Reducing the amount of processes running

Hi. I've got a clean new reinstall on my laptop from my Dell installation disc of Windows 7 Pro x64, with all the stuff installed that I mostly use and everything is running nice and smooth. I'd like to be able to reduce my task manager processes down to early 60's, like it was at the MS Updates stage and before I started installing my programs. My boot time, while it will never be SSD fast like my desktop, is not too bad, around 49 to 55 seconds. It's a Dell Vostro 3550 with i5 2410M, 4GB ram and I replaced the factory harddrive with a WD black 500GB about a year or so ago. It had slowed down to 4 minutes before I formatted! But I'd like to speed it up more. I've disabled all but the most necessary things in msconfig/startup. 10 things enabled, 13 disabled.

There's always about 75 or so processes running. Perhaps that's perfectly normal and acceptable, I don't really know?

With Google Chrome open with only one tab, that shows 5 processes of Chrome.exe. Two tabs shows 7 processes.

svchost.exe, always 15 instances running (system, local service and network service).

conhost.exe, 2 instances.

csrss.exe, 2 instances.

All other processes seem to have just one instance each.

I know that svchost shouldn't be messed with. Is it really necessary to have them all running though and can any of them be terminated or stopped from running in the first place? And Chrome, I don't understand why there are so many.

If there are any suggestions here I can try which might be regarded as risky, I don't mind tinkering because if anything goes wrong, I have Acronis incremental backups of the whole system as of last night, that I can easily restore in 10 minutes. Thanks for any help.

Each instance of svchost.exe hosts one or more system services. You have no control over which instance hosts which service. I would avoid messing with this. The benefits are low and the risks are high. Many services do more than the documentation states.

In Chrome tabs showing pages on the same website will share a process. Those on different websites will have a separate process. Plusg ins etc will also have their own process. This was a design decision to improve stability.

Aside from controlling startup programs there isn't much you can do.

Roman5 said:

Hi. I've got a clean new reinstall on my laptop from my Dell installation disc of Windows 7 Pro x64, with all the stuff installed that I mostly use and everything is running nice and smooth. I'd like to be able to reduce my task manager processes down to early 60's, like it was at the MS Updates stage and before I started installing my programs. My boot time, while it will never be SSD fast like my desktop, is not too bad, around 49 to 55 seconds. It's a Dell Vostro 3550 with i5 2410M, 4GB ram and I replaced the factory harddrive with a WD black 500GB about a year or so ago. It had slowed down to 4 minutes before I formatted! But I'd like to speed it up more. I've disabled all but the most necessary things in msconfig/startup. 10 things enabled, 13 disabled.

There's always about 75 or so processes running. Perhaps that's perfectly normal and acceptable, I don't really know?

With Google Chrome open with only one tab, that shows 5 processes of Chrome.exe. Two tabs shows 7 processes.

svchost.exe, always 15 instances running (system, local service and network service).

conhost.exe, 2 instances.

csrss.exe, 2 instances.

All other processes seem to have just one instance each.

I know that svchost shouldn't be messed with. Is it really necessary to have them all running though and can any of them be terminated or stopped from running in the first place? And Chrome, I don't understand why there are so many.

If there are any suggestions here I can try which might be regarded as risky, I don't mind tinkering because if anything goes wrong, I have Acronis incremental backups of the whole system as of last night, that I can easily restore in 10 minutes. Thanks for any help.

Nothing increases the boot up time more than start-up programs.You should disable as many of them as you can.
As LMiller7 said,you should not mess with the processes that belong to system,that may get your system crashed. But there are several services in those 70,that can be freely "ended" .Any software has its own process(processes), If you have enabled 10 things in start up ,then there will be at least 10 processes that can be "ended", in those 70. So simple,end those processes when you don't need them

Alright then, thanks. Well, it was easy enough to disable non essential startups, but I looked through processes and services and am a bit lost as to what to fiddle with. Guess I'll leave those.

Hi Layback Bear. Here you go. In Services, I'd already unticked a couple of Adobe and Google updaters.
Be interested to know if you think I can untick anything else that might make some noticeable improvement. Or if you tbink there's something that needs to be re-ticked.

Roman5 said:

Hi Layback Bear. Here you go. In Services, I'd already unticked a couple of Adobe and Google updaters.
Be interested to know if you think I can untick anything else that might make some noticeable improvement. Or if you tbink there's something that needs to be re-ticked.

Open Task Manager,go to "Processes" and click (Memory(private working set)) ,this will get your processes sorted by memory consumption.Now you will be able to simply identify the services,that consume much RAM.
In these services,you might be able to find a process/processes that can be freely ended without causing any issue. For example,disabling a service that uses 100.000k RAM could free up your system much more than disabling a meaningless process that uses 500K RAM.
So ,I'd suggest you to check your services in Task Manager or post the screen here and I'll try to find those "useless" services,good luck!

Avoid modification of system services. The benefits of doing this are very limited and the risks high.
Many services do more than the documentation states. Disabling a so called "useless" service may end up disabling important functionality.

It is very difficult to determine the memory used by an individual service hosted by svchost.exe.

Edit: I have had unpleasant experiences with disabling services and do not wish to repeat them.