SysTray & Icons speed killers?

**Caius** · 02-01-2008, 14:51

Originally Posted by Ramses II CP

Whacker hit it on the head. You should be doing spyware checks regularly anyway, but it seems like everything you install these days comes with an 'auto updater' widget that'll sit in your tray and eat resources. Dump them all.

That's right. Those Auto-Updaters will try to run every time you connect to internet, if you configurated your pc to do so. Then, EVERY time you connect to Internet, you will have a decreased speed problem cause of every one of this programs updating themselves.

I agree with everyone here. Except with W.Hacker, who needs to know which programs are running.

I suggest to the Tree Killer to use the program StartUp Cop. This program is easy to understand. There you will be able to see which programs you have. (Click in the link will download the program)

**Beirut** · 02-01-2008, 19:14

Another question if I may. When I do the alt-crtl-del thingamaboober and check the performance, it shows the CPU running at 100%. I`m assuming it doesn't mean 100% free, since I' using it at the time and that should take some power, but why on earth would the machine be running at full tilt like that?

I killed most of the systray icons and a third of the desktop icons, but the thing still acts like a pig. Oh, and I did update and run AVG spyware, anti-virus, as well as Ad-Aware and Spybot. I haven`t run the cache clear yet.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

(When I had this machine it was always rock stable, now that she has it... )

**Lemur** · 02-01-2008, 19:29

Beirut, have you spent some quality time in msconfig? That usually helps me when I'm getting weird slowdowns ...

Also, when you give the three-fingered salute, the CPU usage should start in the low single digits and quickly drop to zero. (It starts showing usage because you're summoning the Windows Task Manager; once that's fully loaded your CPU monitor should drop to nothing.)

Another possibility: check your disk usage. If you've got, say, a 60-gig drive and it's got 59 gigs of stuff on it, performance is gonna suuuuuuuuck. You should always have a few gigs free on the HD for the pagefile and other such necessities.

**R'as al Ghul** · 02-01-2008, 19:55

Originally Posted by Beirut

Another question if I may. When I do the alt-crtl-del thingamaboober and check the performance, it shows the CPU running at 100%. I`m assuming it doesn't mean 100% free, since I' using it at the time and that should take some power, but why on earth would the machine be running at full tilt like that?

Hello Beirut,

when you summon the task-manager, could you please look at the tabs "Processes" and "Network"?
In processes sort the table by Cpu usage (3rd column I guess) and check which process takes most %.
In network you just check how much of the networks bandwitdth in percent is used at the moment. (Stop all downloading etc. before)

The processes tab will tell which process may cause your problem. The glance at the network tab is only to make sure that your pc hasn't been hijacked and is transmitting data like crazy.

**Ramses II CP** · 02-01-2008, 20:27

Very unusual for your CPU to be constantly maxxed out like that. After you follow R'as' advice if there's any unexpected network activity I'd immediately pull the plug (Or disconnect from your wireless) on that box and not hook it back up until you sort out the problem. Better safe than sorry.

**Beirut** · 02-01-2008, 22:08

Task Manager stuff

There's no network activity at all.
There are about 50 processes running (Is that bad?)They all show 00 under the CPU columnThe biggest reads as ENCWCSVR 0% CPU 40500 Mem usage
CPU is fixed at 100%
PF usuge is 418MB
Physical Memory is 2GBAvailable 1500000System cache 1617000
The HD is 2/3 free. 25GB out of 75GB.

The MSCONFIG still shows about 35 things in the Startup but only 6 icons are showing at the bottom right.

I was hesitant to do anything in there because the three files "they" say never to click off don't even seem to be there at all. (Unless I'm as blind as I am stupid, but let's hope not.)

**Xiahou** · 02-01-2008, 22:25

What do you make of this:

ENCWCSVR.EXE is a primary piece of Encarta Web Companion. You should verify this and see it is installed under Program Files/Common/Microsoft Shared/Encarta Web Companion.
The EXE does not always run in memory and definitely does not kick off based on you performing alot of web searches.

It appears to start up when you are not using your machine for a long time, 30 minutes or more and then seems to be indexing your hard drive. The EXE is pretty agile and when you CTRL-ALT-DEL it stops before you can catch on to what it was doing. The thread can be killed and you'll notice your system runs alot better.

After reviewing Microsoft's vague documentation, some kind of reference is made to web companion searching your hard drive. Well the only way for that to work effectively is if it indexes your hard drive. System performance drops about the same as if the indexer service is running so this is believable. However I do not see much in the way of Web Companion offering a real search across your HD to the end-user. So I suspect they didn't finish the functionality, it was full of bugs or they plan on claiming it is a new feature next year.

My recommendation is, if you aren't actually using web companion then get it off your PC. With the latest push by Microsoft to micromanage your PC you have no idea if they'll pulling a Sony on you.

I just got that off of Google, so I can't swear by it's accuracy. However, it would probably be worthwhile to kill that process and see how the PC performs then. If it actually does index your drive like the poster claims, that would definitely kill performance.

**Beirut** · 02-01-2008, 22:27

Originally Posted by Xiahou

What do you make of this:I just got that off of Google, so I can't swear by it's accuracy. However, it would probably be worthwhile to kill that process and see how the PC performs then. If it actually does index your drive like the poster claims, that would definitely kill performance.

Sweet. Thank you.