This whole exercise seems to be rather academic to me. Granted, you can learn a lot if you play around with the services. On the other hand, what sense does it make to stop a service that is not bothering you. The times of small RAM and CPU weaklings are over and any avarage system today can certainly handle 50 or so processes. There is, however, one sure way to stop processes from running: Shut the PC off. LOL
Its called lazy practices because relatively computer resources are in an abundance. Does that mean we should waste them?
Just because the money is good and in abundance does that mean you should spend it? (I hope in light of the current recession that makes sense to people). Supreme Commander is a good view of this. Oh computers have an abundance of RAM we can get lazy with our codeing. Guess what, it didn't turn out so well and they had to opitmize the code and patch the game so that it would work correctly. Now with 64bit those problems are gone so even though the code may be inneficient people will accept it because it works.
I have a MAJOR issue with that kind of thinking.
Last edited by BunBun; 11 Feb 2010 at 13:45.
BubBun, There are a lot better places to apply your basic views (to which I am not opposed). Energy consumption, food wastage, time wastage, money wastage e.g. on military are only a few. But in PCs, I think you waste your time. Any $500 system can handle todays operating system quite well and I think it is a mistake trying to outsmart the developers. I have spent 35 years in operating system development (large systems) and am familiar with the considerations that go into the design and implementation of an operating system. For an outsider, it is very difficult to beat that (although mistakes are sometimes being made).
I'm not quite as computer illiterate as my post sounded. I was just having a little self deprecating fun.The program linked was something I used frequently on XP it shows you all of the programs that are listening or communicating over networks/internet/etc. so you can see that program x is sending and recieving info or is listening for incoming network activity.
There is now a Live version that is run as an ?online-app? I guess over the internet so you dont have to install it. The original program itself though is a standalone app that doesn't even need to be installed and its only a few k's.... fun stuff. All of sysinternals apps are top-notch and low footprint.
I suggest checking out Process Explorer as an alternative to Task manager/System monitor as it shows all process threads and you can stop individual threads/processes/services/and even whole process trees. You can also Pause/resume/restart processes and view all information on each process. It's amazing. :)
I just do not know what all of those activities showing by TCPview are doing; but I am learning. I do use Process Explorer which I think is superior to Task Manager.
My objective in delving into the services is to learn about my OS. I certainly am not using my computer or Windows at anywhere near its maximum capability. If i disable a service and it bites me, I can simply restore that service. I will have learned from that experience. I certainly had that happen with XP Pro.
When it comes to a device that IS a fact a major part of my livelyhood (ie. everything I do to make money involves them) then yeah I will consider it a big deal and no won't shrug it off as a waste of time.
And just because a $500 computer now can handle it doesn't mean squat for down the road. I see lazy codeing practices all over the place and when you question said coders the answer always is "oh theres plenty of RAM, I don't need to take that into consideration".
The fact of the matter is the OS is the interface we use to get what we to do done. If it is inneficient in terms of resources then everything we do will be inneficient. Without the proper tools to tailor it to the needs of the individual's there is a major flaw in the system. No slack should ever be given to any coder, to any one, when it comes to the topic of efficient codeing and resource usage.
In the 60's, I had rewritten a stand-alone OS 3 times because there was only 8KBytes of RAM on the machine where it was supposed to run (plus an application). I wish I had 4GBs then."oh theres plenty of RAM, I don't need to take that into consideration".
No worries. I am not as experienced as I presume myself to be. I am smart enough to not let my intellegence go to my head. In my field, if you haven't broken something, your not trying hard enough. (thats what test environments are for after all) Glad to know that others delve into the system.I'm not quite as computer illiterate as my post sounded. I was just having a little self deprecating fun.
I just do not know what all of those activities showing by TCPview are doing; but I am learning. I do use Process Explorer which I think is superior to Task Manager.
My objective in delving into the services is to learn about my OS. I certainly am not using my computer or Windows at anywhere near its maximum capability. If i disable a service and it bites me, I can simply restore that service. I will have learned from that experience. I certainly had that happen with XP Pro.
I had to tweak XP alot to get it to stop using processes that I didn't need. here is my level of running processes:
win98 7 processes running on startup
winXP 25 processes running on startup
Win7 75 processes running on startup <--this is my next project....there are tons of services in msconfig that are not running, but I don't think I need all 75 of these things running.
Let's see if I can steer this back on topic.. (this may take a bit) LOL
I want to answer this charge first. I have never used apple and only have a brief acquaintance with Linux. As I said I have used windows since Windows 3.1.. and started with Dos 5.0 before that.
Did you suppose I am a Linux fanboy who infilrtrates windows forums just so I can knock down Microsoft? Microsoft has done plenty to knock itself down over the years. The things I state above are true and not some made up rhetoric by a fanboy.
If I am a fanboy for anyone.. it's for Microsoft because that is what I have used over all these years since the IBM compatible PC first came out. I just do not like the way they do certain things.
Up until Window XP you had total control over your operating system. With the XP major re-write, the OS became so internally integrated in the way it works. A friend of mine described it this way, " XP has it's tentacles into everything". It suddenly became less straight forward what libraries were doing what to other libraries and how they all functioned together.
It is being able to understand this for Windows 7 that interests me. Trouble shooting Windows 98 was a breeze.. there was nothing even at the most hard core deepest recesses of the OS's depths one could not manipulate and fix.
Now we have the registry. A simple interface between you and XP, Vista's and Win 7's deep core that let you manipulate certain things.. but it does not give you access to that core functionality itself. Most things that would let you really work with the OS are locked off to you because they are not implemented in the registry for you to access and manipulate. Microsoft has done this to try to help protect the user from himself so Microsoft claims, but I suspect it has more to do with Microsoft protecting it's secrets. Microsoft isn't making it easy for a user to really know the system like they used to.
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