# Computer slowing down question



## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

My computer has suddenly started slowing down and stalling often. It didnât do this before. I checked the processes that are running when I start it up, and there are 28 of them. That seems like a lot of processes to be running when all it is doing is showing the desktop with no programs running. 

Are these all necessary? Can I close or delete some of them to get the computer back up to speed? Iâm wondering why at least one of them (svchost.exe) is on the list several times. Can someone tell me if this is normal or are some of these things slowing down my computer? 

At the bottom of that list is a bar that says âCPU Usageâ. It bounces from 2% to 85% when Iâm not doing anything. Something is obviously going on in the background. 

DDCMan.exe
KBD.EXE
hpsysdrv.exe
explorer.exe
svchost.exe
nvsvc32.exe
mainserv.exe
alg.exe
spoolsv.exe
LEXPPS.EXE
LEXBCES.EXE
svchost.exe
apcsystray.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
lsass.exe
services.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
WPWIN8.EXE
smss.exe
OSA.EXE
FINDFAST.EXE
taskmgr.exe
hkcmd.exe
System
System Idle Process


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

How are you measuring "slowness"? All applications slow down, only the web page loading? The only thing that jumps out is DDCMan.exe. ddcman.exe is an advertising program by WinSoftware. This process monitors your browsing habits and distributes the data back to the author's servers for analysis. This also prompts advertising popups. This process is a security risk and should be removed from your system.

You can also stop OSA.EXE unless you launch office tools several times an hour. Its a speed up office starter. For most people who run office a couple of times a day its not worth running.

WPWIN8.EXE should be word perfect yet you also have office on the machine? This might be a virus


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## snv1492 (Jun 9, 2007)

The svchost.exe processes are normal and it is normal for there to be multiple instances of them.

First, get rid of the ddcman by uninstalling WildTangent from your add/remove programs in the control panel. You don't need it unless you play any wild tangent games which will prompt you to reinstall it.

The problem is probably the findfast.exe indexing service. It constantly scans your harddrive to build its search index. It's not essential and unless you have a truly massive harddrive, you'd never notice its absence. It just more bloatware from microsoft.

You should be able to disable it in your task manager, and prevent it from starting manually by removing it from your start up folder. 

Then click on start >> run and type msconfg in the box. Click on the startup tag in window that opens, and you can remove any non essential software from starting up automatically.

I'd probably uncheck any of the things starting with LEX, and OSA.EXE and WPWIN8.EXE. If you have things like Quicktime or Real player on your computer, you can also uncheck them.

The LEX* are lexmark printer processes, but disabling them doesn't prevent your printer from working, and OSA.EXE isn't important, it just makes windows office files open faster at the expense of speed when you're not using Office.

If you change anything in msconfig, the first time you reboot the computer, a dialog box will pop up. Just check the bok and click ok.

Most software does not need to start when your computer starts. It's aggravating that software manufacturers think their software is so important that they install a startup process to let it start sucking up resources immediately. After I install new software, I immediately remove anything it installed into the startup folder, and run msconfig to see if it installed a startup process, and uncheck those. Then I run add/remove programs to see if it installed any third-party software, like WildTangent or the ViewPoint media player which seems to be installed with everything. I've been deleting the ViewPoint media player for years, but I have never seen a video file in a viewpoint media format. I don't know how that company stays in business producing a media player no one uses.


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## Rocky Fields (Jan 24, 2007)

Hey.

You should have at least 20% free space on your harddrive.

Clean out your cookies and history.

Scan for virus and spyware.

Icons on your toolbar on the bottom will usually have an exit or disable choice...also gives you an idea of some of the programs running.

RF


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Spinner said:


> Iâm wondering why at least one of them (svchost.exe) is on the list several times.


As snv1492 said, that's normal. However, there is a bug in the Windows Update utility that can make svchost.exe max-out CPU usage that way. Try disabling automatic updates for a while and see if that helps.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

> You should have at least 20% free space on your harddrive.


WHY? What is magical about 20% Heck 20% on my system is over 200gb of free space.



> Clean out your cookies and history.


'
WHY? they dont take up much space and dont slow down computers contrary to popular belief



> Scan for virus and spyware.


You should always have a virus checker running and one that links into your mail program to check mail coming in. Stop clicking on every little image on a web site and stop going to get rich quick web sites will get rid of most of your spyware, dropping IE will also help.


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## snv1492 (Jun 9, 2007)

Gary in ohio said:


> WHY? What is magical about 20%


You can not defragment if you have less than 15% freespace, at least not with windows defrag tool. 20% is a good number to keep free. You can use that space for your swap file.



> Heck 20% on my system is over 200gb of free space.


You have a terabyte harddrive?


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

No a raid array with a TB worth of drives.


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## Rocky Fields (Jan 24, 2007)

Gary,

I said: "Clean out your cookies and history."

Gary said: "WHY? they dont take up much space and dont slow down computers contrary to popular belief"

Answer: Some virii write their own cookies

snv1492 answered your other gripe with the 20% of hd free well...this has been a rule of thumb in tech circles for a long time

RF


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## snv1492 (Jun 9, 2007)

Gary in ohio said:


> No a raid array with a TB worth of drives.


The 20% rule of thumb only applies to the OS drive/partition. 

You can fill non-OS partitions to the brim. You still won't beable to defrag without moving some files, but if its just a storage partition it doesn't really matter. They don't need defragging often.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

I turned off some stuff and must have turned off to much cause then windows wouldn't load. Now that I can get online again, I'll go thru and do everything advised above. Is there someplace where I can look up the thinks on that list to find out what they are. I appreciate everyone who answers questions here, but feel like I'm taking advantage of your knowledge. I would look it up if I had any idea where to find the info. (and it doesn't include buying an expensive program or book... LOL)

I have about 80% free space on my hard drive. That's why I couldn't understand why things run so slow. Everything is slow. Web pages load fairly fast, but the computer is taking 10 minutes to turn on when it used to turn on in a few seconds. When I open a program or a file it's taking several minutes to load. I haven't added any new programs so I can't figure out what caused it to suddenly slow down so much. 

I have it set to dump cookies every time I close my browser. Is it possibly keeping some behind the scenes where I can't see them?

I don't use automatic updates, but found they were turned on again so turned them back off. they turn on every now and then. I must click something somewhere that changes that. 

I don't use IE, and thought that it was deleted from my computer, but found out I only deleted the short cuts. How can I delete the entire program? 

Thanks for all the advice.


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## snv1492 (Jun 9, 2007)

Spinner said:


> Is there someplace where I can look up the thinks on that list to find out what they are.


In the msconfig >> startup tab, there is a column for Startup Items which gives the filename. If it's a program you installed, you will probably recognize it. If not, look in the command column. You will probably have to click on the separator between Command and Location and drag it to the right, because the window isn't resizable.

If you couldn't figure out what a program was from the Startup Item column, the command column will give you the full path of the file and you will almost certainly be able to tell what the program is.

It you still don't recognize it, go to either of these sites and look it up.
http://www.liutilities.com/ 
http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/ 

Pretty much anything in your Program files directory, with the exception of any antivirus software, and any software required for your network card/modem to start, can have their start up processes removed. You can't remove anything from the msconfig startup tab that will cause your computer not to start (but stay out of the other tabs in msconfig), and if you find that something isn't working, you can go back to msconfig, reenable it, and reboot.



> I have about 80% free space on my hard drive. That's why I couldn't understand why things run so slow. Everything is slow. Web pages load fairly fast, but the computer is taking 10 minutes to turn on when it used to turn on in a few seconds. When I open a program or a file it's taking several minutes to load. I haven't added any new programs so I can't figure out what caused it to suddenly slow down so much.


Have you defragmented lately? To see if you need to defragment
1) open My Computer
2) RIGHT-click on your C: drive
3) click properties.
4) click the Tools tab
5) click Deframent Now

In the window that opens, click the analyze button. After a few minute it will report if you should defrag your drive or not. If you have never defraged your drive before, depending on the size of your drive and how badly it is fragmented, defragmenting can take several hours, so it is best to start defraging before you go to bed. You CAN NOT use the computer while it is defraging.



> I have it set to dump cookies every time I close my browser. Is it possibly keeping some behind the scenes where I can't see them?


I wouldn't worry about cookies. They aren't related to your problem.



> I don't use IE, and thought that it was deleted from my computer, but found out I only deleted the short cuts. How can I delete the entire program?


You can't. IE isn't just a web browser, it is an integrated part of Windows. You could painstakingly remove all of the web browser files manually, but there's no reason to do that because IE will still be on the computer.


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