How / get to know, What are the programs running in the background ?

[reaper9111]

Hello guys, i recently had a problem with my pc, it was Overheating, due to the fact that my fan was full of dust...

Some of you guys told me about lots of things to try to make OB's run better, this was includding (Turning Off background programs)...

Even if i fix my crashing problem, i would like to know what / where and how to turn those "Background Programs Off" ?

 

So yeah, is there a place in my pc where i can check for the programs running in the background when i play Oblivion ?

If not, is there a way / trick to notice such programs ?

 

Many thanks !

Reaper

[Hickory]

What this means is to close EVERYTHING that's running (IM, Web Browser, Office apps., Email, Music players, Antivirus (disconnect from the net first), etc. before playing games (unless they are online games, in which case leave your antivirus running). You can also download a program called Game Booster, which temporarily stops non-essential services, but you must remember to re-enable them when you finish playing.

[_frost_]

If you're using windows7 then just click the "Start"-button and type the word "msconfig" in the search-field-thing (I don't know the right word for it (search field area? ;)).

Start the msconfig-program by pressing enter/return.

 

Click the button with the name "system start" or something like that.

Then you can select the apps you want to disable or not.

Just check or uncheck them on the left side.

 

The button next to "system start", on the left is also helpful to deactivate unnecessary processes, but it's too difficult for me to explain it in English.

And it's too risky to try it, cause it contains important stuff for the proper function of the os itself.

So it's better not to change these settings if you don't know what you're doing exactly.

 

Windows xp has something similar if I remember right.

 

 

_frost_

[Hickory]

And it's too risky to try it, cause it contains important stuff for the proper function of the os itself.

So it's better not to change these settings

[_frost_]

if you don't know what you're doing exactly.

 

Hehehe - I know, what I'm doing ;].

 

 

_frost_

 

P.S. the names 4 the buttons are "Startup" and "Services"

Edited February 13, 2011 by _frost_

[Ferryt]

I can vouch for GameBooster. It was a godsend in getting Oblivion to run on my old laptop.

 

I would also heartily recommend downloading and running Process Explorer from Microsoft's sysinternals site. I consider this to be a must-have utility and it's much more comprehensive and feature-rich than the built in "Task Manager".

 

One caveat, don't run it while you're trying to install or uninstall Oblivion. It clashes badly with Oblivion's copy protection because the protection scheme doesn't want you snooping into how it hides itself and will disable the installer if it detects PE on your machine. This has, supposedly, been fixed in the latest version of PE, but I still ran into some difficulty when I tried to install Oblivion with it running. You have to completely shut down your machine and do a cold restart even if you've shut down PE because secuROM specifically looks for vestiges of this program. Yeah, there was a big stink about this awhile back and secuROM and the developer of PE aren't exactly on good terms. The secuROM developers claim that PE is a piracy tool, which is utter nonsense, just because it has the ability to track what other programs are trying to hide from the user and other security tools. PE has been taken over by Microsoft, by the way. It's no longer under independent development.

[reaper9111]

Thanks guys !

 

Reaper