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jakmar · Joined: 25 Nov 2007 Posts: 2 Location: worecestershire

what is ideal number of running processes you should have - i have 63

NickAskew · Moderator Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 112 Location: Thirsk

There isn't any hard and fast number of processes that should be running within your operating system at any point in time, the number that is running dependant on 1) What operating system you are using 2) Who provided (HP, Dell, other..) 3) What software you have installed on it (installing iTunes installs at least 3 extra processes)

If you are wondering what each process you have actually does then I find this website a good resource:

http://www.processlibrary.com/

Type in the name of any process you can see in Task Manager into the above web page and it will tell you who wrote it, what its purpose is and whether it is something that you may wish to disable or is critical to the operating of your computer.

Its not necessarily a bad thing if you have loads more processes than a friends PC, providing each process isn't using up tons of CPU or MEMORY - which is evident if you sit and watch it working in Task Manager for a couple of minutes.

Cheers

Nick