Windows processes

[luciusad2004]

Does anyone know anything about cleaning up the number of processes that run under windows? I've always wanted to slim it down and try to have less background processes running but never knew what i can and can't shut down. Does anyone know were i can find a good guide to figuring out what i can and can't kill? It would be nice to streamline my laptop for speed since I'm running on a netbook.

Any other tips for slimming down / speeding up windows would also be appreciated.

[XcOM]

try looking into nlite, also kill the process from task manager, and to stop them loading on startup go into msconfig (Start-->run-->msconfig)

and select the startup tab and deselect what you don't need, watch it though there might be thigs you need, so do them one by one if your unsure.

i will dig out an old stramlining guide a used as a bible a while ago

[Outlaw]

What a coincidence! I was just reading something about this today. They were able to get it down to 2 process running!! (not including task manager or System Idle Process which must run)

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/07/24/running-windows-with-no-services.aspx

And the link to Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx)

You have to kill the process in a certain order or you will blue screen or reboot. I haven't had a chance to test this guide yet though and it does note to "DO AT YOUR OWN RISK". You may want to backup any files you want to keep just in case you crash the OS.

[luciusad2004]

sweet, thanks guys. I actually had process explorer on my comp because i was looking to do this earlier. I probably won't strip it down to 2 processes but ill see how low i can go. All i really use it for is web browsing, chat, and listening to music.

Edit: That was a really interesting read about running windows w/ minimal services but that doesn't quite seem practical.

[Outlaw]

Yeah, they didn't say what they could all do with just those processes running. I'm going to try and get just those 2 running, and see if it crashes for games and whatnot. I would think the processes would start once needed, but don't know if they stay running, and what about a reboot? will this setting only hold for 1 time?

[luciusad2004]

Yeah, they didn't say what they could all do with just those processes running. I'm going to try and get just those 2 running, and see if it crashes for games and whatnot. I would think the processes would start once needed, but don't know if they stay running, and what about a reboot? will this setting only hold for 1 time?

I think it actually said somewhere in the article that you COULDN'T reboot w/ all of the processes turned off. I imagine that if you somehow found a way to not have them fire up on boot your machine wouldn't boot properly. It also said you wouldn't be able to connect to a LAN, which is how I (and I imagine most people here) connect to the internet.

[Outlaw]

Yeah, I tried it and stupid me closed "explorer.exe" haha.. guess what happened. Nothing, and thats exactly what I could do. Simple reboot and everything was fine again. It does only hold for 1 session login. You will not be able to shutdown (through Start button) after stopping the winlogon.exe. After I did that I only had log off/switch user options, shut down was gone. Instead of killing processes in Process Explorer and it only working one time. I went into MSConfig (Like XcOM said), only I unchecked all non required services in "Services" and "Start Up". Then as I found I needed something, like audio, networking... etc. I just turned them back on. While running Firefox I had 19 processes in Task Manager.

[luciusad2004]

You can fire explorer back up buy going to the task manager then doing...
File > New Task > explorer.exe
I used to do it all the time for gaming. Not sure if it worked or not but i figured i would shut down explorer and save some memory. I thought it felt a lil smoother but it might have been placebo effect.

[Outlaw]

At least when I did it, I couldn't. It didn't like me doing it. After the taskbar disappeared and the background went blank, I went to click the window and nothing would respond. It would let me drag the window across the others but then those windows would just go blank white. lol On top of Explorer.exe, I'm not sure what else I had disabled at that point.

[XcOM]

You can fire explorer back up buy going to the task manager then doing...
File > New Task > explorer.exe
I used to do it all the time for gaming. Not sure if it worked or not but i figured i would shut down explorer and save some memory. I thought it felt a lil smoother but it might have been placebo effect.

i still do, i have batch script that i use to start games, they kill processes and stop services not needed, then start the game, i also have a generic batch script to restart everything that gets stopped.

[luciusad2004]

i still do, i have batch script that i use to start games, they kill processes and stop services not needed, then start the game, i also have a generic batch script to restart everything that gets stopped.

Do you notice and reasonable performance gains? I was never quite sure and don't know enough about benchmarking to do a thorough test.

[XcOM]

yes i did, TBH my machine atm, is by far a gaming machine, intergraded gfx on a laptop, so every bit of cpu time and ram i can free is a bonus.