Processes of elimination

Database News - Wednesday December 12, 2007

SLOAN RANGER

Processes of elimination

Find out what's going on inside your computer system with utilities made for the task

WANDA SLOAN

When you turn on your Windows computer, an awful lot of things kick into gear. You may be running two programs while connected to the Internet, but then humming away under the Windows hood, there could easily be another three, four or five dozen sub-programs all running at the same time.

These in turn spawn their own child operations, which in turn sub-run others. But for daily computer use, it's not necessary to dig down that far. If you have a fairly good idea of your running programs and processes, that should be enough.

A process is a program or program part that is active on your computer, but not right within sight. You have a browser connected to the Internet, but Windows is tuning, monitoring, holding and accommodating that connection with half a dozen or 20 "processes" all working away while you only see the browser.

The generic way to get information about your processes under recent Windows versions is to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and, if necessary, choose Windows Task Manager. As an aside, I wish Microsoft would stop fooling around with the key combinations and just settle for the lovely one that works on Windows XP so well.

This manager has a number of tabs across the top. The first one, Applications, shows the actual full-on programs that you have running. The second, which is labelled Processes, starts to get into the insides of Windows. Here you will find main software and also its first-level sub-programs, especially from Windows itself.

Down in the bottom left corner when you click the Processes tab, you will see the number of processes currently running, the percentage of CPU power that is being used (updated every second by default) and - not important for today's discussion - what Microsoft calls "commit charge," or the total amount of memory that is available, and used.

If you are busy on the Internet with browser, email and perhaps other tasks, you may see a number of instances of a process called Svchost.exe. I get email all the time from people worried there are so many of them, maybe 10 in an extreme case. The answer is they are all needed by something.

And that is the problem. Some of the processes are obscure, unfamiliar and potentially hostile.

To make it worse, virus and malware writers name their nasty software with similar names to try to fool alert and knowledgeable users into letting their programs run.

You can end processes in the Task Manager easily. But you must be careful about what to kill. And that's why I like to use more precise tools for this job than Microsoft provides.

What's Running is excellent for the task of trying to suss out unfriendly or simply unwanted processes, free up some memory and CPU time and make the computer run just a little more smoothly.

This process-specific program is not for raw beginners, but it is not at all difficult to use. It starts right up with a list of running processes. A right click gets you more information. But it also allows you to search Google for background on the process you're wondering about.

This is an invaluable tool for setting your mind at ease or, alternatively, discovering you have been invaded by nasty software.

Process Explorer is the ultimate geek tool for lifting the hood and examining what is running under Windows. It presents running programs in a hierarchical display, showing all their various connections. For example: Not only will it show that Notepad is open with a document called Something.txt, you can search for Something.txt and see all the programs and processes that are involved.

Plus, Process Explorer has a very spiffy System Information display which you can see on the screenshot it took - shown here at left.

Of course some processes come from annoying, aggressive programs that insist on starting every time you turn the computer on.

Both What's Running (directly, in the left sidebar) and Process Explorer give you direct access to the startup list of programs, and you can turn off the aggravating ones.

Microsoft also gives you a look at the startup tasks. Click Start, Run, type Msconfig, and press Enter. Click on Startup. As always, the rule should be to only turn off programs you know about. Windows needs a lot of processes just to run, and you do not want to cripple your machine by faulty elimination of process.

Process Explorer is the work of a small company, SysInternals, which has been bought by Microsoft. The giant still allows the programmers to improve and offer the software for free at an informative web site: tinyurl.com/289vcz.

What's Running, free for home and school use, is the work of Swede Christer Fahlgren, and can be found at http://www.whatsrunning.net.

Email: wandas@post.com

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