OT-Confuser Help

[pntrbl]

I hate to ask but the rocket scientists I've met here are definitely my best shot, so here goes.

Awhile ago JTiers started a thread about XP that was very informative. I've perused it many times and in fact switched my XP to the classic GUI as Evan suggested. Had this puppy poppin'! For a little while ...

Part of the thread concerned Taskmanager. I've poked around looking for it cuz it sounded like a useful place to find out what's keeping this computer so ocuupied it doesn't hardly have time for me, but never did find it.

I did find and run msconfig. Couldn't believe how many programs were running but without knowing what they were for and basically being a coward .....

Downloaded Process Monitor and it's no doubt somewhere in the bowels of this machine, but I've never been able to get it to cough up the goods!

FWIW, I'm on a 2 year old Dell Dimension 2400 with XP on the Classic GUI. Panda "keep me safe" anti-whatever software. Primary email address at Yahoo.com.

Please be advised any proferred help needs to be in a step by step childlike form.

Thanx to any who try ....

SP

[CCWKen]

To bring up Task Manager, right click, in a blank area, on the bottom bar. (This is the line that has "Start" and your clock, etc.) Then select Task Manager.

You're wise not to poke around stopping applications but it will show you what's running and has cool little graphs.

[Tinkerer]

Put your mouse down by your clock in the lower right corner... right click. Select task manager in the menu. Hope this helps.

[pntrbl]

Thanx guys! Cool graphs! CPU usage doesn't look to be particularly busy. If I just sit here and look at it it runs 2%. Could that 2% of whatever it's doing cause it to slow down like it does?

It gets so busy doing whatever it's doing sometimes I just want to give a good belt.

SP

[New chips]

You might try a free ware program that I used when I had a lot of problems with programs running that caused my computer to slow down. Winpatrol

It moniters your auto exec, system files, registery, and internet explorer and lets you shut down one at a time and reemable programs running in the background even if started by the registry. Also if left installed will worn you any time web page or software try to attach to registry. If you pay to register it thay will give you info on programs that you have questions about.

[Swarf&Sparks]

ctrl-alt-del will also bring up task manager

[CCWKen]

If you have a question about a process or application, this site has pretty good descriptions of what's going on. Use the description at the top of each page. The comments that follow aren't always applicable or are simply a user's opinion. Locate the P or A in the index and click on it. It brings up a description.

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/index.html

[pntrbl]

More info from the taskmanager performance window.

I did a re-start just cuz I always do and it seems to help sometimes. Launched IE7, forgot to mention that, and then pulled the Taskmanager up and found that poor CPU was getting bombed!

100% at times and bouncing around like a ping pong ball. It literally took several minutes before it settled down ....

There's a box in the lower left corner called processes that shows 45-50 at all times. I'd like to know what that's about! It ain't me doing 49 things at once.

SP

[Evan]

It sounds as though it is waiting for a high priority process to complete something. It will spend it's time in the idle loop and the process won't be using CPU time when it's waiting for a flag from the system that something is ready, happened, received etc. More than that I can't say as there are many possibilities.

Oh, one thing. Make sure there is no CD in the drive.

It's normal for the CPU to be very busy after a start. When the desktop comes up Windows isn't even close to finishing the boot.

[dan s]

I did a re-start just cuz I always do and it seems to help sometimes. Launched IE7, forgot to mention that

One word of advice I would give is to never use this again. Download a copy of www.firefox.com, and the time you spend on the internet will be safer and more productive, especially when you download some of the extensions/add-ons.

Try the following

Go to Start >all programs> accessories > system tools > disk clean-up after the window opens see how many KB are listed for “temporary internet files” and “temporary files”

Go to Start >all programs> accessories > system tools > disk defragmenter, and analyze your c drive, and reply with the results please. I have a feeling your drive might need defragmented.

[dan s]

I for got to ask, can you take a screen shot or two of that list of 50 processes? Kind of sounds like you have a bunch of stuff auto running on start up.

[pntrbl]

Well I've been as busy as this computer will let me be.

Cruised the site CCWKen mentioned and I'm thinking I can run msconfig and then hopefully use the site to make decisions on what to delete?

Downloaded WinPatrol but judging by the dates there's nothing recently added. I'm not done fooling with it yet tho.

No disk in the CD.

Dan S, 151,531K in the temp internet, 9,264K in the temp files, 88% available free space but you're right , it does need de-fragging. I think I need de-fragging!

I'll delete the temporaries. De-fragging is already running.

Isn't there a way to set a weekly routine for de-frag? Like Wednesday night at 2:00 am ...

And I guess I'd better join the crowd and go to Firefox. I've been avoiding it just because stuff like that gets me all confused.

SP

[pntrbl]

Wow! I'm beaming to you live on Firefox and it's hauling the mail! I just hope it stays this way ....

Thanx for all the responses.

SP

[dan s]

Isn't there a way to set a weekly routine for de-frag? Like Wednesday night at 2:00 am ...

Yep

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/gehrke1.mspx

[dan s]

Wow! I'm beaming to you live on Firefox and it's hauling the mail! I just hope it stays this way ....

You might like these extensions.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/398/

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743/