HELP! What Processes Should Be Running on XP?

Hiya Everybody!

My PC is running a bit slow and the graphics are skipping or hanging up. I was wondering maybe if I have too many unnecessary processes running in the background. But I don't know which ones should stay and which ones can go.

What are the absolute necessary ones to be running?? Cuz I have like a TON of them running. Even if this won't help my problem ...I would still like to know which ones can go.

And yes, I've updated ALL drivers...

Here's my Specs:

Windows XP
Direct X 9.0c
Turbo X-Infinity 420W Case
AMD Athlon XP-3200+ Processor (Barton 512K L2 Cache)
ASUS A7N8X-E DELUXE NVIDIA nForce-2 ULTRA 400FSB SATA AGP8X W/ USB2, LAN, IEEE, & AUDIO
1GB (512MBx2) PC3200 DDR400 Memory (Corsair_XMS)
80GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
Albatron Trinity NVIDIA GeForce 6800 LE 128MB/256 bit 8XAGP
CD-RW 52X32X52
3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD

Thanks So MUCH!!

 

Well, it's a little hard to list everything.

I suppose the easiest way to find out what isn't needed is to simply get rid of everything that isn't.

You can do this by running msconfig (windows+r, "msconfig") then go to the services tab and check "hide all microsoft services". All the remaining services that it shows are not needed and can be unchecked. Now go to the startup tab. Every single thing on that tab is not needed, it can all be unchecked.

So what you can do is uncheck everything on both those screens then reset. You can take a look at your processes in task manager after you reset to get an idea of what you always need, before rechecking some of the stuff that you most likely wanted running.

 

I think this may help you.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

 

I just wanted to add. What I said above was to take care of extra applications and junk that came from 3rd party apps. Leaving what MS included with windows intact.

The link solaris posted is mainly focusing on dealing with extra stuff MS bundled with the OS itself. Be careful when dealing with that, as some of it is very important.

 

the only problem about msconfig, is that you could accidentally stop something from loading, that another application might need, however i haven't had any problems. most stuff you can make out, but some things are kinda funky (names).

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php <-- try this if it works (i think it's down now?), i got it from kim komando (sp). - sos

 

this may help . . . doesn't deal directly with the services but still . . .

try downloading startup inspector from windows, a much safer utility than msconfig. I had the same question regarding my system performance and this program made the process VERY simple to see whats running in the background . . . it even offers explanations as to what each program is and does!

also make sure your HDD is defragmented . . . even the most bad*** computer will run like a 386 if its contents are in pieces!

Startup Inspecter for Windows
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4075.html

Diskkeeper Lite . . . try it and you may find youself buying the full version . . . but this one is free.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1207.html

Good Luck

Wiz

 

I'll second that! I recently cut my boot time in half by doing a defrag, along with also defragging the pagefile and moving it to a physically seperate hard drive, as suggested here:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

Everything runs much quicker now...even better than when I first set it up.