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Tips & Tricks for running Windows XP reliably
Tuesday, October 29, 2002 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
Windows XP is the most stable version of Windows yet. But many users, particularly those coming from Windows 98 and ME aren't aware of many of the built in features that allow users to recover from almost any problem.
Here is a short sample:
Any time something hangs, you can hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the task list. Often times, what is hung won't report itself as being hung. Here are common process names you can kill to get your desktop back to normal:
IEXPLORE.EXE (IE)
explorer.exe (Explorer)
msimn.exe (Outlook Express)
Pretty much these 3 are the ones that tend to cause problems.
Then there's the overall performance. Make sure nothing is eating up your CPU. If you're at 100% CPU (click on the performance tab) then find out what is doing that. Back at the processes tab you can sort by CPU usage by clickin gon the "CPU" header. Find out what's eating all your CPU and kill it.
Next comes general stability. There are 3 things that can cause Windows XP to get flakey:
1) Too much memory used will make the system sluggish
2) Too many GDI objects will eventually make the system very slow and cause buttons and such not to show up
3) Too many handles will do the same thing as #2.
But how to find this out? On the processes page go to the view menu item an choose "select columns". Look for GDI objects and handles. Then start sorting by them. Anything using more htan 1000 of these things is probably bad news. You may want to add user objects while you're at it and see if anything is sucking them up.
Look also at how much VM size things are using. For instance, as I type this Explorer is using 95 MEGABYTES of VM. Now if I wasn't using the Task manager I wouldn't think anything of it other than my system be slower than it should (in fairness, I run my system for weeks at a time so things build up). So I'll be killing explorer to refresh it back. Incidentally it was also using over 3000 GDI objects and 2500 user objects and 2000 handles. So it was definitely a drain on my system.
You can reload explorer by going to file New task and type in "explorer" and it will restart it. Now it's only using 11 megs of VM and 228 GDI objects and my system is fast again.
The key though is to use Ctrl-Shift-Esc rather than Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task list where you can perform recovery techniques to avoid having to logoff or reboot.
Feel free to add more tips here.
Here is a short sample:
Any time something hangs, you can hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the task list. Often times, what is hung won't report itself as being hung. Here are common process names you can kill to get your desktop back to normal:
IEXPLORE.EXE (IE)
explorer.exe (Explorer)
msimn.exe (Outlook Express)
Pretty much these 3 are the ones that tend to cause problems.
Then there's the overall performance. Make sure nothing is eating up your CPU. If you're at 100% CPU (click on the performance tab) then find out what is doing that. Back at the processes tab you can sort by CPU usage by clickin gon the "CPU" header. Find out what's eating all your CPU and kill it.
Next comes general stability. There are 3 things that can cause Windows XP to get flakey:
1) Too much memory used will make the system sluggish
2) Too many GDI objects will eventually make the system very slow and cause buttons and such not to show up
3) Too many handles will do the same thing as #2.
But how to find this out? On the processes page go to the view menu item an choose "select columns". Look for GDI objects and handles. Then start sorting by them. Anything using more htan 1000 of these things is probably bad news. You may want to add user objects while you're at it and see if anything is sucking them up.
Look also at how much VM size things are using. For instance, as I type this Explorer is using 95 MEGABYTES of VM. Now if I wasn't using the Task manager I wouldn't think anything of it other than my system be slower than it should (in fairness, I run my system for weeks at a time so things build up). So I'll be killing explorer to refresh it back. Incidentally it was also using over 3000 GDI objects and 2500 user objects and 2000 handles. So it was definitely a drain on my system.
You can reload explorer by going to file New task and type in "explorer" and it will restart it. Now it's only using 11 megs of VM and 228 GDI objects and my system is fast again.
The key though is to use Ctrl-Shift-Esc rather than Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task list where you can perform recovery techniques to avoid having to logoff or reboot.
Feel free to add more tips here.
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Fuzzy Logic
Reply #4 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:02 PM
Reply #4 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:02 PM
Many of Window's background services are run by svchost. It's not a good idea to close it down!
Aqua.
Reply #5 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:21 PM
Reply #5 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:21 PM
Do you know why it's running so many copies of itself?
Fuzzy Logic
Reply #7 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:05 PM
Reply #7 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:05 PM
svchost isn't running copies, they are all seperate processes within that program. Here you go...
svchost.exe 748 RpcSs
svchost.exe 816 AudioSrv, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp, dmserver,
ERSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, lanmanserver,
lanmanworkstation, Messenger, Netman, Nla,
Schedule, seclogon, SENS, ShellHWDetection,
srservice, TermService, Themes, TrkWks,
uploadmgr, W32Time, winmgmt, WmdmPmSp,
wuauserv, WZCSVC
svchost.exe 920 Dnscache
svchost.exe 964 Alerter, LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV,
WebClient
svchost.exe 1828 stisvc
svchost.exe 748 RpcSs
svchost.exe 816 AudioSrv, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp, dmserver,
ERSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, lanmanserver,
lanmanworkstation, Messenger, Netman, Nla,
Schedule, seclogon, SENS, ShellHWDetection,
srservice, TermService, Themes, TrkWks,
uploadmgr, W32Time, winmgmt, WmdmPmSp,
wuauserv, WZCSVC
svchost.exe 920 Dnscache
svchost.exe 964 Alerter, LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV,
WebClient
svchost.exe 1828 stisvc
Tarkus
Reply #8 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:15 PM
Reply #8 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:15 PM
"The key though is to use Ctrl-Shift-Esc rather than Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task list where you can perform recovery techniques to avoid having to logoff or reboot."
Both of those key combinations bring up the Task Manager here. I see no difference.
Both of those key combinations bring up the Task Manager here. I see no difference.
Frogboy
Reply #9 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:20 PM
Reply #9 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:20 PM
On some sestups, Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring up the logon screen.
pixElated
Reply #10 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 4:00 PM
Reply #10 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 4:00 PM
Thanks for this informative thread.
Sometimes my system gets real slow because the cpu is being eaten up by a series of rundll32.exe being launched. Do you have any idea what might cause that to happen?
Sometimes my system gets real slow because the cpu is being eaten up by a series of rundll32.exe being launched. Do you have any idea what might cause that to happen?
Jafo
Reply #12 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 7:10 PM
Reply #12 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 7:10 PM
It's also a God-send for alternate shell use....because the task manager is independent of Exploder and can be accessed the same in LiteSTEP, etc.
Often when creating themes it's necessary to kill LiteSTEP when it goes all 'Exploder-ish' and hogs the CPU due to a typo in the step.rc.
Since you can access any proggy installed on the comp from the manager, you don't even 'need' a shell at all...
Often when creating themes it's necessary to kill LiteSTEP when it goes all 'Exploder-ish' and hogs the CPU due to a typo in the step.rc.
Since you can access any proggy installed on the comp from the manager, you don't even 'need' a shell at all...
Tarkus
Reply #13 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 8:06 PM
Reply #13 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 8:06 PM
I use Windows-L to bring up the logon screen. I guess the Ctrl-Alt-Del thing is for those people using the Classic logon, as I'm using the new XP-style logon.
alexlord_y2k
Reply #14 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:38 PM
Reply #14 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:38 PM
does anyone know what RUNDLL32.exe is? it sounds important and it seems to eat up the most CPU time by far...
if it aint important id love to get rid of it! (causes a great deal of slowdown sometimes and this is a 1.2Ghz system with 512ram)
if it aint important id love to get rid of it! (causes a great deal of slowdown sometimes and this is a 1.2Ghz system with 512ram)
werewolf
Reply #15 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:42 PM
Reply #15 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:42 PM
I think rundll32.exe is the app which runs the open/close dialogs, download dialogs, stuff like that. It probably does a lot more.
craeonics
Reply #16 Thursday, October 31, 2002 4:01 AM
Reply #16 Thursday, October 31, 2002 4:01 AM
rundll32 does what the name says: it runs dll's (program libraries) as programs.
jgRpRrJg7 pHN
Reply #17 Friday, November 1, 2002 2:34 PM
Reply #17 Friday, November 1, 2002 2:34 PM
SUMMARY
Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that are run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services portion of the registry to construct a list of services that it needs to load. There can be multiple instances of Svchost.exe running at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services, so that separate services can be run depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This allows for better control and debugging.
Svchost.exe groups are identified in the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost
Each value under this key represents a separate Svchost group and is displayed as a separate instance when you are viewing active processes. Each value is a REG_MULTI_SZ value and contains the services that run under that Svchost group. Each Svchost group can contain one or more service_names extracted from the following registry key, whose Parameters key contains a ServiceDLL value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Service
Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that are run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services portion of the registry to construct a list of services that it needs to load. There can be multiple instances of Svchost.exe running at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services, so that separate services can be run depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This allows for better control and debugging.
Svchost.exe groups are identified in the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost
Each value under this key represents a separate Svchost group and is displayed as a separate instance when you are viewing active processes. Each value is a REG_MULTI_SZ value and contains the services that run under that Svchost group. Each Svchost group can contain one or more service_names extracted from the following registry key, whose Parameters key contains a ServiceDLL value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Service
Kinrik
Reply #18 Friday, November 1, 2002 3:53 PM
Reply #18 Friday, November 1, 2002 3:53 PM
Tips & Tricks for running Windows XP reliably...
fdisk /u/q
fdisk /u/q
Kinrik
Reply #20 Friday, November 1, 2002 4:01 PM
Reply #20 Friday, November 1, 2002 4:01 PM
i was kidding...i am a win2k user primarily. i have recently picked up SuSE 8.0 Pro, but I finally got the online update to work, and now I get stuck at the command line and can't get out, even after typing sax2. I think it is because i have an nvidia 4200 video card, and the drivers that were downloaded screwed something up. i have no idea how to fix it, or even if my idea of what is wrong is correct. until i get some help, i'll continue debating on wiping SuSE and reinstalling. but I'd rather try figuring it out first...just no idea where to start 
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Reply #1 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:49 PM