Testing 1 2 3 Testing Testing

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm still testing my old/new firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware configuration on my new PC. I basically set everything high as possible then have to go to all the sites that I visit (of course this is the prime one) and make sure I can do everything that I used to be able to do.

I'm checking my ability to post images. Since I gave fair warning in the title of the post that this is just a test, I assume anyone actually reading this has at least some vague interest.

The following screenshot is my task manager showing all processes that run on my PC while connected to the Internet with my firewall and real time virus protection running. I defy anyone to have less processes running on an operational PC.   

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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
18 That is great. I can only get mine down to 22 with firewall and my mouse control program(I have to have it for the extra buttons to work). Maybe you could give some tips on extinguishing some of the uneeded processes.

Edit:oops 17, forgot the taskmngr was one of them.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I used Services Guide for Windows XP it helps out quite a bit. BTW 22 isn't bad in itself. When I got this PC, pre-configured by HP, it had over 50!!!

One point about the Elder Geek Services Guide. In general if I thought I wanted to disable a service I first tried setting it to manual and seeing if it got started or not. If it did get started even on manual and I definitely wanted it off, only then did I disable it. The manual setting works quite nicely, starting a service as it's needed and then deleting it once complete.

You'd be surprised how many programs just set all their services to start automatically (or even worse put them in the HKLM\Microsoft\...\Run registry key) when there's no reason to. DVD/CD burning software is particularly notorious for this.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can run with 17 myself
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep, 17 for browser only on a clean boot is easy to match (can't really beat it unless you find an AV+FW that only uses one process--good luck with that).

But life's too short to be trading the extra effort every day using the machine just to save 4 or 5 more processes and 30mb of ram used by the dock, IM, atiTool (I hate the CCC), and a network monitor (that alone consumes 20mb of that + 2 processes, but is necessary for keeping watch of bandwidth used since my $%%&#$% ISP has quotas... I certainly hope the local DSL provider gets their act around and sorts things out soon so I can switch).

Plus work necessitates keeping IRC, email, and browser running all day anyway.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep, 17 for browser only on a clean boot is easy to match

Remember, I did start from over 50 on the unclean boot image provided by HP. If it had been only an extra 4 or 5 I wouldn't have bothered. Plus I felt stripping out HP's boot monitor plus God know's what else was a benefit. In the end it made me feel much better about my new PC. Even if that's all it accomplished, it was worth it.

Plus this was just a test to make sure I could post an image, so there.   
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the default XP installation has 16 running processes. I'm looking at a screen shot I made when I last formated my computer.

Oh well, good work on cleaning your computer. Me, I'm stuck with Norton and all of their extra processes for another year. I really need to find something much better...

P.S. The link you provided looks interesting. Thanks for providing it.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, I was mistaken. I actually have 16 with browser, firewall and virus scan. There was an "extra" svchost due to paint having been active to paste in the screenshot. This does *seem* to be stable as well. I'd like to hear Kryo's opinion on the current set. Is there anything obvious that I'm missing?

I did have a "clean boot" where I had only 14 processes running and bad things were happening to me (couldn't post a web link or insert image) but a reboot fixed it.

I've heard of memory leaks, but has anyone heard of process leaks?

ca.exe is my firewall, vsmon.exe is my virus scan, everything else (besides taskmgr and iexplore) is my XP "clean boot".

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There was an "extra" svchost due to paint having been active to paste in the screenshot. This does *seem* to be stable as well. I'd like to hear Kryo's opinion on the current set. Is there anything obvious that I'm missing?


Basically, the non-svchost stuff (spoolsv, lsass, csrss, smss, winlogon, services, system, idleprocess) is all core, vital stuff, so getting rid of that will only cause trouble. How many processes svchost uses can vary, since it comes and goes based on other factors not necessarily linked to the number of services running at any given time. You've got one less svchost running, though, but that's not really something easily controlled.

If you really want to be uptight about it, you could just kill explorer and run shell-less (also taking you below 100MB memory used), using taskman (which you can dismiss and bring back with Ctrl-Shift-Esc) to open programs and such
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If you really want to be uptight about it

No. I was more worried that I've already gone too far and may have killed something necessary. What was worrisome was that at least on one clean boot I came up short on processes (wish I had noticed which one) and bad things happened to me. The next and additional subsequent boots all came up in the same (working) condition which made me wonder how things could come up non-deterministically.