Useless processes

[Bubble181]

So, question. I've noticed my laptop's been slowing down a bit (as is usual for a pc I guess). Especially recently - I think I've downloaded something not quite good, but Norton and AVG don't pick up on it, so, well, anyway. I decided to see what else my computer is doing, and in checking I f ound a whopping 70 processes running right after boot-up. Now, I'm willing to believe Vista has a few more things running in the background than XP had (which usually had some 19-20 things going on), but still.
Anyone have good tips on getting some of the useless crap out of there, without impacting performance negatively?

 

[sixpackshaker]

Google search the lot of them. There are a lot of process discussion threads on the internet.

Turn off the updaters for Java, Adobe, HP, etc. I've never found their updates to be of any use until you have to do a manual update anyway.

I was unable to read any of the text in the second photo.

 

[Shakey]

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Malwarebytes is pretty good at cleaning out malware. I would boot into safe mode to install and run it the first time.

I couldn't see the second one either.

 

[Hylian]

The best bet is to do a google search on the names. You will find sites out there that can explain what each process is doing and whether it is safe to close it out. If you decide to uninstall the applications that are running I would recommend Revo Uninstaller it offers a better uninstaller than windows standard uninstaller. It also lets you easily see what items are set to start automatically on start up and you can right click the applications and do a web search without having to type the name in by hand. Also if you don't already have it I would also recommend CCleaner. It will clean out all the temporary files and other crap you don't need on your system. It also searches your registry for registry files that you no longer need and it deletes them.

 

[Kitty Sinatra]

I found Microsoft's Windows Defender a handy tool for controlling what runs at start-up. It gives you a list of everything, organized by company so you can easily pick out the items you know you won't want, which ones you might question, or which ones you're pretty sure you want to keep.

And significantly, it lets you disable each item, or even remove it from the start up list. Disabling is a handy first step because if you discover you do want something running at startup it's easy to re-enable it.

I actually try to check out the list of start up programs in Windows Defender after installing any program. That way I know quickly what the fuck's going on. This program is the backbone of my computer protection, mostly because it gives me a lot of information to avoid bad decisions.

Oh, and googling all the processes is a key part of this too.