Closing Processes / Optimizing performance

[PipWhisperer]

Dear all:

If there are processes that are running and taking a large portion
of the resources from the CPU, could I try to shut it down and see what
happens?

I am trying to find where the bottleneck is.

I run a Nvidia Video card MX4000 card.

Someone told me that this card has an original 32Mb memory, but
other vendors have swapped out the 32 Mb memory and put in a 128mb
memory.

This swap is not supported by NVDIA, so the swap is driven by a
software process.

I don't know the name of this process, but I would like to
eliminate it by process of elimination by closing the bottlenecking
process to see if that is the right one.

I have done a archive search on this group.

There is a mention that "you should not close down processes
randomly. It could lead to problems."

The post did not go into any further details about what the
problems would be. I mainly worry if this "problem" would be a
permanent problem or I can solve it by re-booting if I ran into
problems.

So, in summary: my question is: if I accidentally shut down the
wrong process, would I cause permanent problems with my Operating
enviornment? Or can I repair any problems by re-booting the XP system?

thnx in advance.

 

[R. McCarty]

Are you having problems with system loading or seeking
performance gains ? Do you actually have a bottleneck type
of issue or just suspect that you do.

Is your video card a "Branded" nVidia product or one from a
different vendor using an nVidia chip ? (Like XFX)

If you use TaskMgr how many active processes are listed ?
What is the PF meter showing on the Performance (TAB).

Halting processes isn't a good diagnostic/trouble-shooting
method. Better to determine what is running and change the
Start mode to prevent certain things from running when XP
boots up.