P D Sterling added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
pardon my charging in on your thread; I am concerned about
slow performance, and recently checked, ah, whatever you call
it, Shift|Control|Delete, and was disturbed that over 30
"processes" were running. I know how to limit startup apps,
and actually have 1, soon to become 0. has anyone written a
paper or commentary which explains what "bfltzpk.exe" is and
what it does? (named from the Al Capp character of fame)
I would appreciate any information on this topic
Regards,
P D Sterling
New York, Texas & Texas, New York
No need to apologiz, P.D. Yours is an on-topic question.
Shift|Ctrl|Del is supposed to bring up Task Manager or you can
right click on the Task Bar. To see the running processes, click
on the Processes tab.
Now to your question, as I understand it: as I mentioned, I have
around 60 processes running at any given time. Right now, the
apps on my Task Bar include Explorer, IE6, OE6, PSP 9 Jasc Media
Center, Notepad, and XP Search. If I closed some of these, the
number of running processes would drop, but not by much more than
the number of apps closed. OTOH, depending on what I am doing in
these apps or if I bring up other apps that require supporting
background processes, the number running may go up dramatically.
You won't necessarily see a performance increase if you stop some
of the processes from Task Manager or you prevent them from even
loaded at startup by using Start>Run>msconfig. But, be VERY
careful of stopping processes at startup and/or those already
running unless you are absolutely sure you don't need them and
neither does Windows itself or any of your apps. e.g., don't
delete ANY process marked "system" unless you really know what it
does, it can wound Windows or knock it over requiring a restart.
Now, since your concern is performance, are you having a problem
with a very slow boot-up or very slow performance once Windows is
up and running or both? How many apps do you have in your Start
folder? Here, reducing the number WILL improve startup times
because less must be loaded. I mentioned in a previous post that
I killed a number of processes for utility programs some of my
apps use that I KNEW were unneeded.
As to "bfltzpk.exe" (wasn't this the guy with a black cloud over
his head all the time" or any process you can't identify, you
could search the MS KB or Google for it. Some are obvious as to
their intent and operation just by there name but many are not.
My startup times are quite long but that's because I have many
apps in my start folder.
But, if your problem is drastically reduced performance when
running, has it always been slow or did it suddenly get slow
recently, e.g., after an update to Windows or some of your apps?
Have you done a comprehensive malware scan with as many strong
utilities as possible starting with the monthly Windows Malicious
Software Removal Tool and a full system-wide scan using your
favorite anti-virus utility? Have you tried both Ad-Aware and Spy
Bot Search & Destroy to look for unused or dangerous cookies and
possible spyware? There are other utilities I use personally but
I am not clear exactly what you're having trouble with.
If you only have some 30 running processes, you're running a
pretty lean system and if "bfltzpk.exe" is the only unknown app,
it should be easy to kill it and see if it improves things.
However, if you somehow got infected with some kind of malware,
and this app is really that, it may prevent you from stopping its
process and may also prevent you from running malware scans.
Those are two things all the dangerous malware does to try to
prevent people from un-infecting their PCs.
If you are infected with malware and cannot fix it any other way,
try booting into safe mode and try getting rid of it. If you
understand the dangers of messing with the Registry, you can also
Google for freeware Registry editors that are far better than
regedit.exe or buy a comprehensive utility such as JV16 Power
Tools, and search for all instances of app(s) or processes you
believe are causing you trouble.
NOW FOR THE BIG ONE: BEFORE YOU DO /ANYTHING/, BE SURE TO SET A
SYSTEM RESTORE POINT TO ENABLE YOU TO ROLL BACK YOUR SYSTEM
SHOULD YOUR CHANGES KILL WINDOWS.
Good luck and please clarify if I misunderstood your question.
