What processes must be left running in Win XP Pro?

[mfh6375]

Task manager shows that I have 51 processes running. I would like to see if turning some off will improve gameplay. I'm not sure which ones are mandatory to keep running, though. I remember in Windows 98, the only ones that had to be on were Explorer and Systray.

 

[sigs3gv]

Technically speaking, IIRC only csrss.exe needs to be running for the OS to still run and not crash.

 

[Markbnj]

Check this place out...

http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx

There are quite a few other sites as well.

 

[xtknight]

As long as you're spyware-free, turning off services isn't going to do much of anything until you start sacrificing features you know you'd still want.

 

[n0cmonkey]

What problems are you having with your game play?

 

[mfh6375]

Not really having problems. Just thought framerates would improve a little if I had less stuff running in the background.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: mfh6375
Not really having problems. Just thought framerates would improve a little if I had less stuff running in the background.

Very unlikely unless your seeing some real cpu usage with those tasks. And, with no disrespect intended, people who come in and ask questions like this usually wind up coming back asking how to fix the box later. I'd suggest if you do want to experiment you leave system restore turned on and take a manual snapshot before you start. This way, if something does go wrong, you can restore back to a working config.

Bill

 

[Markbnj]

^^ Very good advice.

 

[Nothinman]

Not really having problems. Just thought framerates would improve a little if I had less stuff running in the background.

How much CPU time is accounted for each of the processes that you want to get rid of? My guess would be that it's an extremely minute amount and that they're not interfering with your games at all.

 

[nubsedasse]

http://www.tweaktown.com/guides/434/12/...to_righteous_page_12_system/index.html

 

[xtknight]

Does the XP scheduler do it on a thread level or a process level? Say iexplore.exe has three threads running and quake3.exe has two threads running. Is time equally split 1/2 between both of those EXEs and then the process decides how much each of its threads get, or does the OS actually give each of the five total threads an equal amount of time?

 

[Nothinman]

I'm not totally sure, but it should be done by thread, otherewise there wouldn't be much reason to multithread your apps on Windows. And a process or thread will only get time when it needs it, if it's sleeping it won't get any CPU time.

 

[Markbnj]

It's thread level, and it is affected by things such as process priority, and thread priority.

 

[Nothinman]

It's thread level, and it is affected by things such as process priority, and thread priority.

Yes, but most processes and threads have the same base priority. The game will also get a priority boost since it's the interactive app in the foreground.

 

[thegorx]

I tend to agree that it's what activley running more than the number of processes
but 51 processes is a bit much I'd think, with that many I'd be willing to bet you've got a few that don't need to be there or are more actively running than they need to be.
or maybe even some junk in there

I've got 34 running processes right now and have got everything I need "+plus" running

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

It's thread level, and it is affected by things such as process priority, and thread priority.

Yes, but most processes and threads have the same base priority. The game will also get a priority boost since it's the interactive app in the foreground.

Yep, that's true, for the most part. Developers don't muck with thread priority much, and users shouldn't muck with process priority 🙂.

but 51 processes is a bit much I'd think,

I have 49 running now, between all the system services, and resident apps like Avast and Beyond TV. I try to prune it back from time to time, but fwiw the number of processes has more impact on memory utilization than CPU. Right now XP is using about 400-500 megs.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
It's thread level, and it is affected by things such as process priority, and thread priority.

And most importantly, if the thread is schedulable. Many times the thread is waiting on something (io to complete, a notification to occur, etc), those threads don't take their time slice since they don't need it.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: Markbnj
It's thread level, and it is affected by things such as process priority, and thread priority.

And most importantly, if the thread is schedulable. Many times the thread is waiting on something (io to complete, a notification to occur, etc), those threads don't take their time slice since they don't need it.

Absolutely true. Usually they are either waiting on a semaphore, or looping in a blocking system call. Sometimes they are put to sleep and wake every so many milliseconds. Lots of different factors apply.