What is all this stuff doing on my computer?
Update: autoruns has gotten even better — check out my latest post about it.
The first time I ran task manager on my Tablet PC, I was faintly horrified at the long list of Windows background processes. What were they doing? And how could I make them stop?
The easiest way to find out was using autoruns.exe and procexp.exe, two tools from those excellent folks at sysinternals.com. Autoruns lists all the executables called at startup, but gives no indication of where they're from or what they do. Procexp lets you dig deeper for vendor name and program information. Note that autoruns can also delete startup items, but that's a little extreme — if you delete something important, you're going to have a fun time with regedit putting it back into SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
It's safer to first try XP's built-in System Configuration Utility, from Start->Help and Support->Tools (or c:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig.exe). Switch to its startup tab to turn off startup processes without deleting their entries. Once you've confirmed that everything you want to work still works, you can then use autoruns to delete the entries for good.
Of course, with 15 or so optional components that's still a pretty large search space, so to save other Toshiba Portege 3500 owners the trouble, here are my findings of what you can disable. I've also turned off the speech recognition module sapisvr.exe, via Control Panel->Regional/Language Options->Languages->Details->Installed Services.
| Process | Description | OK to disable? |
|---|---|---|
| 000stthk.exe | Toshiba function-key component | Yes |
| 00thotkey.exe | Toshiba hotkey component | No |
| apoint.exe | Alps touchpad enhancements | Yes |
| ndstray.exe | Toshiba network device hotkey | Yes |
| tabbtnu.exe | Microsoft Tablet PC component | No |
| tabtip.exe | Microsoft Tablet PC component | No |
| tfnf5.exe | Toshiba LCD/CRT hotkey | Yes |
| thkem.exe | Toshiba hotkey emulation | Yes |
| toshkcw.exe | Toshiba wireless hotkey | Yes |
| touched.exe | Toshiba touchpad hotkey | Yes |
| tpa.exe | Microsoft Tablet PC component | No |
| tpwrtray.exe | Toshiba power tray component | No |
| trirot.exe | Trident video driver | No |
| trot.exe | Toshiba rotation hotkey | Yes |
| wisptis.exe | Microsoft Tablet PC component | No |
Note that I'm not saying that you should disable everything marked "Yes", since that would leave you with a pretty barebones laptop configuration. For example, I leave the LCD/CRT and rotation hotkey components enabled. As ever, your milage may vary.
Updates: Rick Lobrecht has compiled a similar list for his Acer Tablet PC, and Willy Wortel has found that 000stthk.exe manages hot key functionality for the Toshiba's function keys. You can find more useful information at:
- The kephyr database of Windows files (volunteer effort)
- The reger24 database of Windows processes (volunteer effort)
- The WinTasks process library (free library, commercial tool)
Finally, the referrer logs for this page make an interesting case study in why executables names are important.
Comments
- Anonymous
March 14, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
March 20, 2004
More on mine, found via google:
Tmesrv.exe, Docking station file, Yes
TMERzCtl.EXE, Part of Mobile Extensions things-unknown, No?
TapButt.exe (har har), C:PFToshibaTapButton-unknown, No?
TabUserW, Wacom driver control panel and etc., No - Anonymous
April 05, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 06, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 29, 2004
This information was super helpful. Getting machines loaded with all the processes can be a real bear to go through. Thank you all for you help. Do you know of some other url's that'll display more common processes? - Anonymous
April 30, 2004
Good question! I updated the post with three additional sources of information. - Anonymous
May 06, 2004
As you are a laptop user, you may have the problem of changing IP and proxy when you go to different places with your laptop/tablet PC. Here's a small utility I have wrote to help laptop user's store multiple network and proxy configuration and apply instantly.
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/OazSwitchNetConfig.asp
Hope it comes to any assistance. - Anonymous
May 07, 2004
Thanks Omar, but I'm already using a nice auto-detecting proxy (supplied by Microsoft tech support) that only kicks in when it detects that it's on the corporate network. Have you checked if your code works with the latest XP SP2 wireless wizards? - Anonymous
September 14, 2005
These have been hard days for Microsoft laptops. First Dennis Cheung's Acer doesn't autosuspend, then... - Anonymous
June 03, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.tokash.org/2006/06/02/links-for-2006-06-03/ - Anonymous
September 11, 2006
Or, "What is all this stuff doing on my computer", part II. I've just finished switching my portable... - Anonymous
October 09, 2006
My old post on " What is all this stuff doing on my computer " described how to track down and identify