Running Processes

[Chris]

I recently had to reformat because of evdidently a virus.
I reformated and reinstalled windows xp. Now my task
manager says I have 35 to 39 running processes, tying up
from 185 to 200 mb pf usage. some of the processes look
like they are duplicates. is this right. or is something
wrong, computer seems to be running fine. before
reformat, i had only 25 to 29 running processes and 1005
to 156 mb tied up. what happened

 

[Hilary Karp]

Some people have more apps and processes loaded at startup, some less.
Hard to say what is normal. I have 32 right now. If you are unsure
what a process is or for, then run a google search on the name to find
out what it does. Then you can make an informed decision on whether you
need it to run at start up.

 

[D.]

I recently had to reformat because of evdidently a virus.
I reformated and reinstalled windows xp. Now my task
manager says I have 35 to 39 running processes, tying up
from 185 to 200 mb pf usage. some of the processes look
like they are duplicates. is this right. or is something
wrong, computer seems to be running fine. before
reformat, i had only 25 to 29 running processes and 1005
to 156 mb tied up. what happened

I believe the more physical memory you have the more XP & other
programs will use at start up & load into memory.

I have almost 400 MBs used in my RAM with 1 gigabyte of RAM (1024
MBs). on my computer. However the CPU isn't being accessed unless I
am actually using that program or programs.

How much RAM do you have? If you have 512 MBs then I'd say you are
doing fine. if you have only 256 MBs RAM, then you are hurting. 256
MBs RAM is VERY minimal with Win XP. 512 MBs is much better. 1 gig
even better still. More than one gig I don't know. I have read in
some cases it will even slow you down.

D.

 

[Alex Nichol]

. some of the processes look
like they are duplicates. is this right. or is something
wrong, computer seems to be running fine. before
reformat, i had only 25 to 29 running processes and 1005
to 156 mb tied up. what happened

Some things are duplicated; notably svchost, which runs a slew of
services, loaded in groups. You get a separate instance of the envelope
program for each group. You may previously had some services turned off
that are now running. But it is nothing much to be concerned about
*provided* that these things (aside from System idle) do not take much
CPU time, and provided none shows a steady increase in use of memory
(aside from explorer.exe, which keeps things like closed folder windows
ready in RAM in case you open the folder again - it will drop those
trivial uses if a better use of RAM comes along)