Computer Process - The Good And The Bad

Everyone that has adventure into the Windows task manager has already wondered what were all those processes about. Well, processes are computer programs that run behind stage.. back-door programs is another name for them.

So, for exemple, let’s suppose (i mean i'm sure you have) a antivirus running on your PC right now. And what's the meaning of a anti-virus? Stop the virus..

Yep that's the easy part, but how can they stop it? By running a process that consists on the antivirus detection engine. That single process will look at everything you do, like when you download some file, read a Word document, hear a song, while surfing the web... basically everything.

That’s why lots of people with old/slow PC’s have problems when installing antivirus. Because the bigger the process the more memory it will use and, because of that, more slower your computer will get. It's that simple. And normally antivirus and firewalls beat them all when it comes to memory.

So it’s always good to check if you don’t have too much processes that are wasting needed memory. They can be programs you don’t use, useless processes that do nothing (but still waste memory) and virus. Yep you heard right. Virus are back-door programs too, and they run by processes also (not all of them though).

So you can see how important it is to check your processes and the memory they are using. Though after opening the task manager and going to processes, you’ll see lots and lots of weird names all of them ending in “.exe”.

So how i’m I going to know which process is good or not? Or which one is part of Windows and so cannot be shuted down?

Well my solution is going to this website, which is a true process library: ProcessLibrary.com

Just do a search by the process name and it will get all the info you need about it. Then based on that search you can check if you have some un-needed process running, for exemple a old program scheduler,  some spyware problems, etc.

But remember that not every process is useless and some of them are vital so the windows can keep running. Though i don’t know of anyone that had his windows fail to load or something, because they shuted down some important process, you can be sure you’ll need to restart the PC to get it back working 100%

Normally, when someone has a speedy PC, this type of fixes are not really necessary. But for all the people that run slightly slower PC's, or have lots of programs installed, or low memory, then I highly advise that you check your processes.

Sometimes it's not the best option to just delete them, but to do some home work and check if that memory wasting process  is still required by one of your programs, and that you don't want to lose, as for exemple the anti-virus process.

But remember that not every process is useless and some of them are vital so the windows can keep running. Though i don’t know of anyone that had his windows fail to load or something, because they shuted down some important process, you can be sure you’ll need to restart the PC to get it back working 100%

Sometimes it's not the best option to just delete them, but to do some home work and check if that memory wasting process is still required by one of your programs, and that you don't want to lose, as for exemple the anti-virus process.