game takes up, it can really effect the speed of games. For one game I have a huge map that is saved in paint and everytime I load it, it will slow my game down considerably for several minutes. I just checked and loading that paint file runs at about 16,000.

 

[Turner]

And you can always google the names of programs if you see one you don't recognize. That'll help you decide to keep them or not.

 

[Maniacal]

Some of these I don't know what they are but I think they got put on here by spyware/virus (that I think is gone). This is my lousy Dell with XP. I changed the style to win98 since it supposedly uses less system power and it only has 256k.

Specificaly;
tclock.exe - I suspect this is keeping my clock stuck in 24 hour mode. I can't even change it back to 12 hour!

ipwins.exe - NO idea what this does but it has crashed it'self (with no effect on anything) a few times (I get the send error report message when it does).

WkUFind.exe - NO idea what this is. Doesn't seem to affect system when ended.

Pretty much all the other OWNER stuff except for avg, fraps, xfire, trillian, logitech deskmanager (which I keep trying to get to stay off, it's useless to me), taskmgr.exe, and Opera (which usualy used 68,000k not 98,000k.

 

[Turner]

Just running those three programs through google, it looks like ipwins.exe is spyware. tclock.exe looks harmless, and WkUFind has something to do with Microsoft Works Updater.

 

[Maniacal]

How do I remove it? It's been there for like, a year. Or close to a year. AD-Aware hasn't touched it.

 

[Turner]

Google it, you should find some kind of removal for it.

 

[Speedo]

I'm not going to google these for you, but a quick glance through them-

hpqgalry.exe - First guess, something to do with a HP camera or printer, probably axeable.
zdwlan.exe - ???
ctfmon.exe - This is a piece of MS Office, leave it be.
taskmgr.exe - The Task Manager you're looking at
iexplore.exe - IE, hopefully you know.
plaxohelper.exe - "Helpers" are typically anything but.
wzcsldr2.exe - ???
airgcfg.exe - Most like the config process for something, the question is what?
verizonservice(whatever the rest is) - Probably axeable.
smax4pnp.exe - Probably a piece of your onboard sound (smagent told me that), but worth a look.
ccevtmgr.exe - An event manager by the looks of it, but something you actually want, or?
rundll32.exe - Runs a DLL as an app, part of windows; hands off.
hpwuschd2.exe - Something else from HP? Scheduler?
ccapp.exe - ???
tqit.exe - ???
wuauclt.exe - Part of automatic updates.
explorer.exe - This is windows, if you didn't know.

Ok, after that: i see i only have 22 processes running now - you have 39.

Not a big deal in itself. At cold startup I have around 35 processes running - I could chop 5 or so more, but that would mean manually restarting them before using various programs; isn't worth the trouble.

 

[Jerrymander]

Reformat C:\
Works.

 

[Pentium]

You can actually shut down "explorer.exe", you just won't see the desktop and the start menu. You can still use alt-tab, so you can run the game and then shut down the process. Just remember to keep the Task Manager running because that's the only way to get explorer back online.

And no, you won't benefit much from it, but it's fun to do it on a friend's computer

 

[Turner]

You don't even need to keep Task Manager up, as Ctrl-Alt-Del will either bring it up, or bring up a menu where you can bring it up.