Microsoft Windows works best when there are only a few programs running at once. Unfortunately, many applications and websites are aggressive in installing unwanted extra software that runs continually in the background in Windows, sucking up processing time and making the whole system sluggish. In this lesson, you'll learn to remove such performance leeches.

Where's the Background?

When an application or service is running in the background, it's running on your computer, and using a share of the available system resources (like memory), but there's no window for it displayed on-screen. In other words, its operation is hidden from view.

Lots of programs run in the background and serve important and legitimate functions there, such as virus checking and internet connectivity. You might be surprised to know what all is running!

Try this experiment:

1. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete, and then click Task Manager. This opens the Task Manager window.
2. Click the Applications tab. The items listed here are the programs that have visible windows open, as shown in Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1: Windows Task Manager Applications tab.

3. Now click the Processes tab. These are all the things that are running in the background. Some of them are pieces of the applications from the Applications tab, but most of them are background processes and utilities, as shown in Figure 2-2.

Figure 2-2: Windows Task Manager Processes tab.

4. Close the Task Manager window when you're done looking at it.

So, what you see is not exactly what you get, is it? You don't have to understand what all those items on the Processes tab are for, so relax. There won't be a quiz on any of that! You just need to know that there's a lot going on in the background.

The notification area, also sometimes called the system tray (or just tray), is the area immediately to the left of the clock in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Many of the programs running in the background have tray icons here that you can use to open their window or to configure them. Figure 2-3 shows icons for satellite internet service, the LAN (local area network) connection, antivirus software, and sound card's volume control (which is currently muted).

Figure 2-3: The notification area.

Notice the left-pointing arrow button; this indicates that some of the tray icons are hidden. Windows XP hides some of the ones you don't use very often. Click that button to expand the set of icons. Figure 2-4 shows two more icons appeared in the tray.

Figure 2-4: All items in the notification area.

The purpose of this notification area is twofold. It lets you see at a glance what's running in the background, and it also lets you access the background applications.

Most of the icons in the notification area can be used two ways:

• You can double-click an icon to open the program's window (for most programs).
• You can right-click an icon and select from a shortcut menu. For example, you can right-click the network connection icon and select Disable, Status, Repair, or Open Network Connections. Some icons also have a command on this menu that closes or disables the application and removes its icon from the tray -- until the next time you start your computer (if it's set to load at startup) or until you restart that application.

So who decides which icons stay visible all the time and which are hidden until you call for them in the notification area? Windows tries, but you can make the decisions yourself if you prefer. To customize the behavior of each icon in the tray, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the taskbar (any blank area) and select Properties.
2. On the Taskbar tab, make sure Hide inactive icons is marked. (If it's not currently marked, your tray did not have the arrow button shown in Figure 2-3.)
3. Click the Customize button. The Customize Notifications dialog box appears.
4. Open the drop-down list for one of the active icons and select a setting for it, as shown in Figure 2-5:

Always Show: Show it even if you never use it.

Always Hide: Hide it even if you use it a lot.

Hide When Inactive: Show it if you use it a lot; otherwise hide it.

(By 'use it' we mean, you either double-click it to open its window or right-click it and select commands from its menu.)

Figure 2-5: Select which icons appear in the tray all the time and which are hidden.

5. Click OK to accept the new settings, and then OK again to close the Taskbar Properties dialog box.

How Background Applications Get Installed

You might be wondering at this point where all those background applications come from. There are nearly as many sources as there are applications, but here are the major categories:

• Utilities: Some utility programs are designed to run primarily in the background, and to spring into view only when they're needed. Antivirus software is a prime example. You buy such a program and install it with the expectation that it will run in the background.
• Extras for other applications: Some regular applications have background components that supplement them. For example, both Quicken and Microsoft Money have bill payment reminders that run in the background, even when the main application is not running. This is an example of a program that you may not need and that you can disable from loading to free up a bit of memory.
• Hardware services: Many hardware devices have a special controller program that runs when you use them, and these controller programs typically run in the background waiting to be activated. Examples include software for scanners, printers, PDA (personal digital assistant) docking cradles, CD-RW drives, and the driver that controls your sound card's speaker volume. Having the controller program preloaded and waiting can make the device start up faster when you need it, but if you seldom use that device, it can be needlessly wasteful of system memory. If you've turned off the device's controller in the notification area and need to use it, you might need to manually restart the controller (or it might start itself automatically).
• Useless annoyances: The internet is fraught with irritating advertising software (adware) that purports to do something useful for you, like let you earn money or points, but makes ads pop up all the time on your computer or redirects your internet searches through an advertising portal. Unfortunately, it's too easy to get one of these installed (just accidentally click on Yes rather than No in a dialog box). Some of these have tray icons; some don't. You find out how to get rid of them for good later in this lesson.

To shutdown most of the background applications in the tray, right-click the applications and select Close (or Exit, or Quit, or some such command); however, when you restart the computer, they come back because they're set to load automatically at startup. The rest of this lesson is devoted to various ways to get rid of the unwanted background programs permanently, so you don't have to keep turning them off every time you restart.

Many of the background programs can be removed easily through the Add or Remove Programs utility in the Control Panel, even some of the annoying adware ones. Even if you don't have any immediate need to rid yourself of a background program, it's still a good idea to review your list of installed applications occasionally and take out anything you don't use.

To remove an application, follow these steps:

1. Select Start > Control Panel, and then select Add or Remove Programs. The installed programs appear.

Some programs have two separate buttons: Change and Remove. Others have a single Change/Remove button. This depends on how the software's designers have set it up to interact with Windows. Some of them have a maintenance mode where you can change how it's installed.

2. Click the Remove or Change/Remove button for an application you want to remove, as shown in Figure 2-6.

Figure 2-6: Select an application you no longer want and remove it.

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3. Follow the prompts that appear. They're different for different applications.

You may be prompted to restart your computer after removing a program. Do so if you're finished removing programs, but if you still have more programs to remove, you can restart later.

The trick, of course, is knowing what to remove and what to keep. Anything that looks like an update or patch for an application that you use should be kept. For example, in Figure 2-6, there's a line for HighMAT Extension to Microsoft Windows XP CD Writing Wizard. You don't have to know what HighMAT is to determine that it's something you should keep, because you know you want to write CDs.

When you highlight a program, there's a Last Used On section that tells you when the program was last used. You can use this to help you decide whether you need to keep the program.

Using an Application's Properties to Prevent It from Loading

As mentioned earlier, you can right-click an icon in the notification area to get a menu. On some of those menus, there is a command such as Options, Properties, Preferences, Configuration, or something similar. That command opens a dialog box where you can set options for that program. If you're lucky, one of those options is to prevent it from loading at startup.

For example, if you use Yahoo! Messenger, but don't want it to start automatically, you can right-click its icon in the notification area and select Preferences, and then clear the Automatically start Yahoo! Messenger checkbox, as shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7: Yahoo! Messenger Preferences dialog box.

5. DOWNLOADING AND RUNNING SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY

This lesson has alluded to the fact that some programs run in the background and do annoying things such as display endless pop-up ads, monitor your Web-surfing habits, or spy on you. What's worse, many of these don't appear either in the notification area or in the Add or Remove Programs list, so there's not an easy way to disable or remove them.

There are several programs available that find and disable or remove these annoying programs, and they all work to some degree. There's one program that works really well and happens to be free! It's called Spybot Search & Destroy.

Downloading and Installing Spybot Search & Destroy

Here's how to download it. (If you're an old hand at downloading, feel free to do it on your own.)

1. Go to the Spybot Mirror selection website and click the Download Here button next to one of the mirror sites that has this software available. (Download.com is a good one for people in the United States.)

A mirror site is a server that contains the same data as some other server (in other words, a mirror image of it). Mirror sites are used to make files available for download all over the world so that each person can download it from the server nearest to her.

2. Click the Download Now link (if using Download.com) or the equivalent link on some other site. (Each of the mirrors has a slightly different organization to their Web site.)
3. A File Download box opens; click Save.
4. The Save As dialog box opens. Click the Desktop icon on the left side of the dialog box.
5. Click Save and wait for the file to download. When the Download Complete dialog box appears, click Open.
6. In the Select Setup Language box, select English (or your native language), and then click OK.
7. The Setup Wizard opens. Click Next.
8. Click I Accept the Agreement, and then click Next.
9. Accept the default install location, and then click Next.
10. Accept the default components, and then click Next.
11. Accept the default Start menu folder name, and then click Next.
12. Accept the default Additional Tasks, and then click Next.
13. Click Install.
14. Click Finish. The program runs. The first time it runs, it prompts you to create a Registry backup.
15. Click the Create Registry Backup button, wait for the Registry to be backed up, and then close that window.

Using Spybot Search & Destroy

Now you're ready to use the program. It should already be open. Here are the steps to follow each time you want to check your system:

1. In the Spybot Search & Destroy window, click the Update icon.
2. Click Search for Updates. If it finds any updates, click Download Updates.
3. Click the Immunize icon. If you see a message that says Please immunize, click the Immunize button.
4. Click the Search & Destroy button.
5. Click Check for problems and wait for it to run its check. It takes 5 to 10 minutes.
6. Examine the results. If desired, click a plus sign next to an item to see what's in that category. In Figure 2-8, for example, it has found several problems.

Figure 2-8: Spybot results (yours will be different).

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7. Click Fix Selected Problems, and then click Yes in the confirmation box. Wait for the problems to be fixed.
8. When a confirmation appears, click OK, and then close the application.

You'll be amazed at what it finds the first time you run it -- all kinds of nasty little programs and whatnot. Some exceptionally entrenched programs may require a reboot and a rerunning of Spybot Search & Destroy to get all their tendrils dislodged from your system.

This program is fairly easy to use and understand but if you have any questions or problems, post them on the Message Board for the class and perhaps someone can help you figure it out.

6. USING SELECTIVE STARTUP TO REMOVE STUBBORN PROGRAMS

If there are still programs loading into the background at startup that you just can't seem to remove using any of the techniques discussed in this lesson so far, there's one last thing you can do. Well, actually there are two last things, but one of them -- editing the Registry manually -- is not recommend so it's not covered.

That leaves the following method. Use these steps to examine the list of startup programs and disable some of them if desired:

1. Select Start > Run.
2. In the Run box, type MSCONFIG, and then click OK. The System Configuration Utility window opens.
3. Click the Startup tab. Each item that loads at startup has its own line here, as shown in Figure 2-9.

Figure 2-9: The Startup tab lets you disable certain startup items.

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4. Clear the checkbox for any item you want to disable, and then close the window and reboot to see the effects.
5. When you reboot, you may see a warning message that the computer is running in selective startup mode; click OK.

After rebooting, check all your essential background programs, such as your virus checker, to make sure they all still work. If needed, reenter the System Configuration Editor later and reenable an item.

Some computer tech support centers may recommend that you disable everything that was loading at startup through the System Configuration Utility. This is bad advice! You should be very judicious about disabling startup items here. Some of them need to load for important services, such as virus protection, to work.

Moving On

In this lesson, you learned how to identify and manage background programs. Streamlining the list of programs that run in the background can greatly improve your computer's performance. It's an amazing difference on some systems! Check your understanding of the material by completing the assignment and quiz, and then check the Message Board for any announcements or questions from fellow students.

In Lesson 3, you'll learn about updates and patches to Windows -- why they're important, and how to acquire and install them.