Hi Judy. I'm not sure, but I think that person was possibly me. I suggested that someone might have some unwanted background processes running on their computer rather than a virus or malware that can be detected with a scan. These can slow the machine down by taking up ram and processor time.
I realised when I posted the message to the list, that I might have opened a small can o' worms. It used to be relatively easy to do this in, say, Windows XP. But on my Windows 10 machine, there are so many processes running all of the time, that it's very difficult to keep track of them, and what they do. I consider myself a person of intermediate computer experience and nowadays when I look at the task manager I feel a small headache coming on at the prospect of looking up all these unknown processes on the internet. However, as you have Windows 7, things might be a little easier. I suggest opening the utility msconfig. You can do this from the run prompt. >From there, you can go through items that run at startup. You should have a tab called 'startup", which, if you select it, opens a list view where you can select and de-select items. It might help you to look at task manager, too, to see what processes are running and if there is something there that doesn't need to be. Unfortunately, this might involve a good amount of research on the internet to determine the nature of particular programs. So, if you don't have some time on your hands, it can seem a daunting proposition. There are other utilities that can help you as well. Sysinternals suite contains a number of such programs, and is available from the Microsoft site. Most of these programs are not intended for everyday users, but a few of them can still be useful. There is one called autoruns that lets you look in-depth at everything your computer does at startup and lets you remove items. Again though, it's easy to jump the gun and remove something that you don't recognise or doesn't appear to be working, only to find that your computer does, in fact, use it for something. So, be careful. If you want to go further into this off-list, I'd be willing to help some, but I don't have Windows 7, so my own experience wouldn't be the same as yours. -----Original Message----- From: JAWS-Users-List [mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Judy Sent: March 18, 2018 2:08 PM To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: [JAWS-Users] programs running in the background Hi, all, a week or so ago someone asked about their computer running slow and someone sent a post describing how to check to see if there were unnecessary programs running in the background that could be slowing things down. Would that person please repost her information. I swear I thought I kept it, but I must have deleted it. Thanks in advance. Judy & Libby For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
