The following is a web version of the PCFixes Tech Help Paper PT6. 

PERFORMANCE TIPS #6

"EXCESSIVE TRAY ICONS 
AND BACKGROUND TASKS"

As this problem is becoming more and more prevalent, I have included it on one of my performance tips series so that you can get the information about it without me having to repeat myself over and over. It will also be something in black and white you can take with you to look at in more detail when you have time to do so.

 Often a computer will have many small icons near the clock inside your taskbar, and as you have more and more there, you will often see a drop in performance. This tech-help letter was written to help explain how these can slow down your system, why they do, and how to improve the situation.

 In order to best explain, I like to back up into the history of computing and Windows in particular. I will try to keep it short and informative. One of Microsoft’s Windows keys features is that it can appear to do more than one thing at a time. While not all users will be trying to type a letter while they are playing a game or looking at a webpage, it is possible to do it with Windows. The original idea was that you could have several programs open and running at the same time, and be able in most cases to take information from one and use it with another. While today this seems simple, it was not in the beginning. When Windows, then Windows 386, and later Windows3.1 came out, it was pretty rare. There were some other programs that would allow you to run two or more programs at the same time but only they were not in general use and few people used them. Programs such as QuarterDeck’s DESQVIEW were able to run two or more DOS based programs at the same time, switching back and forth with special key combinations, but the typical computer user did only one thing at a time. If you had an address in a database program and wanted to put it into a letter you were writing in a word processor you did this by starting the database program, locating the address, and then writing it down or printing it.  Then you would exit the database program, and start the word processor and type the address in.  Likewise if you got information in an email you could not easily cut and paste it into another program like you do today.  Windows can easily run several different application programs at one time and lets you move data back and forth easily.

     You say you don’t run but one program at a time?  I must argue with that as there are things going on with Windows that you don’t always see.  Even if you have no programs started, the desktop you see is a program called explorer, and the clock and system tray buttons are programs, as well as many that windows runs ‘under the hood’ to do things like watch for key strokes and mouse movements.  If you press CTRL-ALT-DEL all together in most versions of Windows, you will pull up a screen that shows the tasks running currently. This is called the TASK MANAGER screen. Actually you will be seeing the ‘public’ tasks, the ones windows wants you to see, and not those smaller things that make up much of what Windows does.  If you do this now, you will see quite a number of programs running.  Each of these takes a percentage of the power your computer has to offer and as the computer spends a portion of its time doing them, it has less and less time to do what you have manually started.  So after seeing the group of icons near your time display, and the list of programs running in the task manager, you have a bit more of an idea how many things Windows is doing at once.

 Icons that are on your desktop, the background area of the main screen at startup, are usually what we call shortcuts. These are actually small files stored inside the hard disk of your system that tell the computer where to find the program they represent, and to run it. They take up little space and do nothing but take up that space. Having more of them on the desktop is ok, and the only down side to that is the tiny bit of time it requires extra to find them and put pictures on the desktop at the time of startup. Again, usually, these are not the program you think they are in most cases, but just a small file that points the way for the computer to find the program. If you have the feature turned on, all shortcuts will have a small arrow in one of the bottom corners so you can tell that they are shortcuts. One of the most common mistakes users make is thinking they can delete a program by deleting the shortcut icon on their screen. Doing so takes away the easy way to click and start the program, but nothing else.

 The icons in the task bar near the time are not shortcuts, but usually showing a program that is running waiting for you to need it. Some of them are programs Windows put there for you, and others are installed by other software as you load it on your computer. The idea behind many of these is to make it easy for you to start the program the represent or to be running a small program that can more quickly start the bigger program that goes with it. Those are often called launchers.*

 Launchers really have little purpose these days. Most systems are fast enough that you will probably not see much difference – if any – in starting the program with the launcher icon. Those that make a difference usually are so little of a difference you could do without and not notice it. If it takes 1.17 seconds to load the program with the launcher icon, and 1.25 without, most of us would care less.  The other reason that many programs use this method of placing a launcher icon in the system tray area, is to be sure you see that program and use it. Like advertising, they figure you will use it more if you are constantly reminded of it, and others who see your screen will see it too.  AOL is a good example of having all the bases covered. When you install most AOL installations today you will have a ‘quick-launch’ icon in the system tray, the usual entries in your START / PROGRAMS menu choices, and several on the desktop.  Any one of them will start the program, but the one running in the system tray area near your clock is actually a small program that is just waiting for you to click it. It does take up a percentage of your processor’s time and power.  Is it really necessary?

    Another prime example is the typical scanner and its accompanying software for doing OCR work. I often get systems in my shop that have a OCR application program running in the main section of the task bar as well as some similar program in the system tray icons. I ask the user if they are using OCR and they usually are not even aware of what it is. They have been living with a system which starts up and loads an OCR program just in case they need it. This wastes the system power and memory. If they did need to do any OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION and convert a scanned picture of a document into actual letters and numbers, they could start the OCR program when needed. The rest of the time why have it running?

   Realplayer is another example. When you install most of their versions you set them to run any media file that they are capable of by just clicking on the file or icon to do it. Why then have another application running in the system tray taking power from the processor just to make it easier to start real player. I think some of these companies think we will lose their main icon and forget to use the start button to find them. Maybe they think we are so lazy that if its on the system tray its less movement of the mouse to find it. Perhaps they think we are all clock-watchers and will see their icon more often when we look at the clock in the system tray?  Who knows?  I see some computers where there are more than a dozen of these icons for various programs in the system tray area. With that many showing, I would think its just more confusing – not to mention wasteful.  Like TV or radio commercials, we tend to ignore too many of something force fed to us.

 Besides these icons in the system tray there are often programs running in the background, unknown to the casual user, and not showing in the system tray or task bar. If you press the CTRL-ALT-DEL one time and look you may see some that you are not aware of.  Windows can also hide these and does hide system level processes from this list (which may be good as you would not know what some of these ‘under the hood’ type things are anyway).  I will not attempt to get into that level of process monitoring here, but can in person if needed.

    So, the typical system has a history where it seems to be getting slower and slower and more erratic and more likely to crash.  Is it just getting old? Do you need to rush to the store and buy the latest and speediest system you can afford?

   Think of computers like cars – where you add more and more things to your car and it gets weighed down and does not perform like it once did. As you add more and more programs that run all the time, you will have less of the processor to do your work, making it appear slower.  The processor runs from a signal derived from a quartz crystal, like your watch. It really can not go slower or faster with age, humidity, sunspots or alien influenza.  However, its like a handyman with too many chores to do – as it rushes back and forth trying to do all that it has to do, it will get slower from the extra load. If there is not enough ram to do all these jobs in ram, then the computer resorts to using the swap file – copying jobs to the hard disk, loading the next job to work on, working on that a few millionths of a second, copying it to another file, loading the next and so on. This constant swapping from fast ram to the slower hard disk can seriously slow down the work. This is why adding more ram can help your system ‘appear’ to run faster.

What to do?

     It did not get clogged up with all these things in one short session, and you may not clear them all in one sitting either. Take time to see what everything is in the system tray. Most of them will tell you if you place your mouse cursor over them. A right click on most will bring up a menu of choices for settings, to close the program and so on. While it will close it now, if the system is being told to load these automatically at startup, most will do that again each time you start, so stopping them with the CLOSE command from a right click menu is only a temporary fix.

 Make a list of the offenders, and think about whether you need them or not. The basic system functions like the task scheduler, volume control and monitor settings can be removed but usually are not very big hogs on resources.  The biggest ones are usually virus scan tools – and you might want to leave them going to protect yourself.  However, think a bit more about how you are using your virus scan software. Is it up to date?  (if you are not routinely downloading updates to it every week or two the answer is NO.)  Assuming you are faithful about keeping it updated, then ask yourself if it has protection for email virus attacks?  Most of the better ones do – but, they default to having it turned off! 

 If your email protection is not turned on, you have to wait till the damage is done to have the virus program show you its there. If the email protection is on, most of the damaging email virus and worm attacks can be prevented. 

 If you have the full protection on, you can expect the anti-virus program to scan everything you copy, move or save to your drive. That’s a lot of stuff, and it does slow you down somewhat to do it. If you are careful, you can disable the protection while you do things that are not likely to need the protection. If you are sitting down typing a letter about performance tips, for example, it is not likely to get a virus. Now, if I picked up a diskette and ran a program on it – then I should be using the protection. Likewise downloading a file or the latest cute automated greeting from that nifty card website.  So for most of us its best to leave the antivirus programs running – and in fact check to be sure they are being all they can be with the latest updates and email protection turned on.

 Once you know what programs you have running, and if you really want to have them going at all times you are ready to start looking at removing the ones you do not have to have going. Doing this can help with system response and performance, and often prevent some of the lockups or crashes you may be experiencing. 

 Many of these launcher programs get started by having an icon in the STARTUP group in your system menu. Everything that is in this folder gets run when the system starts. Some will be added into the configuration of the system so they force running at boot up. If you are familiar with using SYSEDIT or MSCONFIG you can find and disable these. If you are not sure about this area you may want to refer the problem to me or at least get some more advice. Last but far from least, you will find many of these programs installing themselves in the system registry. Knowing how to use Microsoft’s REGEDIT to find and remove these from the registry is a bit more than we can cover in a simple how to tech paper. Damage to the registry can easily cause bigger problems so I do not wish to point you in that direction on your own.

 Keep in mind that removing unneeded programs from the task bar is just one of many things that can help your system work better.  For more information on performance tweaks and help, see my tech help papers section of the www.pcfixes.com website.

  If you have any questions on this or any other computer need, please feel free to ask. My job is ‘helping you get more from your computer’.

Author & Copyright

Author: J. Mike Nichols   Copyright © 2002   All Rights Reserved

For contact info, please see the webpages at Http://www.pcfixes.com

Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is prohibited without the express consent and knowledge of the author.

DISCLAIMER

Some of the procedures described in this document require changes to your computer’s configuration and may cause other problems that are unforeseen. The author makes no claim of warranty or performance and will not be held responsible for any direct or collateral damage which might result from following the suggestions or recommendations contained herein including but not limited to: loss of data, loss of operation, lost time or expenses incurred in repairing any damage caused by attempts to improve the system which cause unforeseen results. While every effort has been made to provide useful information and suggestions to help improve your system, there exist far too many possible combinations of hardware, software and operating system configurations to be able to accurately provide information and suggestions that will work with every possible system variant.

PERFTIPS6 file version 1.02 1/14/2002  Copyright Ó2002 by Mike Nichols – Nichols Consulting – Hobbs NM  USA   WWW.PCFIXES.COM

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