Software Invasion
on 01.09.05, 07:03am in software • comments (4)
Why is it that every peice of software I install lately wants to install at least part of it that runs all the time? A quick survey of my machine reveals that:
- iTunes installed ‘iTunesHelper.exe" and ‘iTunesService.exe".
- Quicktime constantly runs a ‘helper’ to ensure no one takes the .mov extension from it.
- I ran Nero Backup once, so it decided that its scheduler should be run constantly. Nero also has a ‘NeroFilterCheck’ running.
- MS Money has an alert process that won’t go away, even after you shutdown Money.
- The Logitech webcam has 3 separate applications running all the time.
- Norton Ghost installed a ‘tray application’, even though I don’t use scheduled backups.
It goes on and on. Now, I know RAM is cheap, but why do software vendors insist on invading my machine with tons of little applications running 24/7.
My only recommendation is to use Autoruns and shut down what you don’t want eating system resources.
Mike Dimmick (January 9, 2005 @ 11:49 am)
Even if you did use scheduled backups, the OS has a scheduler: the Scheduled Tasks facility. We use it at work with NTBackup to perform scheduling.
My Pentax camera’s software installed a ‘Device Detector’ but I now see it’s copyright ACD Systems, so I think I can remove that. You can detect device additions and removals through the RegisterDeviceNotification API anyway. I suppose the idea is to launch the full product when I attach the camera, but I don’t necessarily want that anyway. I’m perfectly capable of copying from a camera that presents itself as a removable drive!
Of course while it takes more time to start the system up (since all the bytes have to be loaded from disk), if the process isn’t used, Windows will simply keep trimming its working set until there’s nothing left. I’ve just noticed that Avalon’s FontCacheService’s working set is down to 20K and smss, the Session Manager Subsystem is at 0K. Likewise AVG Anti-Virus’s update service.
It’s important to remember that Task Manager’s Mem Usage column has little meaning: it lists the current working set of each process. However, many pages of each process are shared (e.g. read-only pages of DLLs) - the Mem Usage column simply lists each page currently mapped in the process’s page table, regardless of where it came from.
A lot of the things you list are very, very close to spyware. They exist to remove your control over the software you run on your computer.
Phil B (January 9, 2005 @ 12:08 pm)
I tried to load a game for my son at Christmas and it asked me to download
the latest drivers for my Nvidia GeForce 3 graphics card. I got the latest
drivers from the site but when I come to load them I get a message saying I
can only add one piece of hardware at a time - my computer is currently
trying to add some hardware via the wizard.
I am not aware of any hardware that is loading. Is this caused by some similar background software I’ve loaded recently?
Any clues please?
Phil
Eric (January 9, 2005 @ 4:00 pm)
You could always get a Mac… =)
PaulT (January 12, 2005 @ 8:52 am)
You think thats bad - try installing the connection software for Nokia or Sony Ericsson - there are at least 5 server exe’s and numerous hook dll’s