When I press Ctrl+Alt+Del and the “Close Program” window comes up, there are a bunch of program abbreviations that I don’t recognize. How can I find out what they are so I can shut down the ones that are just using up memory?? I tried right-clicking but no Properties option is available.
Try searching for the program name as a file on your computer. If you find the file, get the properties for it and see if it has a more descriptive name. Search the internet for that name, or just the file name.
Thats right…explorer is windows, the rest is fluff…
you can end task on everything except explorer and windows will still work. It will behave a bit differently (maybe really differently) because those programs are not running, but it will still run
Also, when you restart the computer those programs will be back. If you want to change the setting on what actually loads you need to go to start --> run --> and type in “msconfig”. Click on the startup tab. Everything on this list is extra. You can uncheck everything and windows will still load. Same as above, it will behave differently, but it will still boot. You can go back into that same tab in the future to reenable specific programs if you wish, nothing gets deleted.
uhm…
some of those programs do have a purpouse, such as display, mouse and sound driver. Hardly fluff
You might want to make sure you’re not deleting anything ‘important’.
None of the drivers are located on that list…your sound will work just find with just explorer on the list. Removing point32 from the list will stop the wheel on your intelimouse working, but the mouse itself will work just fine.
I stand by the statement that everything beyond explorer is fluff to add to your system.
Some of those programs, especially ones you can’t account for, may be spyware. I’d recommend downloading a software firewall like ZoneAlarm to monitor what programs are accessing the internet and remove the ones that shouldn’t be.
I wouldn’t shut down systray. (“systray” = System Tray, or what makes the little icons and clock appear in your taskbar) Certain other apps, while not “drivers”, are associated with video and sound card function, and I wouldn’t shut those down either.
Tajiri, if you’re running Win98 or later, you can go to Start/Run and type msconfig to start a utility that will tell you what programs are loading at startup, where they’re loading “from” (your registry, win.ini. the start up menu), and where they’re located on your hard drive. You can selectively disable any or all of these programs using msconfig too, but I wouldn’t recommend it until you know what they are.
I have an intellimouse and never installed any software for it. The wheel works fine without point32.
Systray is kind of important to though, isn’t it?
Same here.
What is rundll?
One thing I really don’t like is when people ask computer questions without even saying what kind of computer they have & what operating system. How can anyone answer without knowing those things? You can’t, you can only guess & lots of times the guesses are right.
**If you want to know what a program does, say, ‘rundll’, you can usually put it in your browser as a URL & the keyword search should turn up just what it does.
But what would you have to post about?
Things that have been beat to death in quite a few previous threads:
- Where you can find the lines that make certain programs run at start up (register, ini files, startup folder, etc)
- How to find out what is running on your computer (ctrl-alt-del only gives an overview, if you want more info there are tools like Sysoft Sandra and MSInfo)
- What systray.exe is and does (hint: it is not the system tray)
A search of old threads should give you all the info you need about these topics (as well as the eternal dilemma about Wintel Vs Apple).
What does apple do?
I certainly hope you do not consider the System Idle Process “fluff”… Try killing it–see if it lets you. (It won’t).
Okay, while we’re on quick answers to quick questions, someone save me 20 minutes of search and conquer and answer me this. Where does Windows store its own start-up screen image/artwork, so that IF I wanted to get subversive and modify it I could do so?
In my Windows 98 “windows” folder, there are a couple of bitmaps called logos.sys and logow.sys that the computer is supposed to show (distorted for some reason) while it’s shutting down. You can change them to anything you want. I can’t find the startup screen, though.
This guy says logo.sys is the startup file. It’s the “getting ready to wun windows for the first time” file.
it can have several names logo.sys, strtlogo.oem etc and can be located in C:, C:\Windoes\ etc. Do a search for any files with logo in the name. Even though the extension is something else, they are actually BMP files and, if I remember correctly they are somewhat compressed horizontally, maybe to about 2/3. You can figure it out easily. Ok, you made me look, mine is 320 wide by 400 high.
carnivorousplant, any message you get on any computer pasted in the URL section of the browser box returns information on that message (you do have to hit return after pasting it). I have never found one message or file that did not bring up a keyword URL list of links by doing that.
Don’t change your logo.sys etc bmps without using a set of proper instructions. Time to buy a nice computer maintenace program like I have, System Suite 2000, which changes your startup & shutdown screens for ya perfectly just fine.
All entering terms into the browser address bar does (assuming you’re using a recent flavour of IE) is start a search on MSN. That’s no different from advising people to use any other search engine. The Windows utility TweakUI allows you to select which search engine will be used when entering keywords in the address bar.
As to changing the images, there are a number of utilities that offer a simple thumbnail interface. I know that the last version of TweakAll did this, but the newer version has dumped a lot of options for an idiot-friendly interface.