ECLiPSE said:
My pc is very slow and after running all the recommended disk cleaners
and speedup applications it remains very slow. I noticed quite a
number of processes running in processes.
Is there a web site or other information source that has
recommendations on which processes need to be running or processes
that can be disabled?
What is your current physical memory usage? What was your peak memory
usage (commit charge)? What is your CPU usage when your computer is
"slow"? Use Task Manager to find out under its Performance tab. If
there is plenty of physical memory unused and CPU usage is low, the
slowdown isn't because of what you have loaded in memory.
When you boot and after the POST (power-on self test) but before Windows
starts loading, you should see a screen showing your system. Check the
CPU specs to see that it is recognized at the speed rating for what you
thought you bought. It is possible the multiplier or speed is wrong in
BIOS. There are also utilities to show you that info within Windows,
like AIDA32 (Google on it as some sites still have it available) or
CPU-Z (
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php).
A site that tells you about which NT services and startup program can be
disabled/deleted won't tell you what YOU want to disable/delete and
which to leave running. If you have gobs free physical memory and CPU
usage is very low, disabling services or deleting startup programs won't
help. However, it is possible that a low-CPU usage process is generating
lots of disk traffic, like a background backup program running at low
priority. Add the I/O read and writes (in bytes) columns to Task
Manager's Processes tab (View -> Select Columns menu) to see if any are
generating lots of bus traffic for file I/O.