Help reading Process Explorer please?

[mikehende]

Hey guys, my HP dc7900 win7 pro machine 'sometimes' locks up and sometimes I hear like the fan is running at high speed for a little while without myself doing much to say that I am putting stress on the unit. I observed Speedfan but not much CPU change to talk about and the unit is always cool to the touch so no overheating issues. Someone told me about Process Explorer, I am looking at it but don't know what to look for in it, help please?

 

[whs]

In your case the PE can only help you find out which process is using how much CPU time.

 

[mikehende]

That's no different than what task manager shows?

 

[whs]

There are some other good uses - e.g. this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/74502-error-message-where-does-come.html

 

[mikehende]

Thanks, will keep that handy!

 

[mikehende]

BTW, I am getting a brand new i5 pc next week, it comes with win10 but I want it with win7, do you guys prefer win7 too and mind telling me why or why not please?

 

[DavidE]

Maybe looking at Task Manager Resource Monitor would help.
It might be something using the Disk.

If it's some GPU intensive program causing the fan to run full speed, i'm not sure what utility would show that info.

 

[whs]

I stayed on Win7 because that is solid like a rock. I have heard too many negative stories about Win10 so I stay away from it. However, in all fairness it should be said that some people seem to have no problems with it.

 

[Barman58]

If you are looking for clues to a specific issue, rather than task manager or process explorer you may find that Process Monitor is more use, as you can use it to record the status of various parts of the windows system on a roiling basis, which will allow you to actually see the process that causes your lock-up. Unfortunately it's not an easy option but it is fully documented on the sysinternals site

 

[mikehende]

Ok thanks, I will look into the Process Monitor. Yes i know folks who use win10 and even win8 without any problems but somehow those two never appealed to me.

 

[mikehende]

This seems to be a browser issue, I wasn't even doing anything on the pc when a "shockwave plugin error" message popped up and locked down the pc, I could not immediately open the task manager. Looking at the event viewer, process monitor and reliability monitors did not show this error.

Now thinking about it, I have been getting kinda regular plugin errors popping up from time to time but I had always thought this was related to specific sites and not a firefox problem. So, since now I believe this to be problem with firefox, how do I fix it please?

 

[Barman58]

Basic way to trouble shoot Firefox is to disable all optional add-ons and other enhancements, (disable the ones you really need, uninstall any that you don't often use ).

Reboot FF and see what happens, if your exceptions are random then the time you allow for this phase is always a lottery, but your experience will guide you.

If you get an exception in this clean boot then the issue is either within the main body of FF or in some other running program, If it's in FF then one of the BETA or Daily Builds could be a way to stop things quickly, other running programs is just a matter of closing them down until you no longer see the Exception. Takes a while but a logical approach is the best way.

If the exception does not appear with the add-ons disabled / Uninstalled the re-enable then one at a time until you see the exception again, one you know that this is the add-on with the issue - either find an alternative, check for updates, or even try contacting the developer directly.

This can be a long process especially with a number of add-ons as there is a chance that two separate add-ons interacting with each other and the permutations can quickly grow, which is why a lot of users put up with this type of issue if it is not to much of a problem, and the natural speed of development in Browser technologies means that faults often "go Away by themselves"

 

[mikehende]

I just look at Add-ons, only one was the "cache viewer", I uninstalled it. Since a lot of the errors are 'plugin' related I am looking at the plugins but is shockwave flash necessary? Or any of the others as shown in this screenshot?

 

[Barman58]

I have all those and quite a few others, of the ones you have, Google Update is set to Always Ask, whilst the others are set to Always Activate. I'm not getting the issues that you are, so hopefully a similar set-up may work for you

 

[mikehende]

BTW, searching the net it seems that this is a very common problem with no fixes but to use chrome:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/957423

 

[Barman58]

Shockwave Flash is actually a Depreciated program these days, all the pressure is to go with the newer, more secure, HTML5 for processing the same sort of content. unfortunately some large worldwide distributors are a little slow to make the jump to the new way, so disabling the plug-in can be a bit of a lottery, As I type here I have streamed TV playing on my second monitor, using Flash of course

 

[mikehende]

Sorry not understanding, would I need to keep shockwave for FF to work effectively or can I uninstall it?

 

[Barman58]

Flash is used by Firefox to play certain types of media files, you can remove flash, but those types of media will no longer work, and the major websites that still use flash will bonmbard you with requests to install it for "a richer web experience"

an idea of some of the issues is here ...

https://medium.com/@h_a_l_e_x/why-we-still-use-flash-104b8bf236ca#.m1tqk76ns

 

[mikehende]

So then it seems I will be in the same situation as many people, either deal with or use chrome.

 

[DavidE]

You could create a new FF profile to see if you have the same issue (maybe something is corrupt in your current profile).
Creating a new Firefox profile on Windows - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

In the post #13 screen print it doesn't show if you have Shockwave set to Always Activate or Ask to Activate.
If you set it to Ask to Activate, flash content will not auto play, but you can still play it if and when you want to.