LF Advanced Task Killer style program for PC

[Stazkat]

Just curious if anyone is familiar with a program for PC that works on the same basic idea as ATK for smart phones? When I open my task manager there are about a bazillion programs running and I am not sure what most of them are. Any advice would be helpful.

[Darsithis]

Moved to Computer

[dontknowdoya]

Just curious if anyone is familiar with a program for PC that works on the same basic idea as ATK for smart phones? When I open my task manager there are about a bazillion programs running and I am not sure what most of them are. Any advice would be helpful.

You can always Google a process to find out what it is. A good reference website, last I checked, for optimization is http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/

[Stazkat]

Moved to Computer

Thanks. I just realized I put in wrong forums.

[Wrestler10307]

What are you trying to achieve by this? Most of the bazillion programs in the background are necessary for your computer to run correctly. If you have a lot of programs on startup that you don't want, try going into each of them and disabling start at windows boot. If they don't have this option, go to "Run," and type in "msconfig." When in msconfig, you can enable or disable programs from starting when windows boots, as well as services which run in the background.

Knowing this, you should be careful about what you choose to disable, and if there is anything you don't know about, google the process first.

[Stazkat]

You can always Google a process to find out what it is. A good reference website, last I checked, for optimization is http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/

Thanks for the advice.

What are you trying to achieve by this? Most of the bazillion programs in the background are necessary for your computer to run correctly. If you have a lot of programs on startup that you don't want, try going into each of them and disabling start at windows boot. If they don't have this option, go to "Run," and type in "msconfig." When in msconfig, you can enable or disable programs from starting when windows boots, as well as services which run in the background.

Knowing this, you should be careful about what you choose to disable, and if there is anything you don't know about, google the process first.

I am mostly just trying to stop anything that is not needed. Just figured I could improve my computers performance by stopping tasks that do not need to be running. Thanks for the info about msconfig. I will be giving that a try.

[tielknight]

Before you start disabling things, make damn sure it is not essential for your computer to function and it is not something that you use(printer drivers for example) on a regular basis.

What kind of specs does your computer have? When do you run into performance problems(opening programs, gaming, browsing websites, watching online videos, etc)? Might be able to help figure out what is making it run slow(if it's not the hardware itself) and give you some possible fixes.

[Kuntantee]

Clear your startup programs from msconfig -> Startup. You don't need a third-party software for that. Also, even if you disable something important (eg. some critical services), you will be forced to restart at worst. So don't be afraid that much.

[haxartus]

Process Hacker can differentiate between processes created by Local Service, Network Service, System and the user itself.
You just want to pay attention to the user processes for now.
Then you basically google the processes one by one. If it's not needed, stop it from msconfig and regedit, or uninstall the program entirely..