Slow performance

[Crockett]

I need some help for good friend of mine...That's his question :

Are you familiar with the OS issues? I experience difficulties with my PC, as it returned now from the lab, for the second time. I have a P166MHz as CPU together with OS Win98. Also I saw there are many programs running in the background, and I tried to identify them and close them.

In my 'System Tray' - 'Close Program' dialogue box - I have few Unidentified programs, running in the background, (probably consuming system resources), and when I clear them, I find difficulties in operating the OS Windows 98.

These Unidentified programs are:

- Fppdis1a

- Poproxy

- Hgcctl95

- Csinject

- Systry

Would you happen to know what are these Unidentified programs?

Please let me know.

I have identified all the others, and closed the unnecessary ones. And still I experience difficulties as a very slow performance (in simple matters as opening folders and files in the Explorer, and in opening programs).

Thanks,

[WWB]

Do not kill Systray. It is very, very important, as it runs those system tray icons. I suspect you can kill all the others without killing the machine.

What would help its speed more would be to reinsall it with Windows 95, as there is less GUI stuff to bog the processor.

WWB

[BeWary]

You can kill everything but explorer and systray. Although, some things may not respond like he's used to if you close down those programs. Those programs running in the background are there for a reason (good or bad).

Personally, I identify what everything is running in the background, and make sure it doesn't start if I don't want it to. Go to Start->Run and type MSCONFIG. There's a tab on the right that lets you unselect items you don't want to start. This usually gives a directory the program can be found in, which can help to track it down. You can also search the registry (use REGEDIT to open it) for the name of the background program. This should help you track them down.

HOWEVER, it sounds to me like he's running low on hard disk space. Have him run scandisk first to fix any hard disk problems. Then have him delete everything in the Windows\temp directory. Then delete any other programs he's downloaded that he doesn't need anymore, like zip files and movies, that might be taking up valuable disk space. He should then run the disk defragmenter. Try these before removing background programs, especially if the computer isn't working correctly without them.

BeWary

[StellarRat]

You definately want to check your hard drive space remaining. If it gets low you will experience severe slow downs. Also, you don't say how much RAM you have, but I would recommend 64 megs for Win98 minimum. I noticed a big performance increase going from 32 megs to 64 megs. After 64 megs the performance does not seem to improve much.

- Fppdis1a

- Hgcctl95

- Csinject

I've not seen the three programs above. You can probably kill them. Don't kill explorer or systray! Your machine will lock up.