Is it possible ...

[Gibbo]

... in windows, to have things that are running in the background
appear on the taskbar so that you know why your machine is
running so bloody slowly?

When I turned my laptop on today, for the first time since last
Tuesday, it was running painfully slowly. So much so that it was
quite clear that something, other than what I was doing, was
caning the processor. But what???

I'm not sure what I would do with the knowledge but surely it would
be better to know what the hell was going on?

Do you know?

[bobda]

You can do a CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and then view all the running processes & programs. Sort the list by CPU usage and you should get a good idea of what's hogging so much.
How much free hard drive space do you have? If it's less than 15% then Windows can throw a massive strop.

[Icheb]

Just out of interest, what flavour of Wondoze are you running and what processor do you have installed? If its XP, then this sounds pretty normal too me. Set a scheduled defrag and disc clean up. Also, type msconfig into the run box, click on the boot icon, followed by advanced options, then make sure the number of processors box is ticked and click on the drop down menu and change it the max setting (probably two).

You could also have a goosey gander in the start-up tab and see which programs are running during the start up process. Then take the tick out of items you don't need to start up with window$. Adobe likes to hog system resources and isn't really required when you first boot up. I know it used to take an age to get Adobe reader running in the days of window$ 98/ME/2K but not ant more, so you can safely turn those features off. Anything Apple can be turned off (unless you run and iPod or iPhone and sync on a daily basis).

HTH

[Gibbo]

@bobda ... my C drive has 191GB free out of 372GB.

@icheb ... I'm running Windows Vista.

[Icheb]

Meh! Windows Vista - Microsoft's first attempt at creating Windows 7.

You can still try my above suggestions though. If you're running Vista then its more than likely to have a dual core processor

Cheers.

EDIT: Just out of interest, what security are you running in terms of AV and Fire Wall?

[bobda]

Originally Posted by Gibbo

@bobda ... my C drive has 191GB free out of 372GB.

That's plenty to run happily.

@icheb ... I'm running Windows Vista.

Oh. I'm so terribly sorry to hear this.

Originally Posted by Icheb

EDIT: Just out of interest, what security are you running in terms of AV and Fire Wall?

Good point - "First time since last Tuesday" would indicate that maybe a weekly scheduled virus scan was taking place. I don't know why but they are often set by AV manufacturers to run on a Friday afternoon and if one hasn't been run for a while it might be that causing the speed issues.

[Gibbo]

I guess that my original concept is not possible ie displaying what
is running in the background so that you don't have to go looking
to find out?

[Icheb]

You could try this Widget but to be honest, I personally find that running widgets on Vista will only slow it down further. In this case, you'll be slowing your system down to see what's causing the slow down in the first place.

Let us know how you get on though

Download Top Process Monitor 3.3 Free - This simple Sidebar gadget shows the top processes on your system - Softpedia

[Gibbo]

I've done what bobda suggested and looked at the things that
are running and that is slightly surprising. The iplayer appears to
be running even though I have closed it, so does skype. Why is
that? There are others aswell and iexplore appears on the list
several times

Stuff is set up to run automatically on boot.

It's annoying.

Look here to disable programs that run from start-up:

Optimize Windows Vista for better performance


Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools > Manage Startup Programs (LHS)

[Gibbo]

That looks interesting, Nev, thanks

[bazza]

If there's anything on the processes list which you don't recognise, always worth googling it. There's usually an explanation out there of what software it's connected to.

[Alfa Vincent]

Still not got that iMac?
One click on activity monitor would tell you everything you needed to know.

that was of no help, I know

old skool in a terminal: % ps -aux | w

[Alfa Vincent]